The Indiana city has had two major league teams in the city in its past.
Indiana legislators are willing to put up money to build a 21st century state-of-the-art football venue for the National Football League’s Chicago Bears franchise. If the Bears ownership does accept the Indiana offer, the football team would be the second NFL team to call Hammond home. Hammond is about 30 miles from Chicago. Hammond had an NFL team before Chicago and was a charter member of the NFL’s predecessor, the American Professional Football Association which started in 1920. Chicago landed a team in the NFL in 1921 when the Decatur Stanleys franchise moved to town. The NFL team was known as the Hammond Pros and played in the NFL between 1920 and 1926. The problem with the Hammond Pros? The team never really played in town and was a travelling team and played just two games in Hammond over the years. The team played its home games in Chicago.
The Hammond Pros franchise was in the forefront of the desegregation of sports teams in the 1920s. The Hammond Pros franchise had six of the NFL’s nine African American players in those days and named Fritz Pollard as the team’s co-coach in 1925. The NFL removed African American players from its rosters in 1926 although there were a handful of African American players that played in the league through the 1933 season. Hammond failed to make the cut when the National Basketball League merged with the Basketball Association of America in 1949. Hammond had a franchise in the National Basketball League in 1948-49 when the NBL was considered a major league. Hammond NBL backers could not raise the money needed to join the newly named National Basketball Association and probably was too close to Chicago which had an NBA franchise called the Stags. Hammond is Indiana lawmakers’ choice city to land the Bears franchise.
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Hammond Pros
