Memory Bank: Rallying for a baseball team

A crowd of people gathers in July 1985 on Monument Circle for a rally to bring a Major League Baseball franchise to Indianapolis at a time it seemed the league was looking to expand. After the Baltimore Colts moved to the city in the early ’80s and the Indiana Pacers survived the ABA-NBA merger, many believed the city could support a major league baseball team. A group of local investors and businessmen put together an organization to focus on the effort, Indianapolis Baseball Inc., and even gave a potential team a name—the Arrows. It also worked to identify a location for a stadium. Momentum for wooing MLB to Indy eventually faded, and Indianapolis didn’t even submit a bid in the early ’90s when the league expanded.

Sources: Indiana Historical Society, IBJ research 

Credit: This image is courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society and is part of the Joseph and Georgia McGuire Photographs Collection. More images are available at images.indianahistory.org.