Las Vegas Wranglers

The Las Vegas Wranglers, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, played the 1958 season in the Class C California League, one of the league's rare ventures outside California. The team began the year as the San Jose Pirates, a Pittsburgh affiliate, but with the Giants newly arrived in San Francisco the club collapsed at the gate; when San Jose missed payroll, the franchise was forfeited on May 26 and awarded to a Las Vegas group that had spent months waiting for exactly that chance. The combined club finished seventh at 54-81, and that October the Wranglers withdrew from the league after a season of sparse crowds. Las Vegas would not see professional baseball again for a quarter century, until the Las Vegas Stars arrived in 1983. Bob Veale, the future National League strikeout king, made his professional debut with the 1958 Wranglers. We traced the whole strange story, from the stakeout of the dying San Jose franchise to the empty grandstands, on our blog.

The 1958 club revived a name with real local history. An earlier, unrelated Las Vegas Wranglers franchise was the city's first professional team in any sport, joining the Class C Sunset League in 1947. That club produced one of the great forgotten offensive seasons in minor league history: 21-year-old Calvin Felix led the league in nearly every category in 1947, hitting 52 home runs. The same season, Hollywood actor Cameron Mitchell pitched a game for the Wranglers after shutting out a Triple-A club for four innings in an exhibition; in league play he was shelled for 11 runs in less than an inning.

In the first half of the 1900s, professional baseball reached into towns of every size across America, and desert circuits like the Sunset League carried the game through the Southwest in the years before television changed the entertainment landscape.

Our design is adapted from original Wranglers artwork found in the team's 1958 game programs, a genuine piece of Las Vegas baseball graphics brought back to life rather than a modern invention.