Pocomoke City Salamanders

The Pocomoke City Salamanders, based in Pocomoke City, Maryland, were a charter member of the Eastern Shore League in 1922, folding partway through the 1923 season. The franchise returned in later eras as the Pocomoke City Red Sox (1937 to 1939) and the Pocomoke City Chicks (1940).

The Red Sox years produced an unusual ownership story. Arthur Ehlers, a former minor league pitcher whose career ended after he was severely wounded at the Battle of the Argonne in World War I, bought the Pocomoke club in 1937, the only owner in Eastern Shore League history to run a team independently rather than through a major league working agreement. He reportedly hocked his own furniture some months just to make payroll. The 1940 Chicks fielded two future Brooklyn Dodgers regulars, Gene Hermanski and Carl Furillo, with Furillo going on to a long career as part of several Dodgers pennant-winning teams, including the 1955 World Series championship club.

The Eastern Shore League was a Class D league that ran on the Delmarva Peninsula across three separate stretches: 1922 to 1928, 1937 to 1941, and 1946 to 1949, with teams drawn from Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia. In the 1800s and first half of the 1900s, teams existed in thousands of small towns across the United States, as Americans looked for recreational activities and entertainment in the era before TV.