1986 San Jose "Bad News" Bees
The coming 2016 baseball season marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most notorious teams in all of professional baseball, not to mention my hometown team the year of my birth; the 1986 San Jose "Bad News" Bees. The Bees were one of the last independent teams in minor league baseball, but did have a partnership with the Seibu Lions of Japan. As the second incarnation of the Bees (the original Bees existed from 1962 to 1976), the team existed from 1983 to 1987. The franchise failed to be profitable and op erated on a shoe-string budget. Aside from several young Japanese players, the rest of the players were disgraced former major leaguers, the majority of which were blacklisted from the big leagues for substance abuse. During the season, many players lived in nearby flophouses and even on mattresses inside stadium's clubhouse. Known as the "Rebels Cave", it featured a refrigerator, beer signs, broken bleacher seats for guests, and a painting made by one of t...