Category: History and More

Raise a glass, tip your cap, or – if you really want to get into the spirit of things – hip check the person standing nearest to you. Today is the 46^th anniversary of the birth of one of the Magic City’s most memorable sports teams.

The club that sparked my passion for ice hockey started the morning of June 29, 1976, as the Toronto Toros but ended the day as the Birmingham Bulls. The move was made official during a meeting of the World Hockey Association’s Board of Governors in Toronto, and in early July some high-profile team members came to town to spread the gospel of the sport.

“This is my first trip to Alabama, and I’m impressed,” Bulls left wing Frank Mahovlich, a future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, told the Anniston Star for a July 8, 1976, story. “The facility the team will be playing in (the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Coliseum, now known as Legacy Arena) has to be one of the prettiest arenas I’ve ever seen. All you need is a good hockey team.”

Mahovlich was joined on his Birmingham visit by teammate Paul Henderson and team owner John Bassett.

“We’re pleased to bring hockey to Birmingham and Alabama and now we want to begin working on fielding a good team and help get people educated to hockey,” Bassett said.

Henderson, also a left winger, tried to assure new fans of the sport that they’d catch on quickly.

“It’s really not that complicated,” he said. “Right now, this is just a transition for everyone here in Alabama. After everyone learns what the whistles are for from the officials, I think everything will fall into place.

“People have the idea that we do a lot of fighting, that we have a couple of guys on the team that don’t do anything but fight. Well, that has been true. Now with an 18-man roster you’ve got to have 18 good hockey players, but fighting is part of it.”

When news broke that Birmingham would be getting a professional hockey team, I read up on everything I could find about the sport. I knew next to nothing, but I did know that the WHA was a major league and I felt it was my obligation to become a major league fan.

And I did.

Man, I loved it.

That first season I sacrificed homework, dates and basically any activity going on opposite the Bulls because they took priority over everything.

Was it because they were a great team?

Nah.

Despite the play of 19-year-old rising superstar Mark Napier and Vaclav Nedomansky (another future Hall of Famer), they finished 31-45-4 – bad enough for fifth place in the East.

But I did get to see legends like Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky skate, which was a pretty big deal.

And when they couldn’t punch out a victory, the Bulls could at least punch out opponents, and what’s not to love about a touring version of Slap Shot? (Fun fact: Dave Hanson, one of the movie’s infamous Hanson Brothers, joined the Bulls during the 1977-78 season).

When they did find ways to get the “W” though, it could be magnificent.

Arguably the franchise’s finest moment came on February 4, 1977, when the Quebec Nordiques (known now as the Colorado Avalanche) came to the BJCC. The WHA champions-in-waiting were facing a Birmingham team riding a five-game winning streak.

It was a massacre.

With a WHA record crowd of 17,489 on hand (and an all-time attendance mark for a first-year club in any pro hockey league) the Bulls blistered the Nordiques, 7-0. Sitting behind one of the goals with a couple of buddies, I got to enjoy much of the carnage as Tim Sheehy scored a pair of goals and Napier, Lou Nistico (my favorite player), J.C. Stewart, Peter Marrin, and Jeff Jacques each tallied one.

It was one of the most enjoyable outings of my life, and Birmingham had established itself as the South’s premiere hockey hub (at least for a day).

Nine months later I was in the stands for the “Thanksgiving Day Massacre,” a 12-2 Bulls wipeout of the Cincinnati Stingers on November 24, 1977. The 12 goals tied a WHA record; Birmingham’s goon-laden starting lineup initiated a brawl 24 seconds into the first period; and 10,259 fans got to see Cincy coach Jacques Demers get so angry with the officiating he threw more than a dozen hockey sticks onto the ice.

Sadly – as is the case with too many Birmingham sports franchises I fall in love with – these Bulls weren’t meant to last.

After three seasons in the WHA, Birmingham was left out of the limited merger with the National Hockey League and dropped down to the Central Hockey League for the 1979-80 and 1980-81 seasons. They served as minor league affiliates for the Atlanta Flames that first year and were retained as a farm club when the Flames moved to Calgary the next. The CHL was a decent league, but it was no match for the circuit I’d enjoyed since 1976.

