Davenport Dav-Sox

The Davenport DavSox, based in Davenport, Iowa, played two seasons in the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League from 1957 to 1958 as a Chicago White Sox affiliate. Their name was a contraction of "Davenport White Sox," and they represented the final chapter of Davenport's Three-I history, a thread that ran from the founding of the league in 1901 through a dozen different team names and two world wars. Davenport had gone without professional baseball from 1953 through 1956 after the Davenport Tigers folded, and the DavSox were the city's attempt to reclaim its place in the circuit.

In 1958 the DavSox advanced to the Three-I championship series before losing to the Cedar Rapids Braves 3 games to 2. Despite drawing 61,522 fans that season, third-highest in the league, the franchise relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska after the season to become the Lincoln Chiefs. Local businessman Hugo "Hooks" Kohn then led a drive to bring a new team back to Davenport, which resulted in the 1960 Davenport Braves joining the newly organized Midwest League. That franchise still plays in Davenport today as the Quad Cities River Bandits.

The Three-I League (also known as 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.