Charleston Marlins Tapestry

So how, exactly, did the capital of West Virginia end up with a minor league baseball team named for a tropical saltwater sport fish for a few short months in the summer of 1961? At the dawn of the 1960’s, a colorful, corpulent South Florida multi-millionaire named Bill MacDonald bought the forlorn Miami Marlins of the Class AAA International League. The Marlins were the top farm club of the Baltimore Orioles at the time. MacDonald was a sportsman – he owned a stud farm, a share of the Tropical Park race track and he would later promote the first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight in Miami. The Marlins were rather unloved in Miami. A particular sore point for MacDonald was the team’s lack of a profitable local radio deal.