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TheMobile Bears were an Americanminor league baseball team based inMobile, Alabama. The franchise was a member of the oldSouthern Association, a high-level circuit that folded after the 1961 season. Mobile joined the SA in 1908 as theSea Gulls, but changed its name to theBears in 1918, and the nickname stuck. The club played in the Association until July 1931, when it moved toKnoxville, Tennessee. Almost exactly 13 years later, in July 1944, the Bears returned to Mobile when theKnoxville Smokies franchise shifted back from Tennessee. (A club known as theMobile Shippers competed in the Class BSoutheastern League from 1937 to 1942.)
The Bears then continued in the SA (classified as aDouble-A league in 1946) through its final season. During the 1940s and 1950s, the club was a longtimefarm system affiliate of theBrooklyn Dodgers, then theCleveland Indians. The Bears played in 5,000-seat Hartwell Field located on Virginia Street in midtown.
The nickname "Bears" lived on in modified form with theMobile BayBears of the Double-ASouthern League, who played 23 seasons (1997–2019) in Mobile before relocating to metropolitanHuntsville, Alabama.
The Bears won theDixie Series, a postseason interleague championship between the champions of the Southern Association and theTexas League, in 1922 and 1955.[1][2]
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