The International League Marlins were a transplanted version of the original
Syracuse Chiefs, having been created on December 20, 1955, when the Syracuse club (a member of the IL as early as 1886 and a continuous member since
1934) was sold to Sidney Salomon (future founding owner of the
St. Louis Blues of the
National Hockey League) and Elliot Stein. The 1955 Chiefs, an affiliate of the
Philadelphia Phillies, finished only two games out of the playoffs, but drew only 85,000 fans, last in the eight-team league. In the Marlins' debut season in Miami, the club finished third and attracted 288,000 spectators, second in the IL circuit. Attendance dwindled in the following years, however, and by 1960 the Marlins—by then a
Baltimore Orioles affiliate—were at the bottom of the IL, with fewer than 110,000 paying fans. The franchise signed a working agreement with the
St. Louis Cardinals and moved to
San Juan, Puerto Rico, in
1961, although after little more than a month of play the Marlins moved again to
Charleston, West Virginia, on May 19. In 1962, the franchise moved to
Atlanta, discarding the Marlins name and adopting the
Atlanta Crackers name, a team in the recently disbanded
Class AA Southern Association. In 1966, when the
Milwaukee Braves moved to Atlanta, the franchise relocated again to
Richmond, Virginia, where it played as the
Richmond Braves for 43 seasons, through . The franchise then moved to
Gwinnett County, Georgia in 2009, and was known as the
Gwinnett Braves through the 2017 season when the franchise became the
Gwinnett Stripers in 2018. ==Notable players==