Arizona-Texas League

The Arizona-Texas League was a low-level circuit in American minor league baseball that existed from 1928-32, 1937-41, 1947-50 and 1952-54. The Arizona-Texas loop merged with the Sunset League (based primarily in California but with teams in Nevada and New Mexico) to form the Southwest International League in 1951. But its Arizona and Texas clubs played only that one season (1951) in the new circuit before seceding and reforming the A-TL in 1952.

The Arizona-Texas League was the lowest level in the minor leagues, Class D, through 1939, and upgraded to Class C from 1940 onward. Its longest tenured clubs included:
* El Paso, Texas
* Bisbee and Bisbee-Douglas, Arizona
* Phoenix, Arizona
* Tucson, Arizona

The Arizona-Texas circuit also had teams in Mexico as early as 1931, although its name did not reflect this fact. Ciudad Juárez was a member for seven years in the 1940s and 1950s. But in 1955, when the league lost its lone Texas franchise, in El Paso, its name was formally changed to the Arizona-Mexico League. In 1958, its Phoenix franchise moved all the way up to Class AAA when it received the old San Francisco Seals club after the Giants moved West. That signalled the end of the Class C Arizona-Mexico League; its final champion in 1958 was the Bisbee/Douglas Copper Kings, an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

References

* Johnson, Lloyd and Wolff, Miles, ed., "The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball." Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 1997.