a few lean years, the Rainiers won PCL flags in 1951 and 1955, the last pennants won under Sick's ownership. After the 1960 season, the team was sold to the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox in turn sold the Rainiers to the Los Angeles/California Angels in 1965, who renamed the team the Seattle Angels, as they were known during their last four seasons. The last hurrah for the Rainiers-turned-Angels came in 1966, when the Seattle Angels won the championship of the PCL's new Western Division (the PCL had absorbed former American Association teams in the midwestern and southwestern parts of the United States). In the playoffs, the Angels defeated the Eastern Division champion Tulsa Oilers, for Seattle's last PCL pennant. The team's last year was 1968, in which they finished in eighth place overall. Seattle had been granted an expansion team in the American League, the ill-fated Seattle Pilots, which began play in 1969. The Pilots would last but one year in Seattle, before a bankruptcy court sold the team to a group headed by Bud Selig and were moved to Milwaukee in 1970. The Class A Rainiers After the Pilots left, Seattle was without professional baseball for the first time since 1900. Following a two-year void, a Sacramento man named Art Peterson bought a Class A Northwest League franchise for Seattle, named them the Rainiers and signed a deal to play in Sicks' Stadium (where the team inherited the Pilots' old offices). The Rainiers played five seasons in the NWL between 1972 and 1976 with two winning teams. The team was a co-op operation in 1972, drawing players primarily from the San Francisco and Baltimore minor league systems. Managed by former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ray Washburn, the Rainiers went into a tailspin in August and finished last in the NWL North Division. The Cincinnati Reds picked up Seattle as an affiliate for the next two seasons. The Rainiers came in with two second-place showings as the team groomed future major league pitchers Manny Sarmiento, Mike Armstrong and outfielder Lynn Jones during that time, as well as manager Greg Riddoch. Peterson went the independent route for 1975 and 1976, signing his own players. One of those was outfielder Casey Sander, a Seattle native who played one season in 1975 before embarking upon an acting career, eventually landing a regular role in the longtime ABC-TV sitcom Grace Under Fire.