Saving Buffalo Baseball: 1956 Buffalo Bisons - Paperback

by Howard W. Henry Jr. (Author)

BUFFALO WAS LOSING BASEBALL!
It was 1955 and the Detroit Tigers, the major league owners of the Triple A Buffalo Bisons, were pulling out of the city. Would the Bisons go, too? Not if a group of determined local baseball men, a ball club of veteran ballplayers and a city of committed fans had anything to say about it.

"Saving Buffalo Baseball: The 1956 Season" takes the reader into the on-field and off-field struggles of a new phenomenon in the Queen City-community owned professional baseball, following the team on a month by month, game by game saga from September 1955 to the hard-scrabble conclusion of the 1956 baseball year. Experience the doubts and disappointments and day to day heroics of what dedicated men (and some women) could achieve if only they stayed true to the cause. Starting from nothing, within three years' time the Buffalo Bisons became the top drawing ball club in all of minor league baseball and with a valuation of more than half a million dollars!

Thanks to detailed (and sometimes conflicting) newspaper reporting and to the gracious involvement of several ballplayers from that team who discussed the 1956 season with the author, the reader will find inning by inning accounts of each of the 151 games played, plus the off-field efforts to simply keep nine healthy men on the field, pay their salaries and see the season through to the end. Simple box scores accompany each game. An internet link allows access to the full box score for each contest. In the book are the names of 233 Buffalonians and their families, plus 68 community groups, all of whom supported the club during this critical campaign.

Additionally, 18 local lads, Buffalo area ballplayers who dreamed to be Bisons or who played for other professional ball clubs during 1956 are highlighted. Perhaps your family or someone you knew made the newspapers that year; their name is in this book.

"What Happened to Our Heroes" gives brief descriptions of the post-1956 and post-baseball careers of the front office personnel and players, professional and amateur, all of whom strove valiantly Saving Buffalo Baseball.