Efforts To Bring Major League Baseball To Denver
The Broncos may have struggled in the early 1960s, but Bob Howsam would prove himself to be a highly successful baseball executive. He led the family-owned Denver Bears of the Class A Western League and Triple-A American Association from 1947 to 1962. For building one of the most successful minor league franchises of the 1950s, Howsam was twice (1951 and 1956) named Minor League Executive of the Year by The Sporting News. While the Bears achieved great success as a Triple-A farm team of the New York Yankees in the late 1950s, their earlier tie-up with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1952–1954) served to introduce Howsam to Pirates' general manager Branch Rickey, who would play an influential role later in Howsam's career.
In an attempt to bring Major League Baseball to Denver, Howsam was one of the founders of the Continental League, which in 1959 planned to become the "third Major League" following the epidemic of franchise shifts during the 1950s. MLB magnates, nervous about the possible rescinding of baseball's antitrust exemption by the U.S. Congress after the National League abandoned New York, agreed to study (and perhaps support) the formation of the new loop. Denver was one of the CL's eight founding cities, with Howsam in line to become owner and operator of his hometown franchise.
As events unfolded, the new league never got off the drawing board; it was doomed once three of its key cities gained Major League franchises in 1961–1962 (New York and Houston got expansion National League franchises, while the American League Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul). However, the Continental League's president was Rickey, and the Baseball Hall of Fame executive, who had revolutionized baseball in his earlier career with the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers, took notice of Howsam for a second time.
Read more about this topic: Bob Howsam
Famous quotes containing the words efforts to, efforts, bring, major, league and/or baseball:
“The literal alternatives to [abortion] are suicide, motherhood, and, some would add, madness. Consequently, there is some confusion, discomfort, and cynicism greeting efforts to “find” or “emphasize” or “identify” alternatives to abortion.”
—Connie J. Downey (b. 1934)
“With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“The Sixties, of course, was the worst time in the world to try and bring up a child. They were exposed to all these crazy things going on.”
—Nancy Reagan (b. 1923)
“What was lost in the European cataclysm was not only the Jewish past—the whole life of a civilization—but also a major share of the Jewish future.... [ellipsis in source] It was not only the intellect of a people in its prime that was excised, but the treasure of a people in its potential.”
—Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)