Portland, Oregon, has been home to many baseball teams, dating back to the 19th century. Despite this, Portland has never fielded a Major League Baseball team.
In 2018 the Portland Diamond Project was formed to lobby for a Major League Baseball team. Among the members include Russell Wilson, quarterback in the National Football League, and Ciara the professional singer and songwriter.Portland Baseball PdxHistory.com
Early Portland baseball: 1866–1883 The first organized baseball team on record in the Pacific Northwest was founded in Portland, when on May 28, 1866, the Pioneer Baseball Club of East Portland was created. Known as a gentleman's group at the time, it composed merchants, doctors, lawyers and farmers from rural Portland.Portland Baseball. pdxhistory.com. Retrieved May 4, 2008. Professional players were not allowed to be part of the club. In fact, members had to pay dues in order to be a part of the club. Over the next year many clubs were created throughout the Portland area.
The Pioneers of East Portland invited clubs from throughout the region to a meeting in February 1868 to form what became The Oregon, Washington and Idaho Territories Association of Base Ball Players. The association consisted of five founding clubs—they were the Pioneers, the Portland Spartans, the Highland Baseball Club, the Clackamas Club of Oregon City and the Occidentals of Vancouver, Washington. The teams adopted rules that were slightly modified from those approved by the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1863.
Professional baseball in Portland: 1883–1901 In 1884 Joe Buchtel, a player-manager for the Pioneers who is regarded as being largely responsible for making baseball popular in Oregon during the 20th century, started a new team in Portland, the Willamettes of East Portland. In 1890 this team became the Portland Webfeet. It helped organize the first professional league in the region, the Pacific Northwest League. This league consisted of teams from Portland, Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane, and began attracting players from around the nation.Oregon Stadium Campaign. Oregon & Portland's Baseball History. Retrieved May 6, 2008.
In 1891 the Webfeet won the league championship, playing teams from as far as the California League, which included Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Jose. This version of the Pacific Northwest League folded in the second half of the 1892 season due to the onset of a nationwide economic depression known as the Panic of 1893.
An attempt was made in 1896 to restart the Pacific Northwest League, which was alternately known as the New Pacific League. Portland fielded a team in again in the league, this time going by the name of the Portland Gladiators. The season only lasted through June, but the Gladiators did end up winning the league championship with a 19–9 record.
Another new team gained notoriety in Portland in 1886, the Portland Monograms. Consisting largely of neighborhood kids from Central and North Central High Schools, this team was very successful. After defeating teams from Oregon, they went on to win against the Washington State Championship team from Tacoma, earning them the right to go to San Francisco to play the California Champions in a game called the Pacific Tournament. The Monograms played two games against the California Champions, tying the first 12–12 and losing the second 16–14.
A new era in Portland baseball: 1901–1902
In the spring of 1901 a new baseball park was constructed at NW Vaughn Street and NW 24th Avenue that would become known as Vaughn Street Park. This year also saw the second resurrection of the Pacific Northwest League. A group of area businessmen, spearheaded by William H. Lucas, also created the Portland Baseball Club and put together a team to play in the Pacific Northwest League, calling them the Webfooters. This team included Joe Tinker and won the League Championship in their first season.
Following the creation of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues in 1901 (renamed Minor League Baseball in 1999), the PNL, and thus the Portland Webfoots, became a Class B league beginning in the 1902 season. In 1902 the team finished fourth in the league.
On December 10, 1902, Henry Harris, the owner of the California League's San Francisco team announced that the Pacific Northwest League team from Portland and a new team from Seattle were joining with the California League to create the Pacific Coast League.
Pacific Coast League: 1903–1917
The Portland Baseball Club began play in the PCL in 1903, being known as the Portland Browns. Portland finished fifth in the league at the end of the 1903 season. In 1904 the Portland team, finished the season with a 74–136 record, setting a PCL record for the most losses in a season.
The Pacific Northwest League attempted to compete against the new Pacific Coast League in their inaugural year. Replacing the team they lost in Portland, as well as placing teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco, they renamed themselves the Pacific National League. The new team in Portland that year, the Green Gages, only played until July 1 when they moved to Salt Lake City, and changed their name to the Elders. Four other teams from the league stopped playing altogether before the end of the season, leaving only four teams in the league. By the end of the 1905, the old Pacific Northwest/National League was gone for good.
The PCL continued on though, as did the Portland Baseball Club. After the 1904 season, the PCL joined the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, thus making Portland a Class A league team (now called AAA Baseball). Also after the 1904 season, Portland outfielder Walter McCredie and his uncle Judge William McCredie purchased the team. The new owners changed the name of the team the Giants for the 1905 season, and Walter became the team's manager while continuing to play. As a result of a newspaper contest, the team was renamed the Beavers (Oregon is the "Beaver State") in time for the 1906 season. The newly named Portland Beavers won their first PCL pennant in 1906, finishing 19½ games over runner-up Seattle. Also in 1906 Beavers player Mike Mitchell led the league in home runs, setting a league record for the least home runs hit by a league leader, hitting it out only six times.
