Sacramento Senators

The Sacramento Senators, based in Sacramento, California, carried the capital city's signature baseball name through multiple stints in the early California League, appearing in 1890-91, 1893, 1901, 1904, and 1908-09 as leagues formed, folded, and reformed around them. The name was the natural choice for the seat of state government, and it proved durable: Sacramento clubs would answer to Senators on and off for decades, with sportswriters eventually coining the synonym Solons, after the ancient Greek lawmaker, which became the city's most famous baseball identity.

The Senators name bridged Sacramento's early professional era and the big time. When the California League's leading clubs organized the new Pacific Coast League for 1903, Sacramento was a charter member, and that Senators club played the young PCL nearly even, finishing second at 105-105 behind pitcher Tom Thomas's 27 wins. The name traded off with Gilt Edges, Sacts, and Cordovas through the century's first decade depending on the year and the sponsor.

In the first half of the 1900s, professional baseball reached into towns of every size across America, and Sacramento stood at the center of the West Coast game, fielding a professional club in nearly every season from 1886 onward under one name or another.