Wessington Springs Saints

The Wessington Springs Saints, based in Wessington Springs, South Dakota, played a single Class D season in 1920 as charter members of the eight-team South Dakota League. League play opened on May 18 that year, and the Saints hosted home games at the Wessington Springs City Park.

The town had fewer than five thousand residents, making it one of the smallest ever to hold a franchise in organized baseball. The Saints held their own anyway, finishing 49-48 and twelve games behind the champion Mitchell Kernels in a league that also included Sioux Falls, Aberdeen, Huron, Madison, Miller and Redfield.

League president Michael Cantillon, formerly of the Minneapolis Millers, required each franchise owner to post a $1,200 deposit as a guarantee they would play out the schedule. Wessington Springs did not return when the league reorganized, and the town has not hosted professional baseball since. 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.