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Robert Lee Howsam (February 28, 1918 – February 19, 2008) was an executive in American professional sport who, in 1959, played a key role in establishing two leagues—the American Football League, which succeeded and merged with the National Football League, and baseball's Continental League, which never played a game but forced expansion of Major League Baseball from 16 to 20 teams in 1961–62. Howsam later became further well known in baseball as the highly successful general manager and club president of the Cincinnati Reds during the "Big Red Machine" dynasty of the 1970s. Born in Denver, Colorado, Howsam served as a U.S. Navy pilot during World War II. He was the son-in-law of United States Senator and two-term Colorado Governor Edwin C. Johnson.〔(The Denver Post )〕 Johnson also was involved with professional baseball as founder and first president of the postwar Class A Western League, an upper-level minor league that played from 1947 to 1958. ==Efforts to bring Major League Baseball to Denver== Howsam first made a name for himself as a highly successful baseball executive. He led the family-owned Denver Bears of the Class A Western League and Triple-A American Association from 1947 to 1962. For building one of the most successful minor league franchises of the 1950s, Howsam was twice (1951 and 1956) named Minor League Executive of the Year by ''The Sporting News.'' The Howsams also built Bears Stadium, a minor league baseball park which, after renovation and expanded capacity, became famous as the Denver Broncos' noisy, raucous and perpetually sold-out home from 1960 to 2001, Mile High Stadium. While the Bears achieved great success as a Triple-A farm team of the New York Yankees in the late 1950s, their earlier tie-up with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1952–54) served to introduce Howsam to Pirates' general manager Branch Rickey, the Baseball Hall of Fame executive, who had revolutionized baseball in his earlier career with the St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers. Rickey would play an influential role later in Howsam's career. In an attempt to bring Major League Baseball to Denver, Howsam was one of the founders of the Continental League, which in 1959 planned to become the "third Major League" following the epidemic of franchise shifts during the 1950s. MLB magnates, nervous about the possible rescinding of baseball's antitrust exemption by the U.S. Congress after the National League abandoned New York, agreed to study (and perhaps support) the formation of the new loop. Howsam was slated to become owner of the Denver franchise, one of the league's eight charter members. Howsam even went as far as to expand Bears Stadium to over 34,000. Rickey, meanwhile, was elected president of the new circuit. As events unfolded, the new league never got off the drawing board; it was doomed once three of its key cities gained Major League franchises in 1961–62 (New York and Houston got expansion National League franchises, while the American League Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bob Howsam」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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