Phoenix Senators

The Phoenix Senators were Phoenix, Arizona's professional baseball club in three separate eras, playing in 1915, from 1928 to 1932, and from 1947 to 1953. The name belonged to the state capital, and the team's best seasons came at both ends of its history.

In 1915 the Senators joined the Rio Grande Association, a short-lived circuit that also took in Tucson, Douglas and El Paso. Phoenix was in first place at 38-21 when the league disbanded in early July. Thirteen years later the city was a charter member of Arizona's first league in organized baseball, and the 1928 Senators won the pennant at 39-29.

The postwar club is the one people remember. In 1947 a 19-year-old second baseman named Billy Martin hit .392 with 230 hits and 174 runs batted in, led the league in both categories and was named its most valuable player. He went on to win World Series rings with the Yankees as a player and manage five big-league clubs. That same season a spiking incident involving Phoenix manager Arky Biggs and Bisbee catcher Clint Courtney started a Martin-Courtney feud that carried into the American League. The Senators won 94 games in 1949 and drew more than 100,000 fans in 1950, but lost in the finals both years.

The club was renamed the Stars in 1954 after a losing 1953 season. The original Senators played at Riverside Park near the Salt River bottom, where lights went in for the 1931 season.

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.