The PCL in 1951

Opening Day for the1951 season is only 2 days away. There will be only one game on April 16th: the Cincinnati Reds will host the Pittsburgh Pirates at Crosley Field for the traditional opener. The rest of the Major League teams will open on April 17th, more than two weeks later than the opening of the 2011 season.

Meanwhile, on the west coast, the Pacific Coast League (PCL) season was already under way. So here is a brief introduction to the 1951 Pacific Coast League.

In 1951, the Pacific Coast League was a AAA league, the highest minor league classification at the time. However, baseball had become big time on the west coast, and the PCL was petitioning Organized Ball to achieve Major League status. The league was never a Major League, but in 1952 they were declared an “Open League” putting them above the other AAA leagues. They maintained that classification through the 1957 season when it was announced that the Brooklyn and New York National League franchises would be moving west to become the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants respectively.

The eight teams that comprised the PCL in 1951 were the Hollywood Stars, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Oaks, Portland Beavers, Sacramento Solons, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Seals, and Seattle Rainiers. They were all truly Pacific Coast Teams.

You probably recognize that six of those eight cities now have Major League teams. The 2011 version of the Pacific Coast League has 16 teams from Sacramento and Tacoma to Iowa and New Orleans. There are still vestiges of the 1951 PCL with a team in Sacramento, the Tacoma Rainiers, and the Tucson Padres. The Portland Beavers were replaced this year by the Omaha Storm Chasers.

Three of the ballparks that were used in the 1951 PCL season eventually became Major League ballparks, if only briefly:

The Los Angeles Angels of the PCL played at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, which became the home of the 1961 Los Angeles Angels of the American League (the next year they were tenants at Dodger Stadium and played there until Anaheim Stadium was ready for action in 1966);

For two seasons, in 1958 and 1959, the Giants played in San Francisco’s Seals Stadium, longtime home of the San Francisco Seals;

The third old PCL ballpark to be used as a Major League field was Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium (try to say that without spraying) home of the Rainiers. No, it wasn’t the original home of the Seattle Mariners. It was the home of the 1969 Seattle Pilots of the American league, an expansion team that was bankrupt by the end of the season, sold to a group headed by current baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.

The other ballparks in the 1951 PCL included:

Gilmore Field, home of the Hollywood Stars and now the site of CBS Television Studios

Oaks Ball Park, home of the Oakland Oaks. Oaks Ball Park was demolished in 1955 to make room for a Pepsi bottling plant which was later torn down to build Pixar Animation Studios.

Lucky Beavers Stadium, home of the Portland Beavers.

Edmonds Field, home of the Sacramento Solons

Lane Field, home of the San Diego Padres and the field where Ted Williams first played professional baseball.

There were a number of big time baseball names among the managers of the PCL teams in 1951:

Hollywood – Fred Haney, who managed the Milwaukee Braves to a World Series victory over the Yankees in 1957;

Seattle – Rogers Hornsby, a Hall of Famer whose lifetime batting average of .358 is second only to Ty Cobb;

Oakland - Mel Ott, a Hall of Fame player with 511 career homeruns;

San Francisco – Lefty O’Doul a San Francisco native who began his career as a pitcher, but a sore arm turned him into an outfielder. In 1929 he hit .398 with 254 hits (still tied for the all-time National League record), 32 homeruns, 122 rbi, and 152 runs.

There will be more about the Coast League teams, their managers and ballparks as the season progresses and the Stars and Angels host, and visit, the other cities of the 1951 Pacific Coast League.