Muskogee Oilers

The Muskogee Oilers, based in Muskogee, Oklahoma, played a single season in the Class C Western League in 1933, after the Wichita Oilers were evicted from their home park in Kansas and relocated mid-season to Muskogee. The club's most notable figure was player-manager Rube Marquard, then 46 years old and already a Hall of Fame pitcher, who took the mound for the Oilers during their brief run. Future major league All-Stars Mort Cooper and Kirby Higbe also appeared on the 1933 roster. Muskogee had hosted professional baseball under several other names stretching back to 1905, with Hall of Famers including Bill Dickey and Bobby Wallace appearing for Muskogee teams across that span.

In the years before television brought major league baseball into American homes, minor leagues were a central part of community life across small-town America. At the peak of the minor league era, more than 50 leagues and nearly 500 clubs operated nationwide, giving fans in hundreds of cities their only connection to professional baseball. The Western League was a mid-level circuit that ran from 1885 through 1958 in various forms, fielding teams across the central United States from the Dakotas and Nebraska down through Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma.