1. In 1972, the Portland Beavers, Oregon’s minor league baseball team of 69 years, relocated to Spokane. Fans grieved, but they assumed nothing could be done.
Depressed sportswriters declared baseball dead in Portland. Then a swashbuckling former television actor decided to resuscitate it. His name was Bing Russell.
He’d achieved semi-fame in the 1960s playing Deputy Clem Foster on a show called Bonanza. Before that, he’d spent the 1948-49 baseball seasons playing pro ball with the Carrollton Hornets, of the Class D Georgia-Alabama League. The Hornets were an independent outfit, meaning they were not affiliated with a major league club, as most teams in baseball’s lower castes were in 1948—and as all would be by 1972.
But independent baseball had once flourished in America, and Bing thought it could again. In Portland, he sought to prove it. He paid $500 for an expansion spot in the Class A Northwest League, relocated his family, and announced that an independent team called the Mavericks would debut that summer.
Portland was incredulous. Major league affiliation comes with major league funding. Player scouting, salaries, insurance—for affiliated teams, all this is taken care of.
Russell was furnishing the Mavericks by himself; the roster he rubber-banded together (through open tryouts) included a 30-year-old high school English teacher, a left-handed catcher, and a former restaurant manager. He paid players just $300 per month. Fans thought the Mavericks would ge.