Merced Bears T-Shirt (Premium Lightweight) - Vintage Defunct Baseball Teams - California brunswick pirates The name is one of

The name is one of the era's hidden gems: encinal is Spanish for a grove of coast live oaks

fielding a rare co-operative roster stocked by multiple big league organizations in its first two seasons

a one-year identity in the middle of one of minor league baseball's most durable small markets

The Missions name itself has deep baseball roots in the region

Merced Bears T-Shirt (Premium Lightweight) - Vintage Defunct Baseball Teams - California brunswick pirates The name is one ofThe Merced Bears, based in Merced, California, were a charter member of the California League, founded in 1941 as a Class C circuit, and were fittingly a farm club of the Boston Bees, as the Boston Braves were then briefly known. Merced was the smallest market among the eight founding cities, and the Bears struggled accordingly, finishing last at 50 86, a full 38 games behind pennant winning Fresno. That one season was the whole story. When World War