Colorado Springs Millionaires
Few teams have carried a more honest nickname than the Colorado Springs Millionaires, named for the Cripple Creek gold fortunes that built Colorado Springs, Colorado, though the franchise itself was never on solid financial footing. The club joined the Western League in 1901 under Billy Hulen, who served as owner, manager, and starting shortstop all at once. Hulen threw left-handed, and remains the last man to play shortstop regularly as a lefty in major league history; Ban Johnson himself once insisted a left-hander couldn't handle the position and recommended Hulen be moved to the outfield. That first season the Millionaires finished last at 45-73, though outfielder Frank Hemphill led the league with a .332 batting average.
The early Millionaires also produced one of the odder arrangements in minor league history. Barred from playing Sunday games in Colorado Springs in 1901, the club took its Sunday home dates up into the mountains, playing them in the gold camp towns of Woodland Park and Cripple Creek, the very source of the fortunes the team was named for.
At their peak the Millionaires competed one step below the major leagues, with rosters stocked with former big leaguers like manager Bill Everitt, a .317 career hitter with the Chicago Colts. But the money never matched the name, and the man running the club may have been part of the reason. On July 15, 1905, sitting at 22-48, the franchise moved to Pueblo mid-season. The name returned twice more: briefly in the Class D Rocky Mountain League in 1912, and once again in 1916, when the Wichita franchise relocated to Colorado Springs in September and finished out the year under the Millionaires name.
As for Hulen, his story ended stranger than any box score. In February 1906 he vanished while traveling to Seattle, his luggage traced as far as Denver before the trail went cold. His wife feared foul play; the Colorado Springs Gazette suggested a different theory, alleging Hulen had collected thousands from Springs businessmen to build a winner in 1901, fielded schoolboys in the outfield instead, and left town with a comfortable bank account. The mystery broke in 1907, when the missing man was discovered playing shortstop for the Medicine Hat Hatters up in Alberta, Canada under the alias Billy Hamilton, hitting .319 for a pennant winner. His wife divorced him for desertion; Hulen kept playing.
The Western League was a Class A circuit for most of its life, operating from 1900 through 1937 and again from 1947 through 1958, fielding teams across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states, including Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and later Texas and New Mexico. For its first decade it stood just one step below the major leagues. An earlier league of the same name, which ran from 1885 to 1899, renamed itself the American League in 1900 and lives on today as one half of Major League Baseball.
