Burlington Flints

The Burlington Flints played in Burlington, Iowa, in 1952 and 1953, when the city joined the Three-I League (the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League) as a Cincinnati Reds affiliate. The nickname echoes the city's original name. The bluffs above the Mississippi were called Shoquoquon, or Flint Hills, by the Sauk and Meskwaki, who gathered flint there for tools, and the first American settlement in 1833 took the name Flint Hills before it was renamed Burlington the following year.

The Flints followed the Burlington Indians, who won the Central Association title in 1949, the league's last season, and they played at Community Field, which opened in 1947. In their first season, under manager Len Schulte, the Flints went 64-60 and finished 11½ games out. In 1953 the Reds sent Johnny Vander Meer to manage the club. Vander Meer remains the only major league pitcher to throw no-hitters in consecutive starts, which he did for Cincinnati in June 1938. The 1953 Flints struggled to a 49-79 finish, and the club took the name Burlington Bees in 1954. Burlington stayed in the Three-I League through 1961.

The Three-I League (the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League) was a Class B circuit that ran from 1901 through 1961, with pauses for World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. Though rooted primarily in Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa, the league also drew clubs from Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota as its core membership contracted in later years.