What's your favorite unknown baseball team?

[Arkham House]

Anyone can say that the 1927 Yankees or 1975 Reds are your favorite team...and anyone can even say the 1962 Mets are, or the 1952 Pirates...but what odd, off-the-wall, funky, obscure team do you remember? My choice is the 1962 Los Angeles Angels. They were a second-year expansion team, and had finished nowhere in '61, and everyone was expecting more of the same in '62...but weird things happened. A rookie named Bo Belinsky pitched a no-hitter early in the year, and managed to turn this into a several-year run as a "celebrity", with gradually diminishing returns as it became apparent that he actually sucked as a pitcher...and the Angels, somehow, kept winning. They had no real hitting--Leon Wagner? Lee Thomas? Albie Pearson?...and, apart from a young Dean Chance, who was a great pitcher for a few years, no pitching--Eli Grba? Ken McBride?...but they won, and won, and damned if they didn't keep winning. Bill Rigney, the manager, would just toss a ball up in the air before a game, and whatever pitcher the ball landed near would start that day...and damned if they *still* didn't keep winning...they never really stopped, finishing third in the AL that year, a remarkable achievement considering some of the talent around the league in those days...they ended up 86-76. A fluke, as it happened...they reverted to expansion-type in 1963, and stayed there for a *very* long time...but that '62 year was fun. Anyone else got any shaggy dog teams they'd like to recall for us?