The Portland Rosebuds were founded in 2021, inspired by the Negro league team of the same name. In 1946, the Rosebuds played a season at Vaughn Street Park in Northeast Portland. The Rosebuds are an often overlooked, but important part of Portland’s baseball history.
2021 Portland Rosebuds!
The Portland Rosebuds have captured the hearts of Portland during their inaugural season in the Wild Wild West League. No team has showed more determination, effort, and grit then these players have, and they are rounding right into form just in time for the final stretch of the season. Led by standout players such as Aidan Bunn, Miles Norman, and Moises Congo, the Rosebuds are here to prove that they belong out in the Wild Wild West!
Check out these two features on the story of the Portland Rosebuds and Moises Congo, who has joined the Rosebuds all the way from Mexico City!
Support Local, Support History!
Wear a piece of Portland baseball history! The Portland Rosebuds are inspired by a Negro League team from their one season in 1946. Get the new on-field hat hat by official league now!
In the spring of 1946, anything seemed possible. World War II had ended less than a year earlier, most of the boys had come home, and the factories had already shifted from bullets and bombers to sedans and iceboxes. Oh, and the Brooklyn Dodgers had signed a young man named Jackie Robinson. Even without Robinson, black baseball was thriving. The Negro American and Negro National Leagues, were destined to bust all sorts of attendance records in front of a postwar population starved for first-class entertainment and newly flush with hard-earned money.
On the West Coast, Philadelphia sports impresario Abe Saperstein and legendary Olympian Jesse Owens (among others) saw an opportunity. Saperstein offered financial backing for a new league, the West Coast Negro Baseball Association (WCNBA), which would operate in cities and ballparks already home to teams in the all-white Pacific Coast League. Owens served as a league officer while officially operating the league’s Portland Rosebuds. He would often travel with the team and give sprinting exhibitions between games of doubleheaders.
Alas, the WCNBA didn’t last long. The Rosebuds and Seattle Steelheads worked out in Texas in April, and worked their way home in May. On June 4, the Rosebuds played their first home game at the legendary Vaughn Street ballpark, beating the Los Angeles White Sox 8-3. In the following weeks, they thrilled fans in Vancouver, Victoria, Tacoma, and Spokane. They even traveled as far afield as Lewiston, Idaho. By early July, both the Rosebuds and the rest of the league were no more. They fell victim to travel and stadium issues, inconsistent attendance, and scant coverage in the local newspapers. This noble experiment that has been largely forgotten until now, when the new Portland Rosebuds will do their best to carry to the legacy of those trailblazing originals.
-OPB: Recovering a forgotten piece of Portland’s baseball history, the Rosebuds
-Portland Monthly: The 1946 Portland Rosebuds
-SportslLogos.net: Negro Leagues’ Portland Rosebuds Rebooted
-Willamette Week: 24 Reasons to Still Love Portland - Portland Rosebuds are back
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