The Beavers finished last in 1907 and second in 1908 and 1909. In 1910 Portland won another pennant being led by the pitching of Vean Gregg and Gene Krapp. Gregg finished the season with a 32–18 record and 14 shutouts while Krapp had a 29–16 record for the season. Portland repeated at PCL champs in 1911 fielding four 20-game-winning pitchers. In 1912, Judge McCredie helped get a new 12,000-seat grandstand built at Vaughn Street Park. His obituary later read that the ballpark was "the sensation of baseball, because it inaugurated a minor league precedent of providing individual grandstand seats, which fellow magnates called an extravagance and a dangerous innovation." The year 1912 also saw a small change in the classification of leagues from the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, as they made the top-tier league AA, which the PCL and the Portland Beavers moved into from the previous top tier Class A league.
During the 1910s the Beavers developed some working relationships with other teams. From 1911 to 1914 the Portland Beavers had their own farm team who played in the Northwest League (renamed the Pacific Coast International League in 1918). The Class B team shared the use of Vaughn Street Park and was known as the Portland Pippins in 1911, but changed their name to the Portland Colts in 1912. During the 1914 season the Colts moved to the Seattle area and finished their last season as the Ballard Pippins before folding. Portland also had an informal relationship with the Cleveland Indians through much of the 1910s that saw many future major league stars come through Portland to fine tune their skills.
In 1913 and 1914 Portland played well, winning the pennant in both seasons. Though the 1915 Beavers featured Stan Coveleski, the team didn't fare too well, and started into a tailspin that would last for over a decade. The year also marked the end of their relationship with the Cleveland Indians. With America's entry into World War I, restrictions were placed on travel, such that the Beavers withdrew from the PCL for the 1918 season, playing instead in the Class B Pacific Coast International League. The team was known as the Portland Buckaroos and finished their shortened season (play was stopped on July 7 due to the war) in second place 1½ games back of Seattle. Ironically, the PCL ceased play just a week later as they too were unable to continue play due to the travel restrictions.
Due to the Beaver's withdrawal from the PCL, the league offered Sacramento, California, a franchise to replace the Portland team, while the McCredie's continued to own the baseball club in Portland. The new team in Sacramento was known as the Sacramento Senators, and could be considered a continuation of the original Portland Baseball Club.
Return to the Pacific Coast League: 1919–1972
With the McCredies still at the helm, Portland was offered the opportunity to become an expansion franchise and re-entered the PCL in 1919. The team finished in seventh place, only ahead of last place Seattle who was also an expansion team that year. Portland finished in last place in 1920 and again in 1921. After the 1921 season, the McCredies sold the team to Walter Klepper who had been president of the Seattle team. Klepper brought in Jim Thorpe who played with the Beavers for the 1922 season, paying him an unheard of minor league salary of $1000 per month. It wasn't long, though, before Klepper was in the middle of a dispute with Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Klepper had brought Seattle player-manager Bill Kenworthy down to manage the Beavers, but Seattle claimed Kenworthy was still under contract and that Klepper had tampered in the matter. Landis suspended Klepper until January 1, 1925, and declared Kenworthy ineligible to play or manage Portland until the 1924 season. According to the book "The Portland Beavers" by Kip Carlson and Paul Andresen, "The feisty Klepper went to court and had the decision overturned, supposedly the only time that Landis ever had a ruling reversed." Kenworthy did manage the Beavers in 1924, replacing popular player-manager Jim Middleton. However, he was fired mid-season, as he was not able to generate support from the players. The 1924 season was also noteworthy in that Mickey Cochrane played on the team.
After the 1924 season, the Beavers officially became a farm team for a major league team when Philadelphia Athletics owners John and Tom Shibe purchased the Beavers as well as Vaughn Street Park. Despite having Duffy Lewis on the team in 1925 (winning the PCL batting title), Elmer Smith in 1926 and 1927 (leading the PCL in home runs in 1926 and all of minor league baseball in home runs in 1927) and Ike Boone in 1928, the Beavers continued to finish in the bottom half of the league.
Longtime head groundskeeper Rocky Benevento started working for the Beavers in 1927. Benevento was so popular with the fans that they took up a collection for him in 1956 to send him to the World Series. Benevento retired at the end of the 1966 season and was given a new car. When Benevento died in 1969, Portland newspaper The Oregonian stated, "He adored kids...he loved baseball...and most of all he loved people." His funeral had an overflowing crowd that included Oregon Governor Tom McCall. Benevento's stayed with the team 40 years, spanning 30 managerial changes and five ownership changes. While the former location of Vaughn Street Park is now a parking lot, there is a plaque honoring Benevento for his efforts in furthering baseball in Portland.