Shawnee Hawks
The Shawnee Hawks, based in Shawnee, Oklahoma, played in the Class D Sooner State League from 1950 through 1957, and were born mid-season: on August 18, 1950, the struggling Duncan Uttmen abandoned Duncan and relocated to Shawnee, taking a new name for a new town. The franchise line stretched back to 1947, when it began as the Duncan Cementers, and counting those Duncan years it fielded a team in every season the Sooner State League operated. The strange story of the franchise's Duncan era, including how it briefly came to be named after its own owner, is on our blog.
The move transformed the club almost overnight. The 1951 Hawks went 96-44 behind player-manager Lou Fitzgerald, who led the team in hitting at .379 while running the club from the field. William Lenihan won 21 games, three more pitchers won 15 or more, and Shawnee drew 44,428 fans, nearly triple what the franchise had drawn the year before, though the season ended with a playoff loss to the powerhouse McAlester Rockets.
From 1953 through 1957 the Hawks were a Brooklyn Dodgers affiliate, and two future major leaguers began their professional careers in Shawnee: outfielder Don Demeter, who went on to play a decade in the majors for the Dodgers, Phillies, and others, and hard-throwing pitcher Stan Williams, a future All-Star with the Dodgers. The Hawks played through the Sooner State League's final season in 1957.
The Sooner State League was a Class D league that ran from 1947 through 1957, consisting of teams from small cities across Oklahoma. 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.
