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.
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