Mobile Bears

The Mobile Bears were an American minor league baseball team based in Mobile, Alabama. The franchise was a member of the old Southern Association, a high-level circuit that folded after the 1961 season. Mobile joined the SA in 1908 as the Sea Gulls, but changed its name to the Bears in 1918, and the nickname stuck. The club played in the Association until July 1931, when it moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. Almost exactly 13 years later, in July 1944, the Bears returned to Mobile when the Knoxville Smokies franchise shifted back from Tennessee. (A club known as the Mobile Shippers competed in the Class B Southeastern League from 1937 to 1942.)

Mobile Bears
  • 1886–1970
  • (1886–1887, 1889, 1892–1896, 1898–1899, 1903, 1905–1932, 1937–1942, 1944–1961, 1966, 1970)
  • Mobile, Alabama
Minor league affiliations
Class
  • Class AA (1946–1961, 1966, 1970)
  • Class A1 (1944–1945)
  • Class B (1932, 1937–1942)
  • Class A (1908–1931)
  • Class D (1905–1907)
  • Class C (1899)
  • Class B (1892–1896, 1898)
League
Major league affiliations
Team
Minor league titles
Dixie Series titles (2)
  • 1922
  • 1955
League titles (10)
  • 1906
  • 1907
  • 1937
  • 1938
  • 1941
  • 1945
  • 1947
  • 1955
  • 1959
  • 1966
Pennants (3)
  • 1899
  • 1922
  • 1947
Team data
Name
  • Mobile White Sox (1970)
  • Mobile A's (1966)
  • Mobile Bears (1944–1961)
  • Mobile Shippers (1937–1942)
  • Mobile Red Warriors (1932)
  • Mobile Marines (1931)
  • Mobile Bears (1918–1930)
  • Mobile Sea Gulls (1905–1917)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1903)
  • Mobile Blackbirds (1896–1899)
  • Mobile Bluebirds (1894–1895)
  • Mobile Blackbirds (1892–1893)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1889)
  • Mobile Swamp Angels (1887)
  • Mobile Baseball Club (1886)
Ballpark
  • Hartwell Field (1966, 1970)
  • League Park (1918–1961)

The Bears then continued in the SA (classified as a Double-A league in 1946) through its final season. During the 1940s and 1950s, the club was a longtime farm system affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the Cleveland Indians. The Bears played in 5,000-seat Hartwell Field located on Virginia Street in midtown.

The nickname "Bears" lived on in modified form with the Mobile BayBears of the Double-A Southern League, who played 23 seasons (1997–2019) in Mobile before relocating to metropolitan Huntsville, Alabama.

The Bears won the Dixie Series, a postseason interleague championship between the champions of the Southern Association and the Texas League, in 1922 and 1955.[1][2]

References
  1. "Niehoff and Mulvey are Stars in Final". The Birmingham News. Birmingham. September 28, 1921. p. 17 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. Harwell, Hoyt (September 30, 1955). "Mobile Misfits Climax Year with Dixie Crown". The Huntsville Times. Huntsville. p. 12 – via Newspapers.com.


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