The Sunset League
It’s more than 650 miles from Reno, Nev., to Tijuana, Mexico. And in the late 1940s, very few of those miles were improved with freeway; it was two-lane blistering-hot desert blacktop from small town stoplight to small town stoplight.
Reno and Tijuana were just two of the towns in the Sunset League. Crowded rattletrap minor league buses rumbled along the dusty highways of this region through the summers of 1947-1950, with air-conditioning nothing but a wish, with such tedium-softening luxuries as cell phones and ipods unimagined. At one time or another in its four years of operation, the Sunset League incorporated 12 destinations: along with Reno and Tijuana were Mexicali, Mexico, Las Vegas, Nev., and Yuma, Ariz., and the California towns of Anaheim, El Centro, Ontario, Porterville, Riverside, Salinas and San Bernardino.
One might say it was a league right out of a Lowell George lyric: show me a sign.
The Sunset League was one of nearly two dozen that sprouted across the country in the suddenly hyper-fertile minor league environment immediately following World War II. And like nearly all of its cohorts, and like many more venerable leagues, the Sunset League would rapidly wither in the equally sudden demise of minor leagues that took place over the 1950s.
Class C
There were 52 official minor leagues in 1947, the first Sunset League year. Then as now, minor leagues were organized by the National Association into hierarchical categories on the basis of the average population of their cities and the seating capacity of their ballparks. The Sunset League was pretty low in the pecking order, but not the lowest: It was Class C, the fifth among the six levels.
A whole lot has changed in the ensuing decades, of course. Anaheim would become the home of a major league franchise less than 20 years later, but in those pre-Disneyland, pre-full-scale L.A. sprawl days, Anaheim was still a sleepy little hamlet (its population in 1950 was 17,000) amid thousands of acres of orange groves (that’s why it’s called Orange County, after all). Their Sunset League entry was called The Valencias—as in the orange variety—and the Anaheim team would survive fewer than two seasons, transferring to San Bernardino in mid-1948.
Nor was Las Vegas yet anything resembling what it would soon become. Gambling had been legalized in Nevada in 1931, and casinos were thriving in Las Vegas. But “The Strip” was still a two-lane highway connecting the small downtown with the small airport out in the desert. The ball club dubbed itself The Wranglers, referencing the town’s rootin’-tootin’ old-west image that still prevailed; after all the population of Las Vegas in the 1950 census was just 24,000.
Indeed neither Anaheim nor Las Vegas was close to the biggest town in the Sunset League. Here’s the 1950 population of each:
{exp:list_maker}Tijuana, 65,000
Reno, 50,000
Riverside, 30,000
San Bernardino, 30,000
Yuma, 28,000
Salinas, 25,000
Las Vegas, 24,000
Anaheim, 17,000
Ontario, 15,000
Mexicali, 10,000
El Centro, 5,000
Porterville, 5,000 {/exp:list_maker}That’s right: the league’s population anchors were Tijuana and Reno.
South and north of the border
The Sunset League’s international character wasn’t unique. Other minor leagues operating in the Southwest in that era also placed entries in Mexico as well as the U.S. The Arizona-Texas League had a team in Juarez in 1947-50, and the Arizona-Mexico League which would operate through most of the 1950s included teams in Juarez, Cananea, Chihuahua, Mexicali and Nogales.
Indeed, when the Sunset League ceased operation following the 1950 season, it merged with the Arizona-Texas League, and the combined entity would be called the Southwest International League. This arrangement, which lasted only for 1951 and 1952, included Juarez, Mexicali and Tijuana along with towns in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and California.
The Sunset League’s short lifespan was, of course, a function of meager attendance. Launched amid the ebullient optimism of the burgeoning post-war economy, the league would never fulfill its economic promise. League-wide attendance in 1947 was just 475 per game; even by Class C standards, that wasn’t good. It would improve somewhat over the next couple of years, but at its 1949 peak the Sunset League sold only 755 tickets per game. When the rate declined the following season, it was obvious that the venture couldn’t survive.
This was particularly true given that the Sunset League was receiving precious little subsidy from major league organizations. In 1947, three of the league’s six ball clubs were farm system affiliates: The Las Vegas Wranglers (a farm team for the Braves), the Reno Silver Sox (the Giants) and the Riverside Dons (the Pirates). But in 1948 only the Silver Sox-Giants arrangement would remain, and in 1949, with the Sunset League expanding to eight teams, just two were farm clubs (Reno was again affiliated with the Giants, and the St. Louis Browns supported the Salinas Colts, though the team couldn’t make it in Salinas and relocated to Tijuana in August).
