The Arrival of the Springfield Cubs Signaled the Demise of Newark’s Legendary Bears

Springfield Cubs official scorecard, 1950. (Courtesy Wood Museum of Springfield History)

 

On Monday evening, February 6, 1950, a cold winter night laced with thoughts of Opening Day two months away, Municipal Auditorium in downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, was filled with fans whooping and hollering as the newest baseball team, the Springfield Cubs, was introduced. Sponsored by the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, the “Meet-the-Manager” Night, as it was billed, witnessed a capacity crowd as they greeted manager Stan Hack of the Springfield Cubs, manager Frankie Frisch of the Chicago Cubs, International League President Frank J. Shaughnessy, and Jack Sheehan, chief of the Chicago Cubs farm system.1 Signs welcoming Hack and the International League adorned the auditorium. As sports reporter Walter Graham captured the following day in the Springfield Daily News, “The whole affair was a bang-up success and the Chicago Cubs folks had reason to feel ever so happy about it all.”2

The event was designed to formally introduce the Springfield Cubs, the Triple-A International League affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, as the newest baseball team in Springfield. The evening also featured a well-deserved thank-you to Jack Sheehan, “the man who spearheaded the movement that resulted in this city getting the Newark franchise.” As Sheehan reflected the day after the event, “It has always been my contention that Springfield and Western Massachusetts is a great sports area, and the wonderful turnout of fans last night makes my conviction stronger than ever. I express the sincere thanks of the entire Chicago Cub organization for all who took part in the affair. With fans like this, I don’t see how International League baseball in Springfield can miss.”3

Indeed, optimism was high as Springfield welcomed not only a new team but a new decade, the 1950s. Neither baseball nor the Cubs were a new venture for Springfield, though. The Springfield Cubs had been a member of the eight-team Class-B New England League in 1948 and 1949. In 1948 the Cubs finished in sixth place, failing to qualify for the playoffs, but the following season, the team improved to fourth place and a playoff berth. After defeating the Pawtucket Slaters in a best-of-three series, they then lost to the Portland Pilots in a best-of-seven championship series. At the conclusion of the 1949 season, however, the league folded, temporarily leaving Springfield without a professional baseball team.

The Chicago franchise strongly believed that Springfield still possessed a strong market, as evidenced by the team’s attendance figures. For the 1948 season, the Cubs finished second in the league with attendance of 95,406, and in 1949 they led the league with 102,387 fans passing through the turnstiles.4 For Cubs executives, Springfield was viewed favorably as a good baseball town, in the parlance of the day, that would continue to support professional baseball.

Sheehan and the Cubs wasted little time in trying to secure another franchise for Springfield, but time was of the essence, so Sheehan quickly went to work and soon found that the Newark Bears team, the Triple-A affiliate of the New York Yankees, were for sale. The Bears were considered the gold standard in terms of minor-league baseball.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Newark Bears fans enjoyed watching one of the most successful minor-league teams in baseball history. In 1931 Jacob Ruppert, principal owner of the New York Yankees, purchased the team from financially strapped newspaper editor Paul Block for an estimated $350,000. The acquisition included Davids Stadium, a relatively new ballpark built in 1926 and located on Wilson Avenue in the city’s East Ward, colloquially known as the Ironbound neighborhood. The facility was renamed Ruppert Stadium soon after the takeover. According to historian Neil Sullivan, Ruppert, who amassed a fortune in his father ‘ s beer business and later real estate, wisely surrounded himself with men who knew the game. In particular, he persuaded George Weiss, vice president, and general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, to accept an offer to run the Newark club in the International League and build an overall stronger farm system for the Yankees.5

Weiss remained with the Yankee organization for 28 seasons, from 1932 to 1960, first as the architect of the farm system before becoming New York’s general manager in 1948 (and being elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971). By 1940, the Yankees controlled nine minor-league teams and operated at all levels of competition, with Newark being considered as the “crown jewel” of its minor-league system. True to its name, the Newark franchise consistently developed talent for its parent organization, and the Yankees claimed seven American League pennants between 1936 and 1943. The Bears also enjoyed success as contenders for the International League crown. During the Bears’ 18-year existence in Newark, the team finished first in the International League in 1932, 1933, 1934, 1937, 1938, 1941, and 1942. The Bears advanced to the league playoffs an additional nine times, missing only the 1947 and 1949 seasons. The team defeated its playoff rivals in 1937, 1938, 1940, and 1945.6