The Bulls folded on February 23, 1981. By then they were owned by an entity called Magic City Sports, with Frank Falkenburg serving as president.

The team needed a $30,000 loan from Calgary to finish out the season, but the parent club denied it.

“Without help from Calgary, we’re ceasing to operate the hockey team,” Falkenburg told Associated Press. “It’s an economic decision based on the fact we’re having poor attendance due to a very poor hockey team. I certainly don’t criticize the fans … I wouldn’t pay to see this team play, either.”

It was a painful ending for the franchise that opened up a whole new sports world for me. Even though they were just 99-129-13 in the WHA and 53-76-9 in the CHL, they managed to win my heart without winning a whole bunch of games.

The Bulls brand has been revived in three different leagues since then, and the latest version competes in the Southern Professional Hockey League. Having a local team to cheer for is nice, but there’s no substitute for the original Birmingham Bulls.

I still miss them.

I’ve never been much into idolizing sports figures, but I made an exception for Satchel Paige. A Mobile native who spent the early part of his career with the Birmingham Black Barons, his exploits on the mound bordered on the unbelievable.

Pitching over four decades – going 112-60 with a 2.36 earned average in the Negro Leagues and 118-80 with a 2.70 ERA in the American League – no one ever did what he did so well for so long.

I never saw him play, but I was always fascinated by arguably the greatest baseball pitcher of all-time. That being said, I don’t claim to be an expert on the man or the myth, although I thought I had a pretty good working knowledge of his story arc.

I was wrong.

Only recently did I stumble upon the fact that he not only got his start as a professional player during a four-year stint with the Black Barons, but actually managed the club for a very brief time. Well, he managed a club called the Black Barons, which is a pretty interesting story in itself.

On March 15, 1956, the Birmingham Post-Herald reported that Black Barons owner Floyd Meshad had, indeed, signed the ageless superstar in a dual role.

“We are pleased to have Paige handle the club,” Meshad told the newspaper. “We’re tickled to death to have him, the fans will like him, and he says he still has that old fastball for four or five innings.”
Paige was almost 50 when he returned to Birmingham following a career that had taken him from various Negro League clubs (now considered major league franchises) to the Cleveland Indians and St. Louis Browns of Major League Baseball.

By 1953 – his last season in MLB before signing for one game with the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 – Paige had been a World Series champion and eight-time All-Star.

In the Black Barons, he was taking over a club that was in its 38^th season and claimed to be the oldest Negro League team in the United States in continuous operation. But after stints in the Negro Southern League, Negro National League and Negro American League, the 1956 Black Barons would play as independents.

And the 38^th season claim is in dispute because the “old” Birmingham Barons had been purchased by Dr. Anderson K. Ross of Memphis in early March and renamed the Giants since Meshack had already copyrighted the name “Black Barons.” The original franchise had been taken away from Meshad earlier in the year at an owners meeting due to “league violations.”

Meshad said his club would face such traditional powers as the Indianapolis Clowns and New York Black Yankees. And they had secured Rickwood Field for the season, so the team would play in familiar surroundings.

“The opposition will be tougher than in the Negro American League,” Meshad said. “That league only has four teams now, including one they call the Birmingham Giants, which doesn’t even play here.”

The Black Barons lost to Mobile in its April 2 spring training opener at Rickwood, 10-8. And the team continued to play exhibitions in anticipation for the start of the regular season in May.

But on April 11 Meshad sold the team – and naming rights – to Ross.

“I’ve sold the franchise, equipment, good will, everything,” Meshack said.

Jim Canady, a former Birmingham player, was skipper of the renamed Giants, leaving Paige in limbo. So, the player/manager reportedly took a trip to Mobile on or around April 14 and by all accounts that ended his tenure with the Black Barons.

Canady was replaced by Horse Walker as Barons skipper on June 8, and the Black Barons finished third in the NAL standings.

As for Paige, well, by April 24 he was playing for Bill Veeck’s Miami Marlins in the International League. When the season was over he had compiled an 11-4 record, 1.86 Earned Run Average and struck out 79 batters in 111 innings pitched.

Obviously, he still had that old fastball.

There must have been something in the water in the early 1970s – or at least something in international waters.

