Last week, writing about Alabama Pitts, I mentioned the existence of a Charlotte baseball team known as the Hornets. Actually, a number of teams have played in the Queen City under that name, leading up to the NBA team that now uses the mascot.
It all really began back in 1780. That’s when British general Sir Charles Cornwallis labeled Charlotte a “hornet’s nest of rebellion” after being harassed by Patriots while he occupied the town. His statement was enough to forever link the town and the insect.
In 1892, a professional minor baseball team took the name, as did a more permanent version starting in 1901. That franchise lasted until 1972, at one point serving as a farm league team for the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins. Also, around the conclusion of World War I, the Charlotte Black Hornets formed and played until the 1950s in the Negro Carolina league. Once baseball integrated in 1947, the popularity of race-based teams declined. Before the team folded, they had changed their name to the Charlotte Mohawk Giants.
Then in 1974, a new professional football league sprang up to challenge the NFL. It was known as the World Football League and originally fielded a team known as the Boston Bulls. They moved to New York, changing its name to the Stars. Then in mid season moved to Charlotte and adopted the name of, you guessed it, the Charlotte Hornets.
The football Hornets played for a season and a half at the old American Legion Memorial Stadium. The team did OK, posting a .500 season in ’74 and going 6-5 the following year. However, the league folded in 1975 leaving North Carolina without a major league professional franchise for over a decade.
Then came the NBA. About ten years after the demise of the football Hornets, Kannapolis businessman George Shinn got an expansion franchise and professional basketball returned to Charlotte after the ABA’s Carolina Cougars folded. That team lasted until 2002 when Shinn moved the team to New Orleans, for a time keeping the Hornets name until they became the Pelicans.
Meanwhile, BET founder Robert Johnson secured another NBA franchise for Charlotte and since Hornets was taken, that team became the Bobcats. Once New Orleans switched names, Charlotte got back “Hornets” and continue to use the name. For a while, basketball great and NC native Michael Jordan was the majority owner of the Hornets but sold enough of his stake to now only have a minority share in the team.
The name has been popular locally, too. Both Newton’s Central High and Hudson High School in Caldwell County used the name for their sports teams as long as the schools themselves were in business.
For the last four decades, when someone said Charlotte Hornets, we think basketball but over a much longer span the name has encompassed two other major American sports. It seems the city and the mascot go hand-in-hand, no matter what game is played.
Photos: The Baseball Hornets come to Hickory (1934) and a helmet from the football Hornets (1974).
