The Bowling Green Barons were a baseball team that represented Bowling Green, Kentucky in the Class D Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee (Kitty) League from 1939 to 1942. The franchise was purchased from the Lexington (TN) Bees during the off-season. The Barons were owned by a group of local investors led by Vick Smith Sr. (His son Vick Jr. was reserve outfielder for the club in 1939.) Their home field was Fairgrounds Park

Fairgrounds Park

Fairgrounds Park is an open land park restored from fairgrounds located off Cleveland Avenue in Hagerstown, Maryland, United States.-Attractions:...

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With a roster consisting largely of players from the 1938 Lexington team, the Barons (75-51) finished in a second-place tie with the Owensboro (KY) Oilers

Owensboro Oilers

The Owensboro Oilers were a minor league baseball team in Owensboro, Kentucky. The team played in the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee League in 1936 to 1942 and 1946 to 1955. In 1952 the team was managed by former major league all-star Wally Berger...

 in 1939. They were managed by Innes "Rip" Fanning, another Lexington holdover. With a three-game sweep against Owensboro, they advanced to the finals of the postseason Shaughnessy playoffs against the first-place Mayfield (KY) Browns. The series was tied at two games apiece when Fanning, seeking reassurances that he would be rehired the next season and receiving none, resigned on September 14. Kitty League veteran and former major leaguer Herbert "Dutch" Welch

Herb Welch

Herbert Doyan Welch, Jr. is a former American football defensive back in the National Football League for the New York Giants, Washington Redskins, and the Detroit Lions. He started in Super Bowl XXI for the Giants...

 took over the reins and led Bowling Green to the Shaughnessy title four games to two.

For more information on the Kitty League, please visit Kittyleague.com

This article is based on the "Bowling Green Barons" article at Baseball-Reference.com Bullpen. The Bullpen is a wiki, and its content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...

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