Miami Miners

The Miami Miners were Miami, Arizona's professional baseball club from 1928 to 1930, one of four charter members of Arizona's first league in organized baseball, and they are best known for a championship they claimed but were never given.

The Miners won the first half of the 1929 season under manager Drap Hayes and met Bisbee for the title. The deciding game on September 17 at Association Park started at 4 p.m. so the mining town could get to the park after the day shift, and by the end of the seventh inning Miami led 13-6 with the light going. The umpire refused to call it. Bisbee scored six in the eighth and two more on home runs in the dark in the ninth, the crowd came onto the field with the seat cushions, and the game was never finished. The league president ruled it no contest and awarded the first-half pennant to Miami and the second-half to Bisbee, with no champion named.

Miami answered the next day with a sign four feet by five, in eight-inch letters, on the back of the grandstand facing the highway, lit at night, declaring the Miners the 1929 champions. Reference books have been crediting Miami with the title ever since. The club went 50-40 that season, fell to 38-67 in 1930 as copper prices collapsed, and ceased operations. Globe and Miami later shared a team, the Browns, that won titles in 1947 and 1948.

Arizona's first league in organized baseball opened in 1928 as a Class D circuit with four clubs, in Bisbee, Miami, Phoenix and Tucson. It became the Arizona-Texas League in 1931 and the Arizona-Mexico League in 1955, and ran, with gaps, through 1958, eventually reaching into Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and northern Mexico.