For 1950, the Reno ball club would pull out of the Sunset League, opting instead to play in the Far West League. That season all eight Sunset League teams would be independent, and only the Mexicali Eagles were able to draw as many as 1,000 fans per game, with every other entry attracting fewer than 500.
It was sunset, indeed.
The action
Those hardy spectators enduring the mid-summer desert sun were few, but the entertainment they were offered was anything but dull. Like all the rest of the Southwestern leagues in that era, the Sunset League was a hitter’s paradise and a pitcher’s nightmare, as the combined effects of altitude, heat and hard-baked fields made run prevention an extraordinarily difficult challenge.
The lowest-scoring Sunset League season was 1950, when the league produced 6.37 runs per team per game. To put that in context, that rate of scoring over a 162-game season would yield 1,032 runs. Since the 162-game schedule was introduced in 1961, no single major league team, not even the Colorado Rockies, has ever scored that many runs in a season.
In the Sunset League’s highest-scoring year, 1948, its teams scored 7.61 runs per game, a rate that would deliver 1,233 runs over 162 games. The highest-scoring team in the Sunset League was the 1947 Las Vegas Wranglers, who delivered 1,261 runs in 140 games, or 9.01 per game. Alas, that Las Vegas club allowed 1,235 runs (8.82 per game), also the Sunset League pinnacle, and its won-lost record was 73-67, good for third place.
Those 1947 Wranglers walloped 271 homers, establishing the all-time professional baseball record for team home runs that stands to this day. Check out this attack:
Player Pos G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG Ken Myers 1B-C 135 459 118 139 13 2 33 121 136 54 3 .303 .462 .556 Paul Godfrey 2B 118 509 93 163 26 7 14 103 32 65 5 .320 .360 .481 Olin Kelly SS-OF-3B 126 508 153 170 33 2 33 99 93 114 17 .335 .438 .602 Sy Gregory 3B-1B-P 102 366 83 120 28 0 17 75 51 50 1 .328 .410 .544 Paul Zaby OF 133 531 158 213 47 7 18 132 104 78 22 .401 .499 .618 Cal Felix OF 140 610 173 236 35 8 52 182 76 105 19 .387 .455 .726 Roy Godfrey OF-3B-1B 134 571 111 183 28 4 32 123 26 118 5 .320 .350 .552 Dom Castro C 129 539 101 191 34 1 28 121 25 69 5 .354 .383 .577 Gail Jackson SS-3B 95 335 112 107 16 1 18 67 75 73 6 .319 .444 .534 Carl Fairly SS 44 176 44 67 11 1 11 53 28 21 1 .381 .466 .642 Newt Kimball P 55 119 27 43 8 1 5 33 15 18 2 .361 .433 .571 Rex Jones P 35 88 22 22 2 0 4 12 14 23 1 .250 .350 .409 Joe Chuka P 36 85 21 25 1 1 2 8 11 24 0 .299 .381 .400 Neal Montank P 21 66 10 15 1 0 1 5 4 16 0 .227 .260 .288 Total 140 5160 1261 1742 290 35 271 1166 728 892 85 .338 .419 .565
Ah, but their beleaguered pitching staff:
Pitcher G CG IP W L H BB SO ERA Newt Kimball 28 15 160 14 5 218 26 122 4.39 Neal Montank 21 13 159 11 8 215 51 96 4.47 Joe Chuka 26 12 158 11 8 211 72 130 6.15 Rex Jones 26 10 142 7 9 206 83 112 7.04 Sy Gregory 19 2 85 6 3 136 38 60 8.58 Ray Will 13 4 78 4 3 91 36 50 4.96 George Byrd 11 2 56 2 5 75 31 43 5.79
Newell “Newt” Kimball was a 32-year-old former major leaguer, and served as the Las Vegas player-manager in 1947. None of the rest of these guys ever made it to The Show.
This Wranglers’ stampede of home runs might suggest that the Sunset League overall was an easy place to go yard, but that wasn’t the case. Only one other team in the league in 1947 hit more than 112 homers, suggesting that the Las Vegas ballpark was the major culprit in producing their staggering home run total that year.
Here’s what also makes that clear: In 1948 the Wranglers’ home run output plunged from 271 to 53, fifth in the six-team league. Las Vegas in 1948 led the league in triples, with 139 in 140 games, after hitting just 35 (last in the league) in 1947. Thus it’s obvious that in 1948 the Wranglers moved from a bandbox to an extremely spacious ballyard, whether or not as a deliberate response to the 1947 home run fest.
