Vintage North Dakota Shirts: Defunct North Dakota Baseball Teams

North Dakota's first professional baseball arrived in 1897, when the Class F Red River Valley League became the first circuit in the Dakotas to operate inside organized baseball. It lasted one summer and produced the two best team names the state ever had. Fargo played as the Divorcees, after a residency law that required only ninety days before a person could file, which turned the city into a national destination for people seeking a quick end to a marriage. Directly across the river in Minnesota, where the saloons Fargo had outlawed were still open, Moorhead played as the Barmaids. Two border towns, two vices, two ball clubs named for them.

The rest of the state's history runs through its railroads and its river valleys. Grand Forks took the state's own label as the Flickertails, for the ground squirrel that gave North Dakota its nickname. Minot, grown up fast around the Great Northern Railway and known as the Magic City, produced the Why Nots in 1917 and then the Magicians, who went 48-21 in 1923 to win the only pennant the North Dakota League ever awarded. Fargo-Moorhead's Graingrowers, named for the elevators that built both cities, won titles in 1915 and 1917 behind a staff with three twenty-game winners. And on July 18, 1891, before any of it was professional, the Fargo Red Stockings and Grand Forks Black Stockings played 25 innings to a 0-0 tie, still the longest scoreless game on record, called only because both clubs had trains to catch. Our vintage North Dakota shirts honor these defunct clubs with original designs grounded in real research.

Every team below links to its own collection, where you can read the full history and shop shirts, hoodies, and crewnecks for that club. Find your hometown team, or the one your grandfather used to talk about.