Description: The Baltimore Brigade were a late-era entry in the now-defunct Arena Football League. The Brigade played during one the league’s darkest eras, when the once sprawling national league was reduced to a tiny cluster of survivors in the northeastern U.S. During the AFL’s final three seasons, the league owed its existence largely to the patronage of Ted Leonsis, the billionaire owner the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals. Leonsis invested in the league in 2016, establishing two 2017 expansion teams – the Brigade and the Washington Valor – at a time when the AFL had just three other viable franchises.
Description: The Beloit Brewers were the Class A Midwest League farm club of the Milwaukee Brewers from 1982 through 1994. The franchise still operates today in Beloit. The club is currently known as the Beloit Sky Carp after two subsequent re-brandings. Since its founding in 1982, the Beloit Professional Baseball Association has operated the local nine as a community-owned non-profit organization.
Description: The Baton Rouge Cougars were a star-crossed independent minor league team that played part of one season in 1976 before disbanding. The Cougars were part of the Gulf States League, which was a new Class A league organized for the 1976 season. The Gulf States League was part of the National Association, the umbrella organization for all minor league baseball clubs with Major League working agreements. But the GSL was the one league in the NA that was explicitly independent. None of the six teams, which were located in Texas and Louisiana, had a Major League parent club. The GSL was a destination of last resort for minor league castoffs and undrafted free agents.
Description: The Baton Rouge Blue Marlins were a the first and only champions of the doomed All-American Association during the summer of 2001. Both the ball club and the independent league itself folded at the end of one season. The All-American Association was a six-team loop with teams in Albany (GA), Montgomery (AL), Winchester (TN) and Fort Worth and Tyler (TX) besides the Baton Rouge club. The Blue Marlins defeated the Albany Alligators in the league championship series in August 2001.
Description: The Bend Timber Hawks were, ever so briefly, a Central Oregon-based farm club of the Oakland Athletics. The franchise joined the Northwest League in 1978 as part of an expansion that saw the short-season Class A circuit expand from six to eight teams that summer. Bend had one previous experience with Minor League Baseball and the Northwest League. The Bend Rainbows had a two-year run in town in 1970 and 1971. That Timber Hawks would last only half that long.
Description: The Birmingham Athletics (A’s) were the Class AA farm club of the Kansas City/Oakland Athletics from 1967 to 1975. The Southern League ballclub was owned directly by Oakland’s colorful, spendthrift owner Charles O. Finley. The Athletics had a phenomenal farm system in the late 1960’s and many of the great ballplayers from Oakland’s 1972-1974 World Series dynasty spent time in Birmingham on their way up the developmental ladder.
Description: Brief two-season entry in the World League of American Football (WLAF), the NFL’s abortive early 90’s effort to create a springtime developmental league. In the past, Birmingham had been unusually receptive to not-quite-the-NFL brands of pro football. The WFL’s Americans and Vulcans and the USFL’s Stallions all attracted relatively strong crowds to Legion Field in the 1970’s and 1980’s.Fire
Description: Danny Noonan works as a caddie at the exclusive Bushwood Country Club in Illinois to earn enough money to go to college. Danny caddies for Ty Webb, a mischievous but avid golfer and the son of one of Bushwood's co-founders. Danny tries to gain favor with Judge Elihu Smails, the country club's arrogant co-founder and director of the caddie scholarship program, by caddying for him. Meanwhile, Carl Spackler, a mentally unstable greenskeeper who lives in the maintenance building, is sent by his Scottish supervisor Sandy McFiddish to hunt a gopher that Judge Smails saw damaging the course. He attempts to kill it with a rifle and high-pressure hose but fails.
Description: Danny Noonan works as a caddie at the exclusive Bushwood Country Club in Illinois to earn enough money to go to college. Danny caddies for Ty Webb, a mischievous but avid golfer and the son of one of Bushwood's co-founders. Danny tries to gain favor with Judge Elihu Smails, the country club's arrogant co-founder and director of the caddie scholarship program, by caddying for him. Meanwhile, Carl Spackler, a mentally unstable greenskeeper who lives in the maintenance building, is sent by his Scottish supervisor Sandy McFiddish to hunt a gopher that Judge Smails saw damaging the course. He attempts to kill it with a rifle and high-pressure hose but fails.
Description: The Beaumont Golden Gators were a four-year entry in the Texas League during the mid-1980’s. Though a San Diego Padres farm club, the Gators wore an eye-popping Gold/Green/White color scheme more reminiscent of the Oakland Athletics, topped off by pillbox-style striped caps. The team played at Vincent-Beck Stadium on the campus of Lamar University.
Description: Milliways, better known as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, is a five star restaurant situated at the end of time and matter. Its main attraction is allowing diners to view a Gnab Gib, before desserts are served. It appeared in the original radio series, second book, and in the television series.
Description: Pandora is an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System, the closest star system to human's own Solar System. It is the fifth moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A. The names of both the moon and its mother planet are coined by humans in reference to figures in Greek mythology.
Description: Pandora is an Earth-like habitable extrasolar moon from the Alpha Centauri System, the closest star system to human's own Solar System. It is the fifth moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A. The names of both the moon and its mother planet are coined by humans in reference to figures in Greek mythology.
Description: Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina, also known simply as Chalmun's Cantina, or as the Mos Eisley Cantina, was a drinking and dining establishment located in the city of Mos Eisley on the desert world of Tatooine. Although a dimly lit tavern known for frequent outbreaks of violence, it was a popular stopping point for pilots, smugglers, bounty hunters, alien misfits, and renegades.
Description: The Bloomington PrairieThunder were a minor professional ice hockey team based in Bloomington, Illinois. They were a member of the Central Hockey League in the Turner Conference. The team was originally a member of the United Hockey League (later known as the International Hockey League) prior to its merger into the CHL in 2010. They played their home games at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum.
Description: The Bloomington PrairieThunder were a minor professional ice hockey team based in Bloomington, Illinois. They were a member of the Central Hockey League in the Turner Conference. The team was originally a member of the United Hockey League (later known as the International Hockey League) prior to its merger into the CHL in 2010. They played their home games at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum.
Description: The Bayou Bullfrogs were an independent professional baseball team that played for three seasons in Lafayette, Louisiana. The team was alternately referred to as the “Lafayette Bullfrogs” and the “Lafayette Bayou Bullfrogs” in various press accounts at the time. The Bullfrogs played at Tigue Moore Field, home of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Ragin’ Cajuns baseball program. The Bullfrogs were part of the Texas-Louisiana League, a centrally-owned and operated independent circuit founded in 1994. Decisions concerning the Bullfrogs were made at the league office, as T-L League clubs had neither local ownership nor Major League parent clubs.
Description: The Dusters were founding members of the North American Hockey League in 1973. The rough-and-tumble NAHL became the inspiration for the 1977 Paul Newman comedy Slap Shot and its member teams served as farm clubs to the World Hockey Association, a 1970’s rival to the National Hockey League. The Dusters had affiliation deals with both the San Diego Mariners of the WHA and the Boston Bruins of the NHL.
Description: The Dusters were founding members of the North American Hockey League in 1973. The rough-and-tumble NAHL became the inspiration for the 1977 Paul Newman comedy Slap Shot and its member teams served as farm clubs to the World Hockey Association, a 1970’s rival to the National Hockey League. The Dusters had affiliation deals with both the San Diego Mariners of the WHA and the Boston Bruins of the NHL.
Description: The Lynn Papooses, a minor league baseball team, played in the New England League between 1926 and 1930. The Lynn Red Sox continued Lynn's long history of play in the New England League. The Red Sox were preceded in the New England League play by the Lynn Lions (1886-1888), Lynn Live Oaks (1901), Lynn Shoemakers (1905–1910, 1913), Lynn Leonardites (1911–1912), Lynn Fighters (1914), Lynn Pirates (1915), Lynn Pipers (1916) and Lynn Papooses (1926–1930). The New England League Lynn teams were preceded in minor league play by the 1877 Lynn Live Oaks, who played as members of the New England Association and the 1884 Lynn team of the Massachusetts State Association.
Description: The Bend Bandits were an independent (non-Major League affiliated) minor league baseball team that played in the Central Oregon during the late 1990’s. The Bandits were one of eight original clubs in the all-independent Western Baseball League formed in 1995. They replaced the Bend Rockies of the Northwest League, a Class A farm club of Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies, who left town at the end of the 1994 season.
Description: The Birmingham Vulcans were a pro football franchise in the World Football League (1974-1975) that existed for just a dozen games in the summer and early fall of 1975. The Vulcans were a replacement for the WFL’s Birmingham Americans franchise, which won the inaugural World Bowl championship game in the fall of 1974 and proved to be a pretty popular box office attraction at Legion Field. But Americans owner Bill Putnam spent himself into oblivion paying out signing bonuses to NFL stars such as L.C. Greenwood and Ken Stabler to join the Americans in future seasons after playing out their NFL deals.