Las Vegas probably wasn’t the only Sunset League team switching to a ballpark with far more distant outfield fences in 1948. The Reno team had hit 38 triples and 184 home runs in 1947, and in ’48 those totals became 90 and 60, respectively. Overall the league dramatically shifted its offensive profile from ’47 to ’48, while scoring even more frequently:
Year R/G BA OBP SLG 3B/G HR/G BB/G SO/G SB/G E/G 1947 7.33 .302 .380 .460 0.34 1.03 4.54 5.63 0.64 2.35 1948 7.61 .291 .390 .431 0.69 0.46 5.71 5.36 1.15 2.61 1949 6.64 .278 .373 .396 0.58 0.47 5.22 5.47 0.90 2.33 1950 6.37 .286 .371 .408 0.49 0.57 4.74 5.24 0.62 1.97
We see that the Sunset League suddenly transformed itself from a crazy-high-scoring power-hitting league into a crazy-high-scoring on-base-frenzy league, prompting a flurry of errors while running wild on those bases. In the next two years it moderated somewhat, but remained a rotten place to pitch.
Stars in the southwestern sky
In closing, why don’t we marvel at the most robust hitting performances presented in this fantastic hitters’ environment:
Year Player Club AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG OPS 1949 Pete Hughes L.V. 408 156 143 31 9 24 126 210 71 6 .350 .569 .647 1.216 1947 Phil Alotta Reno 505 107 195 35 4 43 149 89 69 10 .386 .481 .727 1.208 1950 Pete Hughes E.C. 369 104 145 25 4 19 108 131 40 0 .393 .557 .637 1.194 1947 Tom Lloyd Reno 485 126 193 44 1 35 157 77 44 3 .398 .483 .709 1.192 1947 Cal Felix L.V. 610 173 236 35 8 52 182 76 105 19 .387 .454 .726 1.180 1948 Dick Wilson Mex. 507 146 176 28 12 42 188 112 54 41 .347 .470 .698 1.168 1947 Paul Zaby L.V. 531 158 213 47 7 18 132 104 78 22 .401 .495 .618 1.112 1949 Frosty Kennedy Riv. 472 123 194 19 17 11 123 62 55 19 .411 .484 .593 1.077 1948 Bobby Balcena Mex. 385 106 142 24 13 8 81 66 21 16 .369 .456 .561 1.017 1948 Don Barclay Reno 495 171 174 22 21 3 104 116 63 31 .352 .486 .499 .985
Only one of these guys ever made the majors, and his was only a sip of coffee at that: Bobby Balcena. Yet a few were among the most accomplished of long-time minor league stars (albeit in the bush league division): Forrest “Frosty” Kennedy, whose career batting average was .342, with 228 home runs; Dick Wilson, whose career marks were .322 and 285; and Gabriel “Pete” Hughes, at .350 with 284 homers, and 1,664 walks in 1,333 games. Hughes’ 1949 total of 210 walks was the all-time single-season professional baseball record until Barry Bonds broke it in 2004.
And how about the most successful (or at least the most remarkable) among the league’s corps of deeply suffering pitchers:
Year Pitcher Club G CG IP W L H BB SO ERA 1950 Manny Echeverria Mexicali 49 28 328 28 12 288 73 333 2.74 1949 Gene Roenspie San Bernardino 37 24 266 20 11 263 99 188 3.38 1948 Al Corwin Reno 40 26 280 26 9 260 156 251 3.54 1947 Bob Masters Riverside 34 22 238 19 12 240 107 237 3.55 1950 Clarence Jaime San Bernardino 40 26 289 20 13 320 123 215 4.24 1948 Bob Schulte Riverside 40 19 251 19 13 230 237 276 4.88 1947 Clarence Jaime Ontario 39 28 264 22 13 314 113 175 5.08 1949 Warren Kanagy Riv.-S.B. 29 20 209 18 8 220 195 210 5.25
The only fellow here to see time in The Show was Elmer “Al” Corwin, who had a pretty decent little major league career. Warren Kanagy, by the way, hit .447 (42-for-94) in 1949, with 13 doubles and four homers, for a slugging average of .713.
But, of course, it wasn’t all good times for Sunset League pitchers. Let’s give this poor guy a pat on the back:
Year Pitcher Club G CG IP W L H BB SO ERA 1949 Bob Morris Reno-E.C.-Riv. 30 4 121 0 12 163 113 85 8.55
He allowed 146 runs … that had to leave a mark.
References & Resources
Minor League Baseball Stars, compiled by The Society for American Baseball Research, 1978, pp. 60, 62.
Minor League Baseball Stars, Volume II, compiled by The Society for American Baseball Research, 1985, p. 127.