The Oak Ridge Bombers join the Peanut League for the 1961 season as an expansion team.  After a hiatus of eight seasons, home town native Mike Coveyou was able to obtain the franchise and return East Tennessee to its rightful place as venue for VBG baseball.  Coveyou had previously owned a franchise based in various years, in and around the current location of the City of Oak Ridge from the inception of the league in 1927 through the completion of the 1952 season, when he felt compelled to surrender the franchise for personal reasons.

The Bombers are based in the scenic mountains of East Tennessee, in the foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, about 60 miles from the Great Smoky Mountains and about 30 miles west northwest of Knoxville, home of the Smokies in the South Atlantic (SALLY) League.  

A Little History of the VBG in East Tennessee

While the team plays in Oak Ridge currently, as did Coveyou’s prior franchise (now the Craftsbury Common Classics) for several of its years in operation, the prior franchise had a peripatetic history, as it relocated several times and experienced several name changes,  It was first named the Oak Ridge Bombers, the name deriving from the ridge on which its stadium was located, Black Oak Ridge,  The stadium was located in the small town of Wheat, which was subsumed by Oak Ridge during World War II, when land for the Clinton Engineering Works portion of the Manhattan Project was requisitioned through eminent domain from the existing property owners.  In 1939, the franchise was rechristened the Black Oak Ridge Bombers, to better reflect its location.  After the 1942 season ended, the team was notified that its stadium, as with all other property in the area, would be acquired by the federal government pursuant to the war effort and the team played the 1943 season, in nearby Clinton, the county seat of Anderson County.  After the 1943 season, the owner was asked to change the team name for security reasons, although no clear explanation of the reason for this was forthcoming.  For the next two seasons, the team became the Tri-County Travelers, located in the small neighboring town of Oliver Springs, which is located in three separate counties: Anderson, Roane, and Morgan.  After the war, the army invited the team to return to Oak Ridge where it remained, with its original name, until the franchise was relinquished in 1952.  One peculiarity of the location of the franchise for the 1946, 1847, 1948, and 1949 was that visiting team players and anyone who was not a resident of Oak Ridge or who worked at one of the federal facilities in Oak Ridge had to receive special permission to enter the city for games and to wear a visitor badge at all times while in the city.  A waiver was obtained to allow visiting team players not to wear their visitor badges while in uniform.  These restrictions ceased to be an issue when the gates of “The Secret City” opened in 1949, although some federal installations in Oak Ridge remain highly secured currently.