Along with the
Los Angeles Angels,
Portland Beavers,
Oakland Oaks,
Sacramento Solons, and
San Francisco Seals, Seattle was a charter member of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) which was founded in , after the
California League and the
Pacific Northwest League merged. They were known in the Pacific Northwest League as the
Seattle Clamdiggers. Though the team finished second in 1906, the PCL contracted from six teams to four after the season (mainly due to the failures of the Sacramento franchise). For the next 11 seasons, the team played in the
Northwestern League, at the time a Class B league. Until 1908, the team was known as the
Seattle Siwashes. In 1909, they won 109 games as the
Seattle Turks. After a fan contest, the team was renamed the
Seattle Giants. In 1913, owner
Dan Dugdale built
Dugdale Field, replacing Yesler Way Park, which he had built in 1907. Dugdale sold the team in January 1919. In 1924, the Indians won their first PCL pennant, clinching the title on the last day of the 202-game season. For more than a decade after their championship run, the Indians were mired in the second division year after year. In July 1932, an arsonist burned the 15,000-seat Dugdale Field to the ground. Located at Rainier and McClellan Streets, it had been built in 1913. For the next six years, the team played at
Civic Stadium, which had grassless, hardpan dirt playing field. The team's fortunes improved in 1938 when
Emil Sick, owner of Seattle's
Rainier Brewing Company, bought the Indians from owner Bill Klepper for $100,000 and renamed them the Seattle Rainiers. He began construction of
Sick's Stadium, a 15,000-seat facility on the site of old Dugdale Field. Sick invested in the team, and it bore results. The Rainiers finished first in 1939, 1940 and 1941. They lost the postseason series in 1939, but won pennants in 1940 and 1941. In 1942 and 1943, the Rainiers finished in third place, but did win another PCL pennant in 1942. After a few lean years, the Rainiers won PCL flags in 1951 and 1955, the last pennants won under Sick's ownership. After the 1960 season, the team was sold to the
Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox in turn sold the Rainiers to the
Los Angeles/California Angels in 1965, who renamed the team the Seattle Angels, as they were known during their last four seasons. The last hurrah for the Rainiers-turned-Angels came in 1966, when the Seattle Angels won the championship of the PCL's new Western Division (the PCL had absorbed former
American Association teams in the midwestern and southwestern parts of the United States). In the playoffs, the Angels defeated the Eastern Division champion Tulsa Oilers, for Seattle's last PCL pennant. The team's last year was 1968, in which they finished in eighth place overall.
Seattle had been granted an
expansion team in the
American League, the ill-fated
Seattle Pilots, which began play in
1969. The Pilots would last but one year in Seattle, before a bankruptcy court sold the team to a group headed by
Bud Selig and were moved to
Milwaukee in 1970. ==The Class A Rainiers==