April 10, 1969: Tucson Toros play first Pacific Coast League game
An average of 307 fans attended 58 home games of the 1958 Tucson Cowboys.
Star sports columnist Abe Chanin wrote: “The advent of home air conditioning and the birth of television wrote the death of minor-league ball here, as well as in many parts of the country.”
Tucson was dead times three.
The Class C Arizona-Mexico League of ’58 included the Mexicali Aguilas, Juarez Indios, Chihuahua Dorados, Douglas Copper Kings and Nogales Mineros, but it was the Cowboys, the only-game-in-town in the growing Tucson metro area, who were last in the league in attendance.
At season’s end, just as in failed Tucson minor-league ventures in 1933 and 1942, the Cowboys ceased operations.
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Tucson grew and grew and grew, almost doubling in population by the late ’60s. Finally, in this city’s fourth incarnation of minor-league baseball, Pennsylvania businessman Roy Jackson — part of the Rockefeller family fortune — paid about $300,000 to get Tucson into the Class AAA Pacific Coast League.
He said he was ready to lose up to $80,000 in the first year, but thought the Tucson Toros would break even.
On opening night, April 10, 1969, it rained. The crowd was announced at 2,100, but it was probably half that. It would be a long and at times exasperating climb to acceptance.
Toros manager Billy Adair complained on opening night that the lights at Hi Corbett Field “left much to be desired.”
The Toros replaced the Seattle Angels in the PCL; in 1969, the Seattle Pilots joined the MLB’s American League (and later became the Milwaukee Brewers). It would cost about $50,000 to recondition Hi Corbett Field for minor-league baseball, and it wasn’t always a popular concept.
Chuck Hollinger, vice-chairman of the Tucson Baseball Commission, had been president of the old Arizona-Mexico League.
“I just don’t see how minor-league baseball is going to make it again in Tucson,” said Hollinger, a former UA standout who is the namesake of Tucson’s Hollinger Elementary School. “If we can only average a little over 2,000 per game for the Cleveland Indians spring exhibitions, how can they make it with 77 home games in the Pacific Coast League?”
The answer? It would take some time.
The ’69 Toros drew 105,207 fans, roughly 1,450 per game. The novelty soon wore off, but the White Sox affiliate team was dreadful, 60-86, last place in the PCL South Division. But it changed.
In 1973, when the trendy Oakland A’s replaced the White Sox as Tucson’s parent club, the Toros won a division title and, incredibly, drew 233,004 fans. That record lasted until 1991, when the Toros drew 317,347 and won their first full PCL title (as a Houston Astros affiliate). They were spurred by former UA basketball point guard Kenny Lofton.
Pacific Coast League baseball continued in Tucson through 2013, under operating agreements with the Diamondbacks, Brewers and Padres. If nothing else, the ’69 Toros left a legacy for endurance: 43 years of PCL baseball in Tucson.
The club drew more than 300,000 fans in seven consecutive years from 1991-97.
The Toros by any name were sold twice this century; Tucson businessman Jay Zucker sold them for $14 million to a group that moved them to Reno, Nevada. That was followed by the Tucson Padres, who were soon sold for $20 million to an El Paso group.
Where are they now? Jackson, who bought a 190-acre farm in Pennsylvania during his ownership of the Toros, developed thoroughbreds. In 2006, his horse, Barbaro, won the Kentucky Derby.
How they did it: The ’69 Toros included three former World Series pitchers, ex-Yankees Bill Stafford and Rollie Sheldon, and ex-Dodger Larry Sherry. Former UA and Marana High left-hander Rich Hinton, then 22, pitched 28 innings for Tucson’s inaugural PCL team.
