quick overview:
The Alabama – Florida League (also known as
the Alabama State League from 1940-1950) got it’s start in 1936
and ended in 1962. This Class D league featured teams in
southern Alabama, western Georgia, and the panhandle of Florida.
The league began as an offshoot of the Dixie Amateur League, and
in 1936, the league office was formed in Troy, Alabama. George
Grant, a Troy businessman, served as the league’s first president
and H.L. Dowling of Ozark served as the first secretary-treasurer.
One might imagine that playing professional baseball in Panama
City or Fort Walton Beach might not be such a bad way to go, but
this was baseball when players struggled for a chance, riding
in un-air conditioned buses through the hot south, playing on
fields that barely qualified as « professional » stadiums,
and living on minimal salaries. Class D was baseball’s lowest
professional level, and the Alabama-Florida League was the lowest
of the low. This was the place where young, green rookies hoping
for a chance and tired vets trying to milk out one more season
converged. Even so, quite a few players from the AFL made it to
the majors, the most notable being Virgil Trucks, Joe Dobson,
and Bob Purkey. By 1962, all the teams in the league had major
club affiliations and more players than ever were climbing the
ladder to the majors. Then in November of 1962, the league went
from considering expansion to dying in just four days time. Why
did the league fold in 1962? Very simply, segregation. In 1962,
the AFL was the only league in the country without a single black
player. Remember the times and the geography and it isn’t hard
to see why. The civil rights era was turning the deep south upside
down, and small town Alabama and Florida was unwilling to get
in step with the times. At the beginning of 1962, the major league
clubs gently hinted that in order for the AFL to be considered
as part of their player development systems, those systems had
to be available for all players at all levels. The major league
clubs were signing and developing black talent and the teams weren’t
interested in a league that couldn’t accomodate these players.
AFL president Billy Moore wanted more time to ease into this change
than the leagues were willing to give. When the AFL league officials
attended the winter meetings in Rochester, they expected to be
participants in baseball’s future. What was waiting for them was
a death sentence: The AFL would not be part of the National Association
of Minor Leagues as long as they were segregated, and the towns
in the AFL would not tolerate integrated baseball. There was talk
of working things out and returning in 1964 but it was naive to
think that segregation issues would be resolved in just one season.
So, the AFL was officially history on November 29th, 1962. Not
many would morn it’s passing, but in the 1980’s, the boom in popularity
of baseball historical research, due mainly to the Society for
American Baseball Research (SABR), insured that leagues like the
AFL would live on. The internet revolution of the 1990’s also
meant that information that once was very hard to come by could
now be shared with the entire world with ease. It is here that
we now stand: The AFL web page exists with the sole purpose of
sharing the rich hertitage of Class D minor league baseball with
those who wish to read about it and those once played it.
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