Buffalo's best chance at a MLB franchise probably came in the 60s. Seem to remember reading somewhere they would have gotten a team if things fell through with Montreal.

They were a Continental League target, weren't they?

Buffalo's best chance at a MLB franchise probably came in the 60s. Seem to remember reading somewhere they would have gotten a team if things fell through with Montreal.

Maury Brown: The Team That Nearly Wasn’t: The Montreal Expos

On top of this the clock was ticking on the financing. By early August of 1968, the initial $1.2 million payment to the league had not yet been made. When the award was made, the arrangement had been that the initial payment, as well as a completed lease agreement, would be delivered no later than August 15. In the meantime, the Chicago Tribune reported on August 7 that, “Major League Baseball’s first international experiment is going to flop, and Montreal’s National League expansion franchise will be forfeited." The collapse seemed certain at the time, as a baseball official reported to Tribune, “The Montreal franchise apparently is headed for Buffalo because that group stands by its previous pledge and is even willing to start immediately with McHale.”

They were a Continental League target, weren't they?

Branch Rickey's proposed 1961 Continental League: Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Buffalo, Toronto, New York, Minneapolis/St. Paul

Then in the 1980s the AAA American Association had teams in Denver, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Louisville, and Nashville and made noises about expanding into some other places with large stadiums (New Orleans?), under the surely just as impressive leadership of Branch Rickey III.

"The" MLB never came? No wonder.

Buffalo's best chance at a MLB franchise probably came in the 60s. Seem to remember reading somewhere they would have gotten a team if things fell through with Montreal.

And by the middle of 1970 the Expos moved the Buffalo franchise to Winnipeg and brought AAA to the prairies. My first game was Bat Day and I got a Dave McDonald bat and I could not figure why the Buffalo Bisons was stamped under his name.

Doing research on this I discovered things had gotten so bad in Buffalo that people were breaking into the players locker rooms at War Memorial Stadium and stealing from the players while the game was on.

I do remember when expansion talk came in the 80s it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Buffalo would be one of the teams, it was just a matter of who would get the second - Miami, Denver or Washington. Buffalo was setting minor league attendance records, the Bills were really good, probably heady times to be alive in Buffalo.

Fun fact: Buffalo was once the eighth largest city in America. Now it's 72nd, behind a number of towns that didn't even exist back when Buffalo was eighth.