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).