Sacramento Sacts

The Sacramento Sacts played in the Pacific Coast League from 1909 through 1913, carrying one of the oddest names in West Coast baseball history: Sacts was simply a headline writer's abbreviation of Sacramento, the kind of space-saving newspaper shorthand that hardened into an official identity. The name shared the stage with Senators and, eventually, Solons, but for these five seasons the scorecards said Sacts.

The franchise behind the name was the PCL's great wanderer. A charter member as the Sacramento Senators in 1903, the club was exiled to Tacoma in 1904, spent 1906 as the Fresno Raisin Eaters, returned to Sacramento in the California League from 1907 to 1908, and rejoined the PCL in 1909 as the Sacts. The club spent most of the era in the second division, and by 1913 was managed by Harry Wolverton, the former New York Highlanders manager. San Francisco sportswriters had taken to calling his club "the Wolves," a throwaway bit of wordplay on the manager's name that would, within a year, become the team's actual identity in a new city.

Attendance collapsed in 1914, and on September 6 the team folded mid-season, was taken over by the league, and finished the year in San Francisco. Sacramento got a new PCL franchise in 1918, beginning the long Senators-Solons era the city is remembered for, while the original wandering club went on to a remarkable afterlife in Salt Lake City, Hollywood, and San Diego.