Description: The Bangor Lumberjacks were the second of two failed attempts to establish low-level professional baseball in (or at least “near”) Bangor, Maine during the independent baseball boom of the 1990’s and early 21st century. Both the Lumberjacks and their predecessor, the Bangor Blue Ox (1996-1997), had a brand identity closely connected to Paul Bunyan folklore. Bangor claims to be the birthplace of the mythic logger and has a gargantuan statue of the woodsman in a downtown park
Description: The Bangor Lumberjacks were the second of two failed attempts to establish low-level professional baseball in (or at least “near”) Bangor, Maine during the independent baseball boom of the 1990’s and early 21st century. Both the Lumberjacks and their predecessor, the Bangor Blue Ox (1996-1997), had a brand identity closely connected to Paul Bunyan folklore. Bangor claims to be the birthplace of the mythic logger and has a gargantuan statue of the woodsman in a downtown park
Description: The Bangor Lumberjacks were the second of two failed attempts to establish low-level professional baseball in (or at least “near”) Bangor, Maine during the independent baseball boom of the 1990’s and early 21st century. Both the Lumberjacks and their predecessor, the Bangor Blue Ox (1996-1997), had a brand identity closely connected to Paul Bunyan folklore. Bangor claims to be the birthplace of the mythic logger and has a gargantuan statue of the woodsman in a downtown park
Description: The Birmingham Vulcans were a pro football franchise in the World Football League (1974-1975) that existed for just a dozen games in the summer and early fall of 1975. The Vulcans were a replacement for the WFL’s Birmingham Americans franchise, which won the inaugural World Bowl championship game in the fall of 1974 and proved to be a pretty popular box office attraction at Legion Field. But Americans owner Bill Putnam spent himself into oblivion paying out signing bonuses to NFL stars such as L.C. Greenwood and Ken Stabler to join the Americans in future seasons after playing out their NFL deals.
Description: The Canton Terriers was the name of a minor league baseball team from Canton, Ohio that played between 1928 and 1942. The team was formed in 1928 as a member of the Central League and played there until 1932. In 1936 a new Terriers team was formed and began play in the Middle Atlantic League, as an affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, until 1942. The team folded in 1942, when the rest of the Middle Atlantic League suspended operations due to the strains of World War II. The Terriers were not re-established when the league resumed operations after the war.
Description: Baltimore, Maryland was a long-time staple of the American Hockey League. The Baltimore Clippers (1962-1976) and Baltimore Skipjacks (1982-1993) both had long residencies at the downtown Baltimore Civic Center (later renamed Baltimore Arena). The Skipjacks left town for Portland in 1993, but the city wasn’t without pro hockey for long.
Description: Baltimore, Maryland was a long-time staple of the American Hockey League. The Baltimore Clippers (1962-1976) and Baltimore Skipjacks (1982-1993) both had long residencies at the downtown Baltimore Civic Center (later renamed Baltimore Arena). The Skipjacks left town for Portland in 1993, but the city wasn’t without pro hockey for long.
Description: Formed in November 1976, the Bellingham Mariners were the first full minor affiliate announced by the new Seattle Mariners expansion team in the American League. Bellingham, Washington sits on the coastline of Washington State, 90 minutes north of Seattle and 90 minutes south of Vancouver, British Columbia. The city had a U.S. census population of 39,375 in 1970, though that number has doubled in the years since. The Mariners replaced the departing Los Angeles Dodgers, who operated their own Class A Northwest League farm club at Bellingham’s Civic Stadium from 1973 until 1976.
Description: The Bend Bandits were an independent (non-Major League affiliated) minor league baseball team that played in the Central Oregon during the late 1990’s. The Bandits were one of eight original clubs in the all-independent Western Baseball League formed in 1995. They replaced the Bend Rockies of the Northwest League, a Class A farm club of Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies, who left town at the end of the 1994 season.
Description: The Billings Volcanos were a minor league basketball outfit in the Continental Basketball Association for three seasons from 1980 to 1983. The franchise started out in Honolulu in 1979 where the club first gained its misspelled name. The team moved across the country to Billings after only one season in Hawaii.
Description: The Bridgeport Bluefish were enjoyed a 20-year run in the Atlantic League, the top independent pro baseball league in the United States, between 1998 and 2017. The arrival of the Bluefish in 1998 and the concurrent opening of the $19 million Ballpark at Harbor Yard on an abandoned industrial brownfield was a center piece of public/private efforts to revitalize downtown Bridgeport in the late 1990’s.
Description: The Brevard County Manatees were a minor league baseball team of the Class A-Advanced Florida State League from 1994 to 2016. They were based in Viera, Florida, and played their home games at Space Coast Stadium. The team left Brevard County after the 2016 season for Kissimmee, Florida, where they began play in 2017 as the Florida Fire Frogs. The team′s mascot was a manatee. From 1994 to 2001, he was named Hugh Manatee (a pun on "humanity"), and from 2002 to 2016 he was known as Manny Manatee.
Description: The Brevard County Manatees were a minor league baseball team of the Class A-Advanced Florida State League from 1994 to 2016. They were based in Viera, Florida, and played their home games at Space Coast Stadium. The team left Brevard County after the 2016 season for Kissimmee, Florida, where they began play in 2017 as the Florida Fire Frogs. The team′s mascot was a manatee. From 1994 to 2001, he was named Hugh Manatee (a pun on "humanity"), and from 2002 to 2016 he was known as Manny Manatee.
Description: Bristol, Connecticut hosted the Class AA farm club of the Boston Red Sox in the Eastern League for ten seasons from 1973 to 1982. It was a Golden Age for the Red Sox farm system and a parade of future Major League stars came through ancient Muzzy Field on their way to Fenway Park, including eventual Hall-of-Famers Jim Rice (1973) and Wade Boggs (1978 and 1979).