Understandably, it was the 1937 ballclub that received the most praise and attention. Once named the Minor League Team of the Century by the readers of the publication Baseball America, the 1937 Bears captured one of the team’s three Little World Series championships. According to New Jersey baseball historians Ronald Meyer, James DiClerico, and Barry Pavelec, the greatness of this team rested on three achievements. First, the team finished an astonishing 25% games in front of the second-place Montreal Royals. Second, the Bears captured the Little World Series by defeating the Columbus Red Birds of the American Association in dramatic style. After losing the first three games, Newark stormed back to win the last four games. Finally, the team managed to send every starter to the major leagues. Among the players who graduated to the big leagues were Joe Gordon, Babe Dahlgren, George McQuinn, Jim Gleeson, Bob Seeds, Nolen Richardson, Buddy Rosar, Atley Donald, Joe Beggs, Vito Tamulis, and Steve Sundra. The most beloved member of the squad, Charlie “King Kong” Keller, played 13 seasons, mostly with the Yankees, where he joined Joe DiMaggio and Tommy Henrich as the organization’s premier outfield combination. In later years, other stars including Yogi Berra, Bobby Brown, Johnny Lindell, George Stirnweiss, and Hank Majeski advanced to the majors after spending time in Newark.7

In late December 1949, Newark fans experienced the unthinkable when the Yankees entertained offers to purchase the Bears franchise. The Cubs entered a bid for the team after the New England League disbanded, leaving the Chicago affiliate without a home. The Cubs took an option on the Newark Holdings until January 15. 1950. After hearing the news, Newark City Commissioner Meyer C. Ellenstein contacted Parke Carroll, the Bears’ general manager, to discuss keeping the team in Newark. Bears fans had complained about inadequate transportation to Ruppert Stadium and the offensive smell that engulfed the park. “Transportation can be corrected,” Ellenstein stated, “and the smoke and smells I’ve been hearing about can be eased too.” Carroll considered the city’s response but deferred any decisions regarding the team to Dan Topping, president and co-owner of the Yankees.8

Topping understood that the decision to sell the Bears had little to do with transportation and pollution. Both he and Weiss knew that multiple factors contributed to the sale. The competition from live television and nearby major-league ballparks—the Yankees, Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers were just across the Hudson River—had cut attendance to 90,000 in 1949, a far distance from the record high attendance of 345,000 in 1932. Moreover, the Yankees chose to reorganize their entire farm system with a goal toward greater specialization in player development. The Bears were one of five farm teams the Yankees eliminated. With the removal of Newark, the Yankees retained only one Triple-A team, the Kansas City Blues of the American Association. Weiss, the man who built the Yankees dynasty with Newark’s muscle, officially cited attendance and reorganization as major reasons to sell the team.9

In December 1949, discussions heated up. Springfield was not the only city being considered for the Bears. At the National Convention of Professional Baseball held in Baltimore, Weiss indicated that Springfield; New Haven, Connecticut; and Québec City all represented viable options for the sale and relocation of the Newark franchise. Part of the negotiations for bringing a Triple-A team to Springfield centered on the ballpark. Pynchon Park had been part of the discussions in 1947 when the National League Chicago Cubs agreed to relocate the minor-league Cubs to the New England League. At that time, the Cubs leased the park from the City of Springfield and quickly set about making the necessary upgrades. They desired “to revive baseball in this area and to transform Pynchon Park into a place where people could spend their evenings and Sunday afternoons enjoying their favorite American sport.”10 At that time, it included a new corrugated steel fence, new grandstand and concession stand, improved fire safety measures, doubling the number of entrances, paving the parking lot, and resodding the infield, all for a reported cost of $5,000.

