Elmira Pioneers

The Elmira Pioneers are an amateur baseball team based in Elmira, New York. They currently compete in the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League, a wood bat collegiate summer baseball league. They played in several state leagues in New York intermittently from 1885-1931, but from 1932 to 1995, the team was a professional baseball club in the minor leagues, affiliated with many major league teams throughout their history. They play their home games at Dunn Field.

The Elmira Colonels played in the New York State League in 1885 and again in 1889. Two years later, the Elmira Gladiators were one of six teams in the original New York–Penn League. That league failed, but in 1892, the Gladiators were one of the original teams in the original Eastern League but only lasted one year in the league.

The Pioneers name first appeared in 1900, when the team joined a new New York State League that was founded a year earlier.

The Elmira Red Jackets, presumably named after the Seneca chief, were charter members of the new New York–Penn League in 1923. Armando Marsans, one of the first two Cubans to play Major League baseball, served as their manager in 1923.

They changed their name to the Elmira Colonels from 1924–31 and remained unaffiliated through those years.

The Colonels signed on with the St. Louis Cardinals and changed their name to the Red Wings for the 1932–34 seasons. They resurrected the Pioneers name for their unaffiliated 1935 and '36 seasons. After winning the league championship that year, they signed on with the Brooklyn Dodgers and re-established the Colonels name for the 1937 season, in which they repeated as champions. The league became the Eastern League in 1938 and Elmira managed to pull off a three-peat that year. Elmira maintained their affiliation with the Dodgers, known as the Pioneers, through 1940 despite losing the home stadium to fire in 1938. On June 12, 1939, the Pioneers played their first night game in Elmira.