Dayton Aviators

The Dayton Aviators, based in Dayton, Ohio, took their name from the city's aviation legacy as home to Wright brothers Orville and Wilbur. Dayton is still home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Wright Brothers National Museum. The club was a charter member of the reformed, six-team Class B Central League, joining Akron, Canton, Erie, Fort Wayne, and Springfield to open play on April 25, 1928.

Dayton's debut season was its best on the field: the Aviators went 76-59 in 1928, finishing just one game behind the regular-season-leading Erie Sailors in a split-season schedule. Fort Wayne and Erie split the two halves of the season, and Fort Wayne went on to beat Erie for the playoff title.

The following year's club featured a future Hall of Famer: 19-year-old second baseman Billy Herman, in just his second professional season, hit .329 across 138 games for the 1929 Aviators. Herman went on to a long major league career, mostly with the Chicago Cubs, making 10 consecutive All-Star teams and finishing with a .304 career average and 2,345 hits before his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1975.

The Aviators folded after a last-place 1930 season, a 56-81 finish that left them 26 games behind the pennant-winning Springfield Blue Sox, though Dayton's Clyde Hatter did lead the league with 217 strikeouts that year. The Central League itself didn't return in 1931, and Dayton's spot was eventually filled by the 1932 Dayton Ducks.

The Central League itself was a Class B circuit that ran, often sporadically, from 1903 into the 1930s (with a later 1948-51 revival), fielding teams mostly from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.