LA Browns?

Wow, I had never heard this story:

St. Louis Browns almost move to L.A. in 1941

 

I knew the story, but I wonder why the Browns just didn’t move after the war.

 

If I am correctly remembering the section of "Veeck as in Wreck" on the Browns, the franchise had an extraordinarily fractured ownership structure that made even giving the owners money to buy the team incredibly complicated, let alone it being able to decide to move on its own.

 

Also around that time period, there were rumors of the Cardinals moving to ... Columbus, Ohio.

 

Not gonna lie, the title of the thread had me thinking Cleveland was getting crapped on again.

 

Oops. Sorry.

 

It repeats the myth of O'Malley convincing the Giants to move west. The Giants knew they were leaving New York midway though the 1956 season. Their first choice was Minneapolis, but then San Francisco made a stronger play for them. The Giants announced they were moving well before the Dodgers.

 

The Giants too farm club was in Minneapolis and work had already started on the Met. Moving to the coast along with the Dodgers not only kept their rivalry alive, it also eased travel. Oddly enough, the only AL city the Giants never played in was Minneapolis - until this season.

 

The Bay Area, which at first the Giants would have all to themselves, was also a vastly more lucrative market than Minnesota.

 

Had the Browns made the move in 1942, as the article speculates, I'd guess either the A's or Senators would have jumped to SF within a very few years.

With the AL teams in California drawing like gang busters for the first few years, the NL would probably have jumped to fill the next massive major state still without MLB with expansion teams in Texas. I'd guess expansion would have come in the early mid 50s.

The Upper Midwest cities of Minneapolis, Milwaukee, KC and Denver would be wide open for moves too.

Of course, had Pearl Harbor never happened, WWII would have unfolded entirely differently, on a different timeline, and with significantly different outcomes in many ways -- not necessarily High Castle, but the economy of the nation might have been entirely different.

Say, for instance, instead of Pearl Harbor pulling the US into the war with both feet, the US enters into both the European and Pacific wars over the course of several years; there's no instantaneous explosive ramp-up of the war manufacturing machine, instead things drag on and on. Say the war lasts from 1944-1952. So then when it gets over in 1952 or whenever, there isn't the massive manufacturing economy ready to take off.
Sending baseball expansion teams to Atlanta or Seattle probably wouldn't have been very high on the priority list.

 

I had the chance to read that article last night and it was very interesting to see what could have happened if that move had been made. I heard about it a few years ago and always speculated myself.

One thing: Knowing that the team changed its name when it moved to Baltimore, I think it would have done so if it had gone to L.A., either Angels or Stars, since that was the name of the two PCL teams in the area. With all due respect to Paul Brown and the Cleveland football team, I don't think in the land of sunshine and beaches and Tinseltown they would have wanted to keep the bland "Browns" nickname. The supposed NL expansion team later probably would have taken whichever of those names was available.

Still, it was fun to speculate about a baseball universe that had the Dallas Dodgers, Atlanta Senators, Minnesota Giants and San Francisco A's.

 

Supposing in 1952, Bill Veeck gets Gussie Busch to buy into the Browns instead of the Cardinals when Sam Breadon is selling out due to IRS problems.
All of a sudden, with the financial and promotional muscle of Budweiser behind Veeck, the Browns become a powerhouse. The Cardinals sell out to Houston interests and open up Texas to MLB.
The Browns' abortive move to Milwaukee evaporates as they decide to stay put in St. Louis. So the Braves go there as in real life, but that still leaves Baltimore and KC wide open -- plus the West Coast.

My bet in this instance, about 1955, the PCL tries to beat the established leagues to the punch by expanding and going "major." Dallas, Minneapolis, KC and Denver become the "eastern division" of the PCL.