The logo of the Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña: a big sky-blue circle, bordered in red and white, surrounding a smaller circle of darker blue with white borders, superimposed on which is a red-and-white nautical star that hosts the acronym "LNP" in black block letters.

Gaceta de la Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña

150 years of the best baseball in the universe—all in one place.

The logo of the Western & Plains League: a golden circle on which a green seven-rayed sun, shadowed in black, sits, then is bordered in green-yellow-green.

Western & Plains League

Though Canadians have played baseball almost as long as their neighbors to the south, it took until the last decade of the nineteenth century for a professional league to emerge—and when the Royal Canadian Baseball League joined the baseball world, it did not include the Western and Plains provinces in its remit.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, western Canadians simply decided to forgo their eastern brethren and stand up their own league.

The geographic breadth of its circuits was an unavoidable financial and logistical burden, yet the clubs within each circuit—the Western League of British Columbia and Alberta, and the Plains League, which covered Manitoba and Saskatchewan—developed a kinship with each other that the Ontarian and Québécois teams struggled to maintain. Teams stayed with each other on road trips, took days off to play exhibitions against company and city teams, and were known to have offseason retreats together.

While they would eventually become part of the Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña’s system, the teams of the Western & Plains maintained its tight-knit, almost intimate character. We present them here.

Western League

The logo of the Calgary Chargers: a maroon circle, bordered in electric blue-black-electric blue, inside of which two capital "C" letterforms that almost look like two charging horns sit, offset from one another; the one on the left is black with electric blue bordering; the one on the right is white with black bordering.
  • Banners: 1902.
  • Wild card berths: 1901, 1903, 1904.
  • Western League pennants: 1901, 1902.
  • W&PL championships: None.

Calgary was one of the first cities in Western Canada to catch baseball fever, though in time it would become much more famous for other, equally dramatic, sporting pursuits.

A brown circle bordered in tan, brown and tan, inside of which a tan "K," blocky and square, sits outlined in both colors.
  • Banners: None.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Western League pennants: None.
  • W&PL championships: None.

While almost all of Western Canada knew the corporate skirmishes of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Kamloops had more cause than most settlements to witness those disagreements.

A maroon circle bordered in powder blue, navy, and then more maroon, inside of which a dark steel-gray blocky "K" sits.
  • Banners: 1901, 1903, 1904.
  • Wild card berths: 1902.
  • Western League pennants: 1903, 1904.
  • W&PL championships: 1903.

Kelownian team directors had one of the easiest jobs when it came to choosing a nickname for their side: the city had already been named for an Okanagan word referring to a grizzly bear.

The logo of the Medicine Hat Hellfire is a red circle, bordered in gold and brick red, inside which the letters "MH," in angular sharp font where the rightmost downward point of the "M" and the leftmost of the "H" are angled downwards.
  • Banners: None.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Western League pennants: None.
  • W&PL championships: None.

There are apparently many things to like about Medicine Hat—its relative quietude and the delight of saying its name chief among them—but the team took its name from its famously sun-soaked climate.

The logo of the Western & Plains League's Vancouver Gas: a black circle bordered in silver and more black, emblazoned with a giant triangular silver "V" that looks like it came off a car.
  • Banners: None.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Western League pennants: None.
  • W&PL championships: None.

Believe it or not, as embarrassing as the Vancouver team’s current nickname might be—and no other Western & Plains team has let them forget it—they were once fully named after the appalling figure of John “Gassy Jack” Deighton.

Plains League

The logo of the Western & Plains League's Brandon Threshers: a grass-green circle emblazoned with a simple, almost uncial-style pale yellow "B," bordered in that same pale yellow and more of the grass green.
  • Banners: None.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Plains League pennants: None.
  • W&PL championships: None.

Many cities throughout the North American landmass have taken it upon themselves to feed their people, but few take it to the extent of Brandon, Manitoba’s famous “Wheat City.”

The logo of the Western & Plains League's Moose Jaw Rum Runners: a burnished gold circle emblazoned with a blue "MJ" in tall bold serif font, bordered in black, blue and black again.
  • Banners: 1904.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Plains League pennants: 1904.
  • W&PL championships: 1904.

Moose Javians (yes, the locals do in fact call themselves that) may or may not be inordinately proud of their history’s city of bootlegging, but it bears admitting: it’s a hell of a team name.

The logo of the Western & Plains League's Saskatoon Willows: a white circle bearing a green "S" on top of arrows of several sizes in yellow, gold, lemon, wheat, and brown, bordered in gold, green and gold again.
  • Banners: None.
  • Wild card berths: None.
  • Plains League pennants: None.
  • W&PL championships: None.

While the city may well be named after saskatoon berries, locals and players alike enjoy pointing out that the Cree cut the willow trees where the berries grew to make shafts for their arrows.

The logo for the Western & Plains League's Steinbach Mennonites: a simple white circle with a maroon Old English style "S," bordered in maroon, white, and maroon again.
  • Banners: 1901, 1903.
  • Wild card berths: 1902.
  • Plains League pennants: 1902, 1903.
  • W&PL championships: 1902.

Steinbach owes its existence, let alone its baseball team’s name, to the Canadian government’s need to populate its central provinces: the Privilegium of 1873 brought the first settlers to the area.