From the Millionaires to the Orphans, Maine’s long minor league baseball history

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Three decades ago on April 18, 1994, the first pitch was thrown at the very first Portland Sea Dogs game, marking the beginning of the longest-lasting era in minor league baseball in Maine.

The Sea Dogs, a member of the Eastern League and a Double-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox, have grown to become a beloved part of warm-weather activities for Mainers, with a game at Hadlock Field as an affordable and fun way to entertain the whole family.

But the Sea Dogs are far from the first minor league team to play in Maine — though they are the only minor league team in Maine history to make it past five consecutive seasons. For more than a century until the founding of the Sea Dogs, of the more than 30 minor league teams that played from Calais to York Beach, few made it past one or two seasons only.

One of the oldest baseball leagues in the Northeast was the New England League, which operated under several different names from 1877 until 1949. In that league, there were multiple teams from Portland, Lewiston and Bangor at various points in its existence. The New England League was one of three minor leagues that broke the color barrier in 1946, allowing Black players to play alongside white players a year before Jackie Robinson began playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

The New England League’s Portland team changed its name several times over the course of more than 60 non-consecutive years — between 1885 and 1949 there were the Portland Phenoms, Duffs, Blue Sox, Eskimos, Mariners, Gulls and Pilots. Bangor had the Millionaires in the 1890s, Augusta had the Kennebecs, the Biddeford Clamdiggers played one season in 1885 and Lewiston had several teams in the New England League, including the Gazettes, the Cupids and the Twins.

Many other short-lived leagues existed in Maine as well. In 1897, the Maine State League was founded with six teams, including newcomers the Belfast Pastimes, and other teams in Augusta, Bangor, Rockland, Portland and Lewiston. The first iteration of the Maine State League folded after less than two months.

The Maine State League was brought back in 1907, and made it two full seasons before again folding, with teams including the Augusta Senators, the Bangor Cubs, the Biddeford Orphans, unnamed teams in Lewiston, Waterville and York Beach, the Pine Tree Capers in Portland and another Portland team, the Blue Sox.

There was also one season in 1913 in which Maine and New Brunswick joined forces to create an international baseball league called the New Brunswick-Maine League. It included four teams: the Bangor Maroons, the Fredericton Pets, the Saint John Marathons and the St. Croix Downeasters, a joint team with players from both Calais and St. Stephen, New Brunswick.

After the New England League finally folded for good in 1949, it would be another 35 years before Maine had another minor league baseball team. That team would come in the form of the Maine Guides, a Triple-A team based out of Old Orchard Beach between 1984 and 1988, owned by two Bangor area natives, Jordan Kobritz and sportscaster Gary Thorne.

For their first three seasons, the Maine Guides were an affiliate of the team now known as the Cleveland Guardians, and were a popular draw to tourist destination Old Orchard Beach. The teams’ purpose-built field, The Ball Park , had issues from the beginning, including a major mosquito problem, and fog rolling in from the beach that could obscure the field and drop temperatures quickly.

For their final two seasons, the Maine Guides were affiliated with the Philadelphia Phillies, and for the 1988 season changed their name to the Maine Phillies. Game attendance had flagged, and in 1989 the franchise relocated to Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The Ball Park became a popular concert venue in the early 1990s, hosting artists including Cher, Whitney Houston, the Grateful Dead and Aerosmith, but by 2000 it had fallen into disrepair. A community effort revitalized the facility in 2008, and between 2015 and 2018 independent team the Old Orchard Beach Surge played there, before moving to Saranac Lake, New York.

Up north, Bangor tried to make baseball work twice in the 1990s and early 2000s with the Northeast League, an independent league not affiliated with Major League Baseball. The Bangor Blue Ox played two seasons in 1996 and 1997 at Mahaney Diamond at the University of Maine in Orono, and famously had former Red Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd in its starting lineup for the first season. Attendance was never strong, however, and in 1998 the team moved to Canada, where it still plays as the Quebec Capitales.

In 2003, Bangor tried pro baseball again, this time with the Bangor Lumberjacks, who played their 2003 season at Mahaney Diamond and their 2004 season at the Winkin Sports Complex at Husson University. While the team played well, attendance at games still didn’t cut the mustard, and the team folded after its 2004 season.

That left the Portland Sea Dogs as the sole survivor in Maine’s long and colorful history with professional baseball. The team has seen its fair share of players go on to Major League success, including Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Adrian Gonzalez, Alex Gonzalez, Kevin Millar, Hanley Ramirez, Edgar Renteria, Xander Bogaerts, Kevin Youkilis and Mookie Betts.

After 30 years in Portland, the Sea Dogs have far outlasted all other pro teams in the state, and have found devoted fans from all over Maine.