Omaha Crickets
The Omaha Crickets were two seasons in the life of one of the great franchises of the western minors, the charter Western League club of Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha's Western League club had already been the Omahogs, the Rangers, the Rourkes (named for longtime owner-manager Billy "Pa" Rourke, who led them to championships in 1904, 1907, and 1917), and the Buffaloes before taking the Crickets name in 1928. Along the way the franchise employed future Hall of Famers Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown in 1902 and Heinie Manush in 1922.
The 1928 Crickets finished 71-86 but placed three men on the league All-Star team: first baseman Snake Henry, who hit .347 with 18 home runs, catcher Jack Burns at .314, and pitcher Max Thomas. The staff also included Jumbo Brown, a 295-pound right-hander who went on to a long major league relief career with the Yankees and Giants.
The name lasted only through 1929 before the club became the Packers, and the franchise's long Omaha run ended in 1935, when unpaid players and Depression finances forced a mid-season move across the river to Council Bluffs. After nearly four decades, Omaha's charter Western League franchise was gone; the city wouldn't see professional baseball again until after the war.
The Western League was a Class A circuit for most of its life, operating from 1900 through 1937 and again from 1947 through 1958, fielding teams across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states, including Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma, and later Texas and New Mexico. For its first decade it stood just one step below the major leagues. An earlier league of the same name, which ran from 1885 to 1899, renamed itself the American League in 1900 and lives on today as one half of Major League Baseball.
