Lewiston Broncs

Lewiston

Location in the United States

Lewiston

Location in Idaho

The Lewiston Broncs were a minor league baseball team based in Lewiston, Idaho, and played from 1952 through 1974. Locally, the team was known as "Lewis-Clark" to include the adjacent twin city of Clarkston, Washington. The team played at Bengal Field,^[1] a few blocks southeast of the high school.

The parent organization was Lewiston Baseball Club, Inc., formed in 1952 by Lewiston businessmen Sam Canner Sr., Jack Lee, Billy Gray, George Thiessen, and others. Gray later sold his shares to Thiessen. The Broncs were a member of the Western International League ("Willy") from 1952–54,^[2][3] and the its successor, the Northwest League, from 1955–74. The Broncs won the NWL championships in 1961,^[4] led by catcher–manager John McNamara, the future MLB skipper, and again in 1970^[5] and 1972.^[6]

The Broncs had two distinctions:

1. They played in the smallest town in America to have a professional baseball team (1960 census = 12,691); and
2. They were the only professional baseball team to be operated without a business manager. During their entire existence, they were run by a board of directors centered on the stockholders.

The team colors were blue and white. Bengal Field,^[1] at 11th Avenue and 14th Street, is now the football-only venue of Lewiston High School, with a grandstand on its west sideline. When it was a baseball stadium for the Lewiston Broncs, home plate was in the northeast corner of the property at 15th Street, resulting in an unorthodox southwest alignment (home to center field). (The recommended alignment is east-northeast.)^[7]

Affiliations

The Broncs were affiliated with four major league franchises:

• The St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles in 1954.
• The Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland in 1968.

Players

A roster check in 1967 showed that 40% of the players and coaches of the Kansas City Athletics had been in Lewiston at one time or another. Reggie Jackson was perhaps the most famous Lewiston Bronc of all-time; Mr. October played 12 games at age 20 for Lewiston in 1966.^[8] The Broncs' rosters included Rick Monday,^[9] manager John McNamara, Vearl ("Snag") Moore, Thorton ("Kip") Kipper, Antonio Perez, Ron Koepper, Delmer Owen, Dick Green, Bud Swan, Bert Campaneris, John Israel, Dave Duncan, Al Heist and as a player, later coach-manager Robert ("Gabby") Williams.

See also

• Lewiston Broncs players   (1952–1974)

Termination

The Broncs and their parent company were dissolved in January 1975,^[10][11] after years of financial losses due to poor win-loss records, resulting in low attendance. Micromanagement interference from A's owner Charlie O. Finley, at all levels of the organization, was the cause. The result for the Broncs was lost games due to the best players being quickly moved up to other A's minor league franchises in Single-A (Burlington Bees) and Double-A (Birmingham A's).

The A's maintained a presence in the Northwest League in 1975 with a new franchise in southwestern Idaho as the Boise A's, managed by former Bronc, Tom Trebelhorn.^[12] After two seasons in Boise, the team moved to Medicine Hat in eastern Alberta in 1977 and joined the Pioneer League.^[13] The Medicine Hat A's switched affiliations after one season to become the Medicine Hat Blue Jays in 1978. There was no A's affiliate in the NWL in 1977; in 1978 it was the Bend Timber Hawks, who moved south in 1979 and became the Medford A's.

Previous teams

Prior to the Broncs, Lewiston's first two seasons in the minor leagues were with teams named the Indians, in the Class B WIL in 1937,^[14][15] and in the Class C Pioneer League in 1939.^{[16][17][18][19]} The first night game at Bengal Field was the opening game in 1937 on April 27.^[14][20]

References

External links

• Baseball-Reference.com – minor league teams – Lewiston, Idaho
• Nat Notes – Northwest League
• Northwest League of Professional Baseball 2012 Media Guide
  • (Information on page 28 supports the fact that the franchise's official nickname was Broncs, not Broncos).

Coordinates: 46°24′32″N 117°00′43″W / 46.409°N 117.012°W / 46.409; -117.012