Sport Baseball No. of teams 14 Most recent
champion(s) Rome Braves (2nd) | Founded 1980 Country USA Classification Class A | |
The South Atlantic League is a minor league baseball league with teams along the Atlantic coastline of the United States from New Jersey to Georgia. It is a Class A league that plays a full season, and its teams are composed of players in their second or third year of professional play.
Contents
- History
- Current teams
- South Atlantic League teams 1980present
- South Atlantic League Hall of Fame
- References
A number of different leagues known as the South Atlantic League have existed since 1904. The current league of that name adopted the moniker in 1980, having previously been the Western Carolinas League, founded in 1963.
History
There have been different South Atlantic Leagues in the history of minor league baseball, spanning from 1904 to the present with a few breaks. The league ran from 1904 to 1917 as a class C league, then started up again in 1919, also class C. This time it ran from 1919 to 1930, moving up to class B beginning in 1921. William G. Bramham became league president in mid-1924, and served until 1930. The league was restarted again as a class B from 1936 to 1942, shut down for the war and returned in 1946 as a class A league. The AA Southern Association (which never integrated) died after the 1961 season and so the SAL was promoted to AA in 1963 to take its place; a year later the name was changed to the Southern League. Out of the 51 seasons of operation, Augusta, Georgia competed in 46, Macon, Georgia was around for 46, and Columbia, South Carolina was in 45. Charleston, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Columbus, Georgia; each competed for at least 29 years also, making for a relatively stable lineup.
The South Atlantic League name went unused for 16 years, but in 1980 the Western Carolinas League brought back the name when it sought to change its identity. For nearly 60 years, 1948 through 2007, the dominant figure in the WCL/SAL was league founder and president John Henry Moss, who started the WCL as a young man in 1948, refounded it in 1960 and then led it into the new century. Moss retired at the close of the 2007 South Atlantic League season. He died at age 90 on July 1, 2009, at Kings Mountain, North Carolina—a town where he had also been mayor for 23 years.
In 2005, the SAL had the highest attendance in 101 years with over 3,541,992 fans (while minor league baseball set a second straight record with 41,333,279 attendees). Currently, the league has 14 teams, divided into two divisions of seven clubs.
In 2015, the Savannah Sand Gnats relocated to Columbia, South Carolina, becoming the Columbia Fireflies.
Current teams
The league is divided into a Northern Division and a Southern Division.
South Atlantic League teams (1980–present)
Notes: Bold font indicates that team is an active South Atlantic League team • An "^" indicates that team's article redirects to an article of an active team in the South Atlantic League or in a different league
South Atlantic League Hall of Fame
The South Atlantic League Hall of Fame was opened in 1994: