St. Augustine Saints

The St. Augustine Saints wore the most natural nickname in Florida: their city, the oldest in America, is named for a saint. The club first appeared in 1926-27 in a Class B southeastern circuit, then found its true home in 1936, joining central Florida's league and winning the championship in its first season with a four-game sweep of Daytona Beach.

The Saints were a power for the next decade and a half, taking another title in 1949 as a Chicago Cubs affiliate and posting first-place seasons in 1941 and 1947 along the way. The franchise's most poignant story belongs to Forrest "Lefty" Brewer, a pitching phenom who threw a no-hitter for the Saints in 1938. Brewer jumped into Normandy with the 82nd Airborne on D-Day and was one of five professional and semipro ballplayers killed in the invasion.

The Saints folded in June 1952, undone by poor attendance and thin funds. Francis Field, their old home ground, still hosts events in St. Augustine today.

The Saints' league began play in 1919 as a Class D circuit of six teams clustered across central Florida, tracing what would later become the I-4 corridor decades before the interstate existed. The circuit ran through 1928, went dark during the Depression, returned in 1936, paused again for World War II, and resumed in 1946. Unlike most minor leagues of the era, it never truly died; the same circuit still operates across Florida today.