Pueblo Steel Workers

The Pueblo Steel Workers wore the identity of Pueblo, Colorado, the Steel City, home to the Colorado Fuel and Iron works, the largest steel mill in the West; when professional baseball returned to town in 1928, the team named itself accordingly. The Steel Workers played two seasons in the Class A Western League before rebranding as the Braves in 1930; the franchise lasted through 1932, compiling a 367-402 record across its five seasons, and folded ahead of the 1933 season as the Depression closed in.

The Steel Workers were a late chapter in a longer Pueblo baseball story. The city's Western League history began in 1900, and its earlier club arrived in 1905 when the Colorado Springs Millionaires moved south mid-season. Another edition arrived in 1911 the same way, when Wichita's franchise relocated to finish out its year in Pueblo. Professional baseball returned after the war when the Pueblo Dodgers joined the revived Western League in 1947.

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.

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.