San Jose Missions

The San Jose Missions, based in San Jose, California, carried a name honoring the Spanish missions of the Santa Clara Valley across two different leagues in the late 1970s. From 1977 through 1978, the Missions were San Jose's unlikely entry in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, when the Sacramento Solons franchise was leased to San Jose while its owners pursued a new stadium. That arrangement put the highest level of minor league baseball ever seen in San Jose on the field at Municipal Stadium, though attendance never followed and the franchise moved to Utah after two seasons.

The name stuck around anyway. When California League baseball returned to San Jose in 1979, the new club adopted the Missions identity and played under it through 1981, bridging the gap between the first Bees era and the franchise shuffle of the early 1980s that eventually produced today's San Jose Giants.

The Missions name itself has deep baseball roots in the region; San Francisco's PCL Mission Reds carried a version of it between the wars, and the identity remains alive in the minors today in San Antonio, making San Jose's Missions part of a long tradition of mission-belt baseball naming.