The Shelby Reds , was the primary name of a minor league baseball team that played in Shelby, North Carolina , between 1937 and 1982.
6-814: The Reds were a member of the Western Carolinas League , before transferring with the league to the South Atlantic League in 1980. The club was initially affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds . In 1979, the Pittsburgh Pirates became their affiliate, changing the team's name to the Shelby Pirates . The team changed affiliates again in 1981, this time to the New York Mets . As result their name changed
12-752: A final time to the Shelby Mets . Among earlier teams were the Shelby Colonels , Shelby Farmers, Shelby Yankees, Shelby Rebels, Shelby Senators and Shelby Cubs. Source: This article about a baseball team in North Carolina is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Western Carolinas League The Western Carolinas League was a Class D (1948–52; 1960–62) and a low Class A (1963–79) full-season league in American minor league baseball . The WCL changed its name prior to
18-791: The North Carolina State League to form the short-lived Class D Tar Heel League , which lasted only 1½ seasons (1953–54) before folding. In 1960, the WCL was revived as a Class D circuit intended to house farm teams of the member clubs of a planned third major league, the Continental League . It featured teams in eight North Carolina locales: Gastonia , Hickory , Lexington , Newton – Conover , Rutherford County , Salisbury , Shelby and Statesville , but soon expanded to sites in South Carolina . When
24-536: The 1980 season and has been known since as the South Atlantic League , a Class A circuit with teams up the Eastern Seaboard from Georgia to New Jersey . Originally called the "Western Carolina League", the 1948–52 WCL was a Class D league (equivalent to a Rookie-level league today) composed exclusively of teams located in the Piedmont and Blue Ridge sections of western North Carolina . It merged with
30-789: The Continental League was torpedoed by the Major League Baseball expansion in 1961 and 1962 , the member teams of the Western Carolinas League became affiliates of American and National League clubs. It was upgraded to Class A in the 1963 reorganization of the minor leagues. The first professional baseball team based in Monroe, North Carolina came into being when the Statesville Indians moved into town on June 20, 1969 and finished
36-598: The year as the Monroe Indians. The team lasted just one season before being replaced by the Sumter Indians . For nearly 60 years, 1948 through 2007, the WCL/SAL's dominant figure was league founder and president John Henry Moss , who started the WCL as a young man in 1948, refounded it in 1960 and then led it into the new century. Moss, also the longtime mayor of Kings Mountain, North Carolina , retired at
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