September 6, 1946: The 1st Southern Team In the "Major Leagues"

September 6, 1946: The All-America Football Conference, an early "rebel league," debuts. The Cleveland Browns, replacing the Rams, who won the NFL Championship and then moved to Los Angeles because of poor attendance, play their 1st game, at home, at Cleveland Municipal Stadium, and win, 44-0.

Under head coach Paul Brown, in the 4 years that the AAFC played, the Browns went 47-4-3, and won all 4 league championships. They then were admitted into the NFL, and won the Championship in 1950, 1954 and 1955; losing the Championship Game in 1951, 1952 and 1953. Counting their 4 AAFC seasons and their 1st 6 NFL seasons, they went 58-13-1 and reached 10 league title games, winning 7.

But this post isn't about the Browns, or the AAFC. It's about the team the Browns beat in their 1st game: The Miami Seahawks.

Miami... Seahawks? I mean the Miami Dolphins, or the Seattle Seahawks, right? Nope: The Dolphins didn't debut until 1966, in the AFL; and the Seattle team didn't debut until 1976. In fact, there was a minor-league hockey team called the Seattle Sea Hawks from 1936 to 1941.

No, the Miami Seahawks actually existed. And, if you consider the AAFC a "major league," then the Seahawks were the 1st major league team in the American South, the 1st major league team from a State that had seceded from the Union for the American Civil War.

Harvey Hester, a former quarterback at the University of Florida, and briefly the head coach at Wofford College in South Carolina, led a group of fellow Miami businessmen to put together an ownership team.

Their head coach was Jack Meagher, who had played at Notre Dame while Knute Rockne was an assistant coach there. He coached Rice University to an 8-4 season in 1930, Auburn to win the 1938 Orange Bowl, and the Iowa Pre-Flight Team to a 10-1 record under wartime conditions in 1944. His Auburn teams were nicknamed Meagher's Marauders.

The Iowa Pre-Flight Team, established (as were some of the other military-base teams that played college teams during World War II) near a major college campus, in this case the University of Iowa, was, due to the "flight" theme, named for a bird: The Seahawks. Meagher took their name with him, and Hester approved it for the Miami team, which made more sense in Miami than it did in Iowa City. He hadn't yet coached a pro game, but, certainly, he was qualified.

But while they got better after their opening disaster, they were never good. They lost 21-14 away to the San Francisco 4ers, and 30-14 away to the Los Angeles Dons, before playing their 1st home game, losing to the 49ers again, 34-7 at Burdine Stadium, which would be renamed the Orange Bowl in 1959.

On October 11, they got their 1st win, 17-14 over the Buffalo Bisons at Civic Stadium in Buffalo, later renamed War Memorial Stadium. But that would be the highlight of their season. They lost 28-7 to the Chicago Rockets at Soldier Field, 30-7 to the football version of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field, 24-21 to the football version of the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium, and 20-7 at home to the Rockets.

(Note: When I say, "the football version of... " I only mean that those teams had the same names as their baseball equivalents, and it was convenient for them to play in the same stadiums. It wasn't the baseball teams moonlighting as football teams, a practice that did include Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics in a league that lasted just one year, 1902.)

The way the Seahawks' schedule worked out, 7 of their 1st 8 games were on the road, and their last 6 games were at home. On November 18, they beat the Bisons again. They lost 34-21 to the Dons, 34-0 to the Browns, and 31-0 to the Yankees. They closed on December 13, at home, beating the Dodgers, 31-20. 

The Seahawks wore orange and green,

like the University of Miami, and presaging the Dolphins.

They finished 3-11. With the Dodgers and the Bisons, the 2 teams they beat, both finishing 3-10-1, the Seahawks had the worst record in the league. They folded after the season.

Why? Several reasons. This was before the widespread use of air conditioning made life in Florida tolerable. As a result, Miami was, by far, the smallest market in the AAFC, and only Green Bay was smaller in the NFL. The stadium that would become the Orange Bowl only seated 35,000, so even if the Seahawks sold games out, it still might not have been enough to make a profit. It was soon expanded, but that didn't do the Seahawks any good.

The Browns had brought in black players Marion Motley and Bill Willis. The AAFC made it known that black players would be accepted. Despite Florida being a Southern State, there were no incidents when they played in Miami. But the Southern fans wanted no part of that, and the Seahawks simply didn't draw well. Knowing this, Hester knew he couldn't bring black players onto the team, no matter how good they were. So he was stuck with a an all-white team that went 3-11.

