Cordele Bees

The Cordele Bees, based in Cordele, Georgia, played two seasons in the Class D Georgia-Florida League in 1939 and 1940. The franchise had a longer presence in the league under other names: the Cordele Reds ran from 1936 through 1938 and again from 1941 through 1942, winning league championships in both 1937 and 1942. The Bees identity was brief, sandwiched between those two Reds stints, and the team did not advance deep into the postseason in either season. After the war, the franchise returned under a succession of affiliations: White Sox in 1946, Indians from 1947 through 1949, and Athletics from 1950 through 1953, before departing the league in the mid-1950s.

In the years before television drew audiences indoors, towns across south Georgia supported professional baseball at the Class D level as one of the few organized forms of summer entertainment. The Georgia-Florida League was a Class D circuit that ran, with a wartime interruption from 1943 through 1945, from 1935 through 1958, fielding teams primarily from south Georgia with occasional representation from Florida and Alabama.