On January 6, 1950, the New York Times reported that top officials in the Cubs organization, including John T. Sheehan and Earl Nelson, asked civic and business leaders in Springfield to raise $250,000 to totally renovate Pynchon Park and upgrade facilities consistent with the quality of an International League baseball club. After all parties reached a satisfactory agreement, the Cubs officially announced the purchase of the Newark Bears on January 12.11

With the purchase and relocation, Springfield now hosted an International League team, the second of two Triple-A franchises for Chicago. (The Los Angeles Angels still operated in the Pacific Coast League.) It also meant that there would be a marked improvement in the quality of players who spent time in Springfield. For comparison, only four players from the team’s two New England League years ever played in the majors, while the 1950 team alone saw 22 players get the call to the big leagues at some point.

 

Springfield Cubs manager Stan Hack. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

 

Optimism greeted the Springfield Cubs for the 1950 season, generated by legendary Cubs third baseman Stan Hack, who had been a five-time All-Star and a key player for three Chicago pennant winners (1935, 1938, 1945). On a cold and blustery April 22, 1950, the Springfield Cubs welcomed the Buffalo Bisons to Pynchon Park. Five thousand fans saw the Cubs lose their opener, although optimism remained high as the weather heated up. The Springfield team finished fifth out of eight teams and narrowly missed the playoffs with a 74-78 record. Despite hovering around .500 for most of the season, the team did have its bright spots, including third baseman Randy Jackson, who won the league’s rookie of the year award and would go on to a 10-year major-league career that included two All-Star selections. Fans continued to support the team in 1950 as they had in 1949, with 201,217 fans coming through the gates. During that season, 22 Cubs players eventually played in the majors, including pitcher Warren Hacker and catcher Smoky Burgess.

Over the next three seasons, however, the fortunes of the team gradually sank. In 1951 the team (63-90) finished in last place. Attendance fell nearly in half to 105,052. Bill Kelly, who had managed the declining fortunes of the Los Angeles Angels in 1950, was the manager of Springfield in 1951 and 1952. The primary bright spot occurred on April 12, 1951, when a preseason exhibition game with the Boston Red Sox (the Red Sox won, 5-2) attracted a crowd of 10,736, at that time the largest ever for a baseball game in Western Massachusetts. Fourteen Springfield players would go to or had played in the majors, including catchers Nelson Burbrink and Harry Chiti and pitchers Monk Dubiel and Vern Fear. Fans also enjoyed seeing some players who were nearing the end of their careers, including infielder Emil Verban, and outfielder Stan Spence.

The team did not fare much better in 1952, with a mark of 65-88 and another last-place finish, 31 games behind the first-place Montreal Royals. Attendance improved slightly to 107,675. After the season, manager Kelly’s services were not retained. Again, a highlight was another early-season game against the Red Sox at Pynchon Park; this time 9,160 fans watched the Cubs lose, 6-1. Much like previous seasons, though, the fans did have an opportunity to watch major-league talent: 20 members of the Springfield Cubs had played or would play in the major leagues.

With Kelly out as manager, the Cubs introduced their third manager in four seasons—Bruce Edwards. But the wheels came off the team in 1953 as it again landed in last place with a 51-102 record, costing Edwards his job toward the end of the season. Jack Sheehan finished up as manager. Attendance mirrored the fortunes of the team on the field and plummeted to 85,281. This represented a nearly 60 percent decline over the four seasons. The fans did have something to cheer about as they watched future big-league pitchers Don Elston, Dave Hillman, and Jim Brosnan hone their craft.

What began with an optimistic start with the team’s official announcement in the winter of 1950, ended with a giant thud by the fall of 1953. Many reasons were cited for the team’s demise. Although the Cubs had won the 1945 National League pennant, by the 1950s the team was mired in the second division. During the four seasons that the Cubs oversaw their Springfield affiliate, Chicago finished in seventh place twice, fifth once, and eighth once in the eight-team National League. Without the necessary talent to stock a faltering major-league team, it became even more difficult to stock a Triple-A franchise, let alone two of them. Neither Triple-A team fared well, and the Springfield team did not always get the Cubs’ best prospects.

During the Cubs’ four years in Springfield, the team—as well as the International League as a whole—was dominated by Montreal, the top farm club of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Future Dodgers stars Junior Gilliam and Sandy Amoros made game appearances in Springfield during the 1952 and 1953 seasons. The Royals team also featured a lefty pitcher by the name of Tommy Lasorda, who loved to pitch at Pynchon Park. While later managing the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lasorda once remarked, “I loved that Springfield ballpark with its deep fences. If I could have pitched there all the time, I’d be in the Hall of Fame.”12

In September 1953, Chicago placed the Springfield team up for sale. Roberto “Bobby” Maduro was the majority owner of the Havana Cubans and desired to have a major-league club in Cuba. He purchased the rights to the Springfield franchise and received permission to relocate the team to Cuba, with the new name of the Havana Sugar Kings. In 1954 the Red Sox were New England’s lone professional baseball franchise. Baseball would be dormant in Springfield until 1957, when the Springfield Giants of the Eastern League became the final professional team to call Pynchon Park home. They lasted until 1965, when low attendance, once again a recurring theme, forced them to relocate to Waterbury, Connecticut. A year later, in 1966, Pynchon Park burned to the ground. Professional baseball has yet to return to Springfield.13

ROBERT CVORNYEK is professor emeritus of history at Rhode Island College and currently serves as a teaching professor at Florida State University. He received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1993. He has written extensively on the history of baseball in Newark, New Jersey, with emphasis on the city’s premier teams, the Bears and Eagles.

DOUGLAS STARK served as museum director at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island. He has also held positions at the United States Golf Association Museum in Far Hills, New Jersey, and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. He has written several books about basketball history and is working on a multivolume series about race and sports in Boston.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Edited by Marshall Adesman and fact-checked by Mark Richard.

 

NOTES

1 Walter Graham, “‘Meet-the-Manager’ Night at the Auditorium Here Results in Capacity Crowd to Welcome Stan Hack and Other Baseball Notables,” Springfield Daily News, February 7, 1950: 22.

2 Graham.

3 Graham.

4 Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball third ed. (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc.), 2007.

5 Neil J. Sullivan, The Minors: The Struggles and Triumph of Baseball S Poor Relation from 1876 to the Present (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 132-148; Ronald A. Mayer, The 1937 Newark Bears: A Baseball Legend (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 10-18. See also, “Ruppert Acquires the Newark Club/Owner of Yankees Buys Block’s Holdings Outright—Price Reported at $350,000,” New York Times, November 13, 1931: 33. Information on the Newark Bears adapted from Robert Cvornyek, Baseball in Newark (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 31-32.

6 Sullivan, The Minors, 142-144; Mayer, The 1937 Newark Bears, 19-26.

7 James M. DiClerico and Barry J. Pavelec, The Jersey Game: The History of Minor League Baseball From Its Birth to the Big Leagues in the Garden State (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 85-90. See also “Newark’s Baseball History Has Been a Colorful One,” Newark Evening News, January 13, 1950, located in the subject files of the New Jersey Reference Room in the Newark Public Library.

8 “Ellenstein, Newark, Offers Aid to Bears,” New York Times, January 17, 1949: 25; “Newark Officials Plan Aid to Bears, New York Times, January 20, 1949: 40.

9 “Report Topping Set to Sell Newark Club,” New York Times, November ii, 1948: 40; John Drebinger, “Yanks Drop 5 Minor League Teams as Club Reorganizes Farm Policy/Bombers to Aim for Greater Specialization in Developing Players—Will Operate School in Phoenix Under New Plan,” New York Times, December 31, 1949: ii.

10 See also Roscoe McGowen, “Hartung, Lohrke in Giants Fold; Yankees Sell Newark Franchise/Cubs Will Place Team in Springfield, but Take No Bear Players …,”New York Times, January 13, 1950: 34.

11 The 1950 Official Scorecard, Springfield Cubs, Wood Museum of Springfield History, Springfield Museums, Springfield, Massachusetts.

12 “Stadium Fund Proposed: Cubs Ask Springfield to Spend $250,000 for Baseball Club,” New York Times, January 6, 1950: 30.

13 Garry Brown, “When Pynchon Park Went Triple A: The 1950-1953 Springfield Cubs,” masslive.com, April 15, 2018, https://www.masslive.com/sports/2018/04/when_pynchon_park_went_triple.html#:~:text=Local%20baseball%20fans%20greeted%20the,6%2C%20to%20the%20Buffalo%20Bisons.