Biz Cards The Collection- Phoenix & Tucson (part 1)

Today's Saturday post is a little later than usual. While I was going to get into what happened that made it a late post, but then I started to write this post. As I got into it things started to change, and the post was scraped. This is an interesting turn of events that I just feel was worth scraping what was already written, and tell the story in order. Its amazing how much I learned from starting this to where I am ending up. I will also say if you read today's you need to come back tomorrow for the entire story..

Phoenix

 Playing in the Pacific Coast League from  1966 until 1997. During the team entire history in Phoenix the team was a San Fransisco Giants affiliate. The team was such a success in Phoenix that the town was awarded an MLB franchise for the start of the 1998 season. With the new team moving into town the Firebirds were forced to relocate. This is where the entire story starts to get wild. The Firebirds decided to move south to the city of Tucson There was only one problem with this move. Tucson already had a triple A team.

Tucson

Playing in Tucson from 1969 until 1997 the Toros were the current team in Tucson when the Firebirds decided to relocate, and replace them. This came about in the form of a swap. The owner of the Firebirds, and Toros swapped franchises so that the new team could keep its current structure in place. This would allow the new team to keep its staff, and facilities without starting from scratch.

With the new ownership came the change of affiliates, and a new name. Wanting to have a name associated with their MLB franchise the name Sidewinders was chosen. Despite all the newness things weren't all sunshine, and roses. The team was met with a disgruntled fan base, and terrible attendance. Deals between the team, and Pima County didn't help the situation. After only a couple seasons the team was sold in 2000. The new ownership attempted to fix the problems by running more promotions one of which were weekly fireworks. In the end this was only a band-aid as the team was still losing money, and experiencing tons of problems. Eventually the problems would be too much as at the end of 2008 the team would relocate to Reno. In another strange turn of events, this move forced another team from its home stadium.