CDunn Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 My mother is writing a book that takes place in Illinois in the late 1800's-early 1900's. One character is a sports writer for a local newspaper that actually existed back then, and my mom wants to use baseball team names that actually existed in that time. So what I'm looking for are any teams that played in any league between the years 1885 and 1920 in these three Illinois cities: Peoria, Bloomington, and Normal. I'm having a really hard time tracking any teams down, so any help would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mac the Knife Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 You might want to consider a few sources, such as minorleaguebaseball.com, or perhaps some actual league sites... some of them have history sections that could shed some light.Odds are though you'd have to really do some hard-nosed research (going to the citites and going through newspaper archives and what-not) to find teams that existed in those cities (if there ever were any to begin with) from that era.There might, however, be an extensive, independently-operated Minor League baseball web site (like baseballreference.com is for MLB) that could help. If such a site exists and you find it, sharing that info would be a boon to many of us.Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardman 1 Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 Peoria had a team in the class A Western League in 1902 and 1903. It also had a team in the class B Central League that moved from Marion in the middle of the season and then moved back to Marion 2 months later in 1904.Bloomington had a team in the class B Three-I League from 1902 to 1910.I don't know any teams in Normal from 1902 to 1910.My book starts in 1902 so any previous teams I don't have record of. My book also doesn't have nicknames. I hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moser316 Posted July 26, 2003 Share Posted July 26, 2003 Minor League Teams ListThis page not only has a list of every minor league team that existed over the past 100 or so years, but what league they played in and what major league team they were affiliated with. Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CDunn Posted July 26, 2003 Author Share Posted July 26, 2003 Thanks for all the help. I have all the teams I need now. The site Moser linked to is pretty cool and pretty helpful. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sj32 Posted July 27, 2003 Share Posted July 27, 2003 Another potential problem you may have is that many early teams did not have nicknames. Many nicknames were developed by sportswriters and by fans and could change on a whim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.