Once the American League and National League agreed to get along in the early days of the 20th century, there was stability among the 16 major league franchises. An upstart Federal League in the 1910s didn’t last, and MLB found a way to organize and affiliate the minor leagues to gain more geographic control.
But that started to change after World War II as the nation went through growth and change in almost every industry, and that eventually affected the baseball business a decade before zip codes even became a thing.
1 Boston-Milwaukee-Atlanta Braves
From 1902-52, all 16 franchises stayed put. The Boston Braves ended that streak with their move to Milwaukee before the 1953 season, and that spurred the game’s biggest period of franchise relocation as four teams found new locales in the 1950s.
Economics were the key factor behind the move, as the Braves struggled to draw fans – like most other teams – during the depression of the 1930s and WWII. There was an immediate uptick in attendance after the war when the Braves were competitive and won the 1948 pennant, then lost to the Cleveland Indians who were heavily favored on the odds boards.
But the attendance and the wins were short-lived, and as the club drifted further back in the standings, fewer fans bought seats. In their final season in Boston, the Braves drew less than 300,000; in their inaugural 1953 season in Milwaukee, they drew 1.8 million.
The other National League owners were quick to approve the move, especially the teams in Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis, since it gave them a fourth team ‘out west’ to balance the scheduling and travel.
Milwaukee would eventually see another decline in attendance, and the Braves made their second move to Atlanta in 1966. They even changed zip codes once again recently, in 2016, when they abandoned Turner Field and moved to Truist Park.
2 St. Louis Browns / Baltimore Orioles
A year after the Braves shifted west to Milwaukee, the St. Louis Browns went east to Baltimore. The Browns had always played second fiddle to the Cardinals in the Gateway City, and winning just one pennant from 1901-53 