Riley Park's first call to duty came in 1949 when the new Sumter Chicks joined forces
with the Class B Tri-State League. This incarnation of T-SL was based out
of South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. When the Chicks moved here from
Fayetteville, they teamed up with ballclubs from Anderson, Spartanburg, Charlotte,
Asheville, Rock Hill, Florence and Knoxville. Unfortunately, there were no
Major League franchises willing to take a gamble on this ballpark and the Sumter
Chicks would play this era of professional baseball at Riley Park as a co-op
team. Because of this, the Chicks were not a playoff team, and finished with
a rather lackluster 65-80 (.437) record, 21.5 games behind first place. In their
first full season of pro-ball, they drew a very underwhelming 55,000 fans to
the ballpark… 5k less than the 2nd worst draw in the league (and most teams were
pulling between 94,000 and 128,000 to their respective ballparks). |