“Six Guns” Hockey and Bart Simpson Baseball: A History of Professional Sports in New Mexico

• In Event: Topics in American History

Abstract

Albuquerque, New Mexico is located 400 miles from Denver, Colorado. Nearly the same distance separates the “Duke City” from Phoenix, Arizona. In between these locales exists some of the most barren and desolate stretches of landscape in the United States. Thus, there is today, and there has been in the past, a veritable no-man’s land between Albuquerque and “big-time” professional sports. Instead of playing host to a major professional sports organization (one from the MLB, NHL, NBA, or NFL) Albuquerque has been tethered, over the course of the past 70 years, to a strange and mostly unsuccessful collection of semi-professional organizations. The Six Guns Hockey team, for example, played in a rundown arena, before sparse crowds in Albuquerque in 1973. It quickly went out of business. The minor league baseball franchise in the city renamed itself after an episode of The Simpsons. So the reasonably named Dukes, became the lucrative Isotopes. The New Mexico Chiles played professional soccer in the city in 1990. The club’s name, however, could not convince New Mexicans that the organization deserved hometown support; the Chile harvest (in soccer terms) lasted barely one season. While the history of professional sports in NM’s capital is quixotic and amusing, it also sheds light on the economic development of the state of New Mexico. The failures of New Mexico’s teams highlight the isolation of New Mexico, and New Mexicans, even in the midst of the Southwest region. The failure of Albuquerque’s many professional sports ventures also suggests that the city is different than many comparably sized American cities. In short, an investigation of professional sports in New Mexico provides important new insight into the development of one of America’s most diverse, and economically fragile, states.

Author

• Ryan Swanson, University of New Mexico