Even more telling, Hester needed the other members of his group to buy the team. He was the only owner, in the NFL and the AAFC combined, who was not a millionaire. Paul Brown, who was the Browns' head coach and GM, was not their owner, but stood in for the owners in league meetings until Art Modell bought the team in 1962. He noticed that Hester didn't seem to fit in, operationally or emotionally, with the other team owners, and wouldn't even play poker with them.

Meagher never coached again, and died in 1968. An Auburn fan group took the name "Meagher's Marauders," and annually award a scholarship and dedicate an award to an Auburn football legend. I can find no details of what happened to Hester after the Seahawks folded, only that he lost his life savings with the team, fell deeply into debt, and was not involved in professional sports again.

There wouldn't be another major league (or even "major league") team in a former Confederate State until 1952, when the NFL debuted the Dallas Texans. They failed after 1 season, too. In 1960, the NFL debuted the Dallas Cowboys, and the AFL debuted, with the Dallas Texans, who became the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963, and the Houston Oilers, who became the Tennessee Oilers in 1997 and the Tennessee Titans in 1999. In 1962, Major League Baseball debuted the Houston Colt .45s, who became the Houston Astros in 1965.

And the Miami Dolphins finally brought major league sports back to Florida in 1966. This would be followed by the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1976, the NBA's Miami Heat in 1988 and Orlando Magic in 1989, the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning in 1992, MLB's Miami Marlins and the NHL's Miami-area Florida Panthers in 1993, the NFL's Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995, and MLB's Tampa Bay Rays in 1998. (The Rays were known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays until 2007. The Marlins were known as the Florida Marlins until 2011.)

Other Southern cities getting major league teams have included Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina, Atlanta in Georgia, Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee, New Orleans in Louisiana, Oklahoma City, and, in addition to Dallas and Houston in Texas, San Antonio.

If you counted the ABA as "major league," not only did Memphis have a team, but the Norfolk area had the Virginia Squires, Louisville had the Kentucky Colonels, and Miami had the Floridians. If you counted the WHA, then there were the Houston Aeros, and the Toronto Toros moved to Alabama, anglicized their name, and became the Birmingham Bulls. A Miami Screaming Eagles was planned for the WHA's start in 1972, but their ownership group fell apart, and the franchise was awarded to Philadelphia instead.

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September 6, 1946 was a Friday. Basketball player Ron Boone, an ABA All-Star that went on to play 5 seasons in the NBA, was born on this day.

The NFL didn't start its season until September 20. The AAFC tended to split its schedule between Friday nights and Sunday afternoons, to avoid competing with college football, so Seahawks vs. Browns was the only game played on this day. Two other games were played on the Sunday: Yankees 21, 49ers 7, at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco; and Dodgers 27, Bisons 14, at Civic (War Memorial) Stadium in Buffalo.

And these baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 4-3 at Shibe Park In Philadelphia. Bob Savage outpitched Clarence Marshall, whose nickname was "Cuddles." How is a team supposed to beat a Savage with Cuddles? Joe DiMaggio went 3-for-4. Sam Chapman hit a home run for the A's.

* The New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 16-2 at the Polo Grounds. Ernie Lombardi, who built a Hall of Fame career as a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds, went 3-dor-5 with a home run and 5 RBIs for the Giants in this game. Babe Young (3-for-5) and Jack Graham (2-for-4) also homered.

* The Washington Senators beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Stan Spence doubled Buddy Lewis home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. The season before, the Senators had fallen just 1 game short of the American League Pennant. No Washington baseball team would get that close again for 74 years. The Red Sox were running away with this year's Pennant, and Ted Williams went 1-for-3 with 2 walks before being removed for defensive purposes.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians, 9-0 at Briggs Stadium (later renamed Tiger Stadium) in Detroit. Dizzy Trout pitched a 4-hit shutout. Hank Greenberg hit his 31st home run of the season, going on to lead the AL with 44, and in RBIs with 127.

* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-6 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Stan Musial went 2-for-4.

 

* The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Boston Braves jointly agreed to move their game scheduled for this day, at Braves Field in Boston, to part of a Sunday doubleheader on September 22. The Braves won the opener, 4-2. The Dodgers won the nightcap, 8-1.

* And the Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds, the Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Browns were not scheduled.