Ottawa Athletics

Ottawa Athletics
1952–1954
Ottawa, Ontario
Class-level
Previous
Minor league affiliations
League
Major league affiliations
Previous Philadelphia Athletics (1952–1954)
Team data
Previous parks
 Lansdowne Park

The Ottawa Athletics (also known as the Ottawa A's) were a professional minor-league baseball team based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, that operated from 1952–54. The team played at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa and was a member of the Triple-A International League.

Lansdowne Park, 1950s

History

Triple-A baseball first came to Ottawa in 1951, when the former Jersey City Giants (1937–50) relocated to Canada's capital because of poor attendance. Ottawa had most recently hosted the Nationals and the Senators of the Class C Border League from 1947–50, leading that league in attendance for three of its four seasons and making the playoffs each year.

The 1951 Ottawa Giants were one of two Triple-A affiliates of the New York Giants of Major League Baseball (the other was the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association). But the Ottawa Giants would play only one season. In the autumn of 1951, their parent club decided to field only one top-level minor-league team in 1952, the Millers, and they abandoned Ottawa. The Philadelphia Athletics, who had no Triple-A affiliate in 1951, replaced the Giants and the Ottawa team was renamed.

The 1952 season saw Ottawa's attendance (over 153,000 fans) increase by 31 percent over the 1951 Giants',[1] but the A's finished in seventh place in the eight-team IL. Attendance held steady in 1953 for a sixth-place team, but when the 1954 Ottawa A's plunged into the league's basement, attendance also plummeted to a league-worst 94,000 fans.[1] The Athletics' record over their three years in Ottawa was a poor 194–264 (.424).

The Ottawa A's then relocated in 1955 to Columbus, Ohio, which had just lost its longtime American Association franchise to Omaha. The Ottawa Athletics were renamed the Columbus Jets, and the Jets remained in Ohio's capital city until 1971, when a deteriorating home stadium led the team to move to Charleston, West Virginia, as the Charleston Charlies. However, the Charleston International League franchise returned to Columbus in 1977 to become the Clippers.

Notable players

Year Record Finish Attendance[1] Manager
1952 65–85 Seventh 153,152 Frank Skaff
1953 71–83 Sixth 149,219 Frank Skaff
1954 58–96 Eighth 93,982 Les Bell
Taft Wright

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Johnson, Lloyd; Wolff, Miles, eds. (1997). The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (2nd ed.). Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America. ISBN 978-0-9637189-8-3.


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