Quad Cities River Bandits
High-A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals in Davenport, Iowa.
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Based in Davenport, Iowa, the Quad Cities River Bandits are a High-A Minor League Baseball team. They compete in the Midwest League as an affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. Their home field is Modern Woodmen Park, which was previously called John O'Donnell Stadium.
History
Professional baseball in the Quad Cities area dates to 1879, when the Davenport Brown Stockings of the Northwestern League featured Hall of Fame inductee Bid McPhee. That league folded after one season. Later 19th-century Davenport teams included the Onion Weeders (1888), Hawkeyes (1889), and Pilgrims (1891). In 1901 the Illinois–Indiana–Iowa League (Three-I League) was founded, with the Davenport River Rats and Rock Island Islanders as charter members.
The Davenport franchise changed names frequently, playing as the River Rats (1901–04), Riversides (1905), Knickerbockers (1906), Prodigals (1909–12), and Blue Sox (1913–1916). The Blue Sox won the 1914 Three-I League Championship. In July 1914 the Danville Speakers relocated to Moline, becoming the Moline Plowboys, who won Three-I League titles in 1915, 1921, and 1937. The Rock Island Islanders were affiliates of the St. Louis Browns (1932) and Cincinnati Reds (1933).
The Moline Plowboys/Moline A's were affiliates of the Detroit Tigers (1922), St. Louis Browns (1931–1932), Chicago Cubs (1937–1940), and Philadelphia Athletics (1947–48). Nearby Kewanee hosted the Kewanee Boilermakers in the Class C Central Association (1908–1913 and 1948–1949), winning the 1949 championship as the Kewanee A's.
Ballparks
Early Davenport teams played Sunday games on Sullivan Island, presumably to avoid Sunday activity laws. From 1901 to 1916, the Davenport Blue Sox played at Davenport Base Ball Park (also called Blue Sox Stadium), located at Bowditch & Second Streets or Third Street & Telegraph Road. The Davenport Blue Sox of 1929 and 1930 played at Fairgrounds Park within the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, a venue with a capacity of 5,500. The city then sought a riverfront stadium with lights.
On May 26, 1931, Municipal Stadium opened on the banks of the Mississippi River, built with local labor for $165,000. Its first night game was June 4, 1931. The grandstand faced the river, and the park was nicknamed "The Muny." In 1971 it was renamed John O'Donnell Stadium after the longtime sports editor of the Quad-City Times.
The ballpark has hosted eight Midwest League All-Star Games (1964, 1968, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1990, 2006, 2011). The Davenport Blue Sox held exhibitions against Negro league teams in the 1930s, and the St. Louis Browns played the Pittsburgh Pirates there in a 1942 exhibition. The stadium has survived major Mississippi River floods in 1965, 1969, 1993, and 2001, with the Great Flood of 1993 causing especially severe damage. It continues to operate as Modern Woodmen Park.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Quad Cities River Bandits (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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