The San Diego Clippers were born when the Buffalo Braves headed west in the summer of 1978. Almost as soon as they got there, the team was angling to move up the 5 to L.A., which they ultimately did in 1984.
The Quincy Giants were a minor league football outfit that played for one season in this border city on the southern edge of Boston during the fall of 1969. The franchise previously played in northern Massachusetts as the Lowell Giants from 1966 to 1968. The Giants were members of the Atlantic Coast Football League, competing against teams from Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The Seattle Steelheads were members of the West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA) in that circuit’s only season, 1946. The team was actually the Harlem Globetrotters baseball club and returned to barnstorming when the WCNBA ceased operations.
The Cleveland Crusaders were one of twelve original franchises in the World Hockey Association in the winter of 1972-73. The franchise originally intended to play in Calgary. But after hitting a dead end in Alberta, the club ended up in Cleveland, where they skated for seven seasons.
The Maine Phillies of the Class AAA International League were the top farm club of the Philadelphia Phillies during the summer of 1988. Previously known as the Maine Guides from 1947 to 1987, the ball club was also a lame duck, stranded in Old Orchard Beach that summer thanks to a ferocious legal dispute over the ownership of the franchise. After the 1988 season, the team executed its long-awaited move to Pennsylvania and became the Scranton-Wilkes Barre Red Barons in 1989.
Reno 1868 FC was a 2nd Division pro soccer club affiliated on the technical side with the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer and operated on the business side by the front office staff of Minor League Baseball’s Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League. 1868 played out of Greater Nevada Field, the Aces’ 9,000-seat baseball stadium, from 2017 through 2020.
The Greensboro Prowlers were a misbegotten indoor football team that competed in the minor league Arena Football 2 (AF2) during the early 2000’s. The Prowlers’ misadventures included a 103-3 home loss at the hands of the league’s best team, the Quad City Steamwheelers, during the 2000 season.
The Pittsburgh Pipers were charter members of the American Basketball Association (ABA) in 1967 and won the league’s first championship. Then promptly moved to Minnesota, only to move back to Pittsburgh after one season. When that didn’t improve their situation, the team changed its name to the Pittsburgh Condors.
The San Antonio Texans were a One-Year Wonder in the Canadian Football League, playing a single season at the Alamodome in the autumn of 1995. The franchise had a twisty backstory, dating back to the formation of the NFL-backed World League of American Football (WLAF) in 1990.
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