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:
“It could be clearly proved that by a practical nullification [by the South] of the Fifteenth Amendment the Republicans have for several years been deprived of a majority in both the House and Senate. The failure of the South to faithfully observe the Fifteenth Amendment is the cause of the failure of all efforts towards complete pacification. It is on this hook that the bloody shirt now hangs.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.”
—Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)
“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“Staff has a genius for sitting on its brains and coming up with perfect hindsight.”
—Leo V. Gordon, U.S. screenwriter, and Arthur Hiller. Major Craig (Rock Hudson)
“He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven no harm shall touch you. In famine he will redeem you from death, and in war from the power of the sword. You shall be hidden from the scourge of the tongue, and shall not fear destruction when it comes. At destruction and famine you shall laugh, and shall not fear the wild animals of the earth. For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the wild animals shall be at peace with you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 5:19-23.
“The salary cap ... will be accepted about the time the 13 original states restore the monarchy.”
—Tom Reich, U.S. baseball agent. New York Times, p. 16B (August 11, 1994)