Major League Baseball returns to Buffalo, New York on Tuesday night. The Toronto Blue Jays, essentially kicking out of Canada because the federal government was concerned about all travel to the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, will play most home games this season at Buffalo’s Sahlen Field. The Blue Jays will host the Marlins in Buffalo on Tuesday in the 2020 opener of their temporary home.
“I’m one of the guys who voted to play in Buffalo. Go the old school route and pick up,” Tanner Roark told reporters, among others. TSN’s Scott Mitchell and Gabe Lacques of USA Today, during a recent conference call. “We’ll be known as grinders and I love grinders, because that’s what makes you who you are at the end of your career, as the end of the day.”
Sahlen Field has been home to the Buffalo Bisons since opening in 1988. It is the highest-capacity under-16 park with 16,600 seats, though fans may not be allowed in the stadium this year. The modern era of Bisons began in 1979, when the franchise became a member of the Double-A Eastern League as a Pirates subsidiary. The Bisons moved to Triple-A in 1985 and joined the Blue Jays in 2013.
Long before the Bisons appeared in 1979 and long before Robert Redford filmed scenes as Roy Hobbs in “The Natural” at Buffalo’s War Memorial Stadium, Buffalo was the home of baseball baseball. However, it has been a very, very long time. Tuesday’s prize draw will be Buffalo’s first major league game in 104 years.
With the Blue Jays set to call home the City of Good Neighbors in the coming weeks, let’s go back in time and look at the history of premier baseball in Buffalo. Come with me, will you?
The Bison years
The current iteration of the Buffalo Bisons takes its name from the first professional baseball team to call the city home. The original Buffalo Bisons began playing in the semi-affiliated Minor League Alliance in 1877 before being invited to the National League in 1879. The Bisons spent seven seasons in the eight-team National League and never finished higher than third:
|
1879 |
46-32-1 (.590) |
plus-29 |
3rd place (10.0 GB) |
|
1880 |
24-58-3 (.293) |
minus-171 |
7th place (42.0 GB) |
|
1881 |
45-38 (.542) |
minus-7 |
3rd place (10.5 GB) |
|
1882 |
45-39 (.536) |
plus-39 |
3rd place (10.0 GB) |
|
1883 |
52-45-1 (.536) |
plus-38 |
5th place (10.5 GB) |
|
1884 |
64-47-4 (.577) |
plus-74 |
3rd place (19.5 GB) |
|
1885 |
38-74 (.339) |
minus-266 |
7th place (49.0 GB) |
|
Total |
314-333-9 (.485) |
minus-264 |
– |
The Bisons played their home games at Riverside Park (1879-83) and Olympic Park (1884-85). They were relocated to the minor Eastern League in 1886 and were close to joining the newly formed American League in 1901, but were eliminated from the league in favor of the Boston Americans (the Americans later became the Red Sox). The franchise remained a minor team until financial misery forced a move to Winnipeg in 1970. (Today’s Bisons are a separate franchise of the same name.)
In 1890, a separate Buffalo Bisons franchise was created as part of the Players’ League, which lasted one season. (The Players League is exactly what it sounds like: a rogue baseball league formed by players). Those Bisons were not considered part of the original Bisons – they presumably used the team name without permission – and went 36-96-2 in their lone season. Hall of Famer Connie Mack was a co-owner and player for the outlaw Bisons.
The BufFeds and Blues years
From 1913-15, the Federal League operated as a third major league in competition with the American and national leagues. The league felt like eight teams at one point, including a 1914-15 Buffalo franchise. The 1914 club had no official name and was run by BufFeds. In 1915, the franchise became the Blues.
|
1914 (BufFeds) |
80-71-4 (.530) |
plus-18 |
4th place (7.0 GB) |
|
1915 (Buffalo Blues) |
74-78-1 (.487) |
minus-60 |
6th place (12.0 GB) |
|
Total |
154-149-5 (.508) |
minus-42 |
– |
The Blues were the last major league franchise to play in Buffalo. Robert Swados, a Buffalo businessman and founder of the Buffalo Sabers of the NHL, was part of a group that tried to form a third major league in 1960, but their efforts failed and the league failed before they ever played a game. to play. The league, known as the Continental League, would have placed a franchise in Buffalo.
Notable players
Several Hall of Famers suited the Buffalo Bisons of 1879-85 in their short history, including Judge Pud Galvin and First Baseman Dan Brouthers. Brouthers hit .351 / .391 / .554 with 38 home games in parts of five seasons with the Bisons. He later went on to join the Detroit Wolverines, Boston Reds, and Brooklyn Grooms, among other teams.
Galvin began his career with the St. Louis Brown Stockings before landing in Buffalo in 1879. He threw 3,547 2/3 innings with a 2.63 ERA in parts of seven seasons with the Bisons. (Yes, more than 3,500 innings in just seven seasons.) The 1884 season of Galvin is one of the most statistically incredible seasons in baseball history:
|
72-71 |
46-22 |
1.99 |
0.99 |
636 1/3 |
369 |
63 |
That was the second of two straight 46-win, 600-plus innings for Galvin. He appeared in 72 of the team’s 115 games and completed 71 of them. At WAR, Galvin’s 1884 is one of the three greatest seasons in baseball history:
- Tim Keefe, 1883 New York Metropolitans: 20.2 WAR
- Old Hoss Radbourn, 1884 Providence Grays: 19.4 WAR
- Pud Galvin, 1884 Buffalo Bisons: 18.4 WAR
- Jim Devlin, 1876 Louisville Grays: 18.3 WAR
- Guy Hecker, 1884 Louisville Eclipse: 17.8 WAR
Radbourn is known for his pitching explosions with the Grays, but he began his career with the Bisons … as a second baseman. He went 3 for 21 in six games for the 1880 Bisons before being released and signed with Providence, where he became one of the greatest pitchers in the sport’s early history.
Galvin is the Buffalo Bisons franchise leader in WAR (59.0), ERA (2.63), wins (218), innings (3,547 2/3), and strikeouts (1,303). It is not even close in all categories. Brouthers is the franchise leader in positional player WAR (24.8), handball average (.351), home games (38), and runs in (343). Hardy Richardson is the franchise leader in hits (772), runs (473), and games played (618).
Four Hall of Famers played for the Bisons 1879-85: Brouthers, Galvin, Radbourn, and Jim O’Rourke. O’Rourke, an infielder, hit .317 / .353 / .427 in parts of four seasons with Buffalo. He also served as player manager from 1881-84. O’Rourke spent most of his career with the New York Giants.
Here are some other notable Buffalo baseball performances:
- As a member of the Bisons, Curry beat Foley for the first uncontested cycle in major league history on May 25, 1882, against the Cleveland Blues. It included a grand slam.
- Galvin threw the only two no-hitters in the history of Bisons: August 20, 1880 vs. Worcester Worcesters (yes, really) and August 4, 1884, vs. Detroit Wolverines. The final scores were 1-0 and 18-0, respectively.
- Ed Porray played his only three career games with the BufFeds in 1914. He is the only major league player on record to be born at sea. His official birthplace is “at sea, on the Atlantic Ocean.”
Trying to bring MLB back to Buffalo
There have been several efforts over the years to bring a major league franchise back to Buffalo. Buffalo was one of seven cities identified as a potential expansion location by the American League in 1960, along with Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Oakland, San Diego, Seattle and Toronto. A team from Buffalo has also submitted an extension application to the National League.
Buffalo was so close to landing an expansion franchise in 1969 that the New York Daily incorrectly reported that the city, along with San Diego, had been crowned a main team, according to Mark Byrnes of Bloomberg. The expansion franchise went to Montreal instead. Buffalo officials sought to bring a first-class franchise back to the city in the mid-1980s.
“We are not going to be in the first run (of expansion teams),” Buffalo Mayor James Griffin told Gary Pomerantz of the Washington Post in 1985. “But we’ll get one. I bet you the first beer on the opening day we do.”
The retro-themed Sahlen Field, originally known as Pilot Field, was built downtown and equipped with main amenities, including a full-service restaurant and a large video scoreboard, which were unheard of in the late ’80s. were at the minor level. The ballpark initially had only 19,500 seats, but was designed to allow expansion to 42,000 seats (although construction during the season would never be easy).
Armed with a new state-of-the-art ballpark, Buffalo Bisons owner Bob Rich Jr. visited. securing a premier-class franchise in the late ’80s and early’ 90s. MLB instead assigned expansion teams to Denver and Miami in 1991, and Phoenix and Tampa / St. Louis. Petersburg in 1995.
“During our first meeting (in 1983), Bob set three goals,” said former Bison GM Bill Billoni Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News earlier this year. “Actually, get the Bisons back in Triple A. Two. Work with Mayor Jimmy Griffin to build a downtown ballpark. Three, do everything in our power to get a franchise in the Premier League. Some say it’s hitting “2 for 3 is a very good average. For Bob and (his wife) Mindy Rich and our whole team, the goal has always been to reach all three goals, and we almost did.”
Attempts to bring first-class baseball back to Buffalo have been hampered by market size. With a rough population of 250,000, Buffalo is the 86th most popular city in the country, behind places like Toledo, Ohio, and Fort Wayne, Indiana. It is also not among the top 30 television brands. Rising expansion costs were also a roadblock.
“You can do nothing about it and we can do nothing about it, but it would be great if you had another one million people living here,” Douglas Danforth, then CEO of Pirates, said during a media briefing in March 1991, according to Harrington.
MLB has not indicated another round of expansion is on the horizon, although I would be shocked if the league continues through the whole of 2020 without at least exploring the possibility. Too much money has been made. Buffalo could make another attempt to secure an expansion franchise, although larger markets exist as alternatives. For now, Buffalo gets the Blue Jays for 29 games this year, and hey, that’s pretty cool.