The World Hockey Association hit the ice in 1972, the World Football League took the field in July, 1974, and in April, 1974, the World Baseball Association announced its intention to make the National Pastime the Global Pastime.

President and co-founder Sean Morton Downey Jr. (who would later become better known simply as Morton Downey Jr., a confrontational talk show host who helped pioneer trash TV) held a news conference in Washington, D.C., proclaiming the WBA was ready to challenge Major League Baseball. The WBA would feature 32 franchises with 16 in the United States and the other 16 scattered across Mexico, South America, Cuba, Japan, Taiwan and Canada. A 72 to 84-game regular season would begin in January, 1975.

“We’ll better the American and National League salaries, yet our players will have to play less than half the number of games the current major league teams expect of their players,” Downey said in an article published by Associated Press. “We anticipate longer player life, more offense In the game, less lengthy games and player participation in operation of the association.”

Downey stressed that this would be big league all the way, with the WBA going after 160 “front line” players.

It was revealed at the news conference that franchises had already been awarded to Columbus, Ohio; Jersey City, N. J.; Birmingham; Memphis; Tampa -St. Petersburg; and Mexico City. Each franchise cost $150,000 and two and a half percent of all gross revenues annually would go to the WBA, a “profit-making corporation that will direct all activities of the league, including hiring of ballplayers, coaches and managers and umpires.”

A manager/player draft was to be held in June.

“We have some substantial people, people with money, already involved,” WBA co-founder Wayne Nelson told the Miami News. “I can’t tell you who they are, but a couple of our people make (American Football League founder) Lamar Hunt look like a pauper.”

But it wouldn’t be a 1970s sports venture without some groovy rule innovations, and the WBA was gonna shake things up dramatically.

Some of the ideas included:

* Orange baseballs used for night games.

* Five designated hitters to replace five defensive players who remain in the game.

* One designated runner per game.

* Pitchers required to release a pitch within 20 seconds.

* Three balls instead of four for a walk.

* Two runs for stealing home after the sixth inning.

Shortly after the announcement Dick Williams, who managed the Oakland A’s to a pair of World Series titles, said he had been approached about becoming the new league’s commissioner.

“I’ve had three short conversations with those people,” Williams told AP. “I have no idea what the job would entail. I know of 70 players who have been contacted already. It’s got every chance to go. I think the WBA will put a lot of pressure on the rest of baseball.”

It certainly would’ve been entertaining to see this wildly reimagined version of baseball actually come to life. But for that to happen the WBA needed teams, and as the spring turned to summer and the summer turned to fall, it became apparent teams were hard to come by.

In June it was announced that Washington had joined the league, and Downey Jr. expected to name six flagship franchises by September 10 and two more by December 10. He said the WBA would likely start with 10 to 14 American clubs for the first year.

January, 1975, came and went without the WBA, and little was heard from the fledgling league until late November when new president Marvin Adelson told AP it would have a “sneak preview” with a six-game winter exhibition series in Cuba. The tournament would feature a “team representative of the World Baseball Association against clubs representing various provinces of Cuba and the national championship team, Santiago de Cuba.”

Adelson said the delay in launching a full season was simply a case of smart business.

“We’re really being tough on people who want franchises,” he said. “We can’t afford the bad publicity the World Football League got. That’s the reason it’s taken so long. You’ve got to be prepared to lose money – big money. We want to go slow and easy and be on solid ground.”

Adelson said five franchises had been sold in North America, but he declined to give names or locations. He added that five more franchises had been awarded to cities in Japan, two in the Dominican Republic, two in Puerto Rico and one in Manila.

As for the international tournament, well, it was never played.

In September, 1975, the WBA released a statement saying that a United States team would face a Japanese team in Honolulu and Tokyo, which would be the first actual game associated with the league.

That was never played, either.

And by December of 1976, Adelson had abandoned his role as WBA president in order to buy the Triple A Pawtucket Red Sox. He also hoped to own an MLB club within five years.

Thus, the World Baseball Association joined the increasingly long list of professional sports ventures that never made it past the idea stage. And as for the other 1970s leagues with “World” in their names, their worlds ceased to exist before the decade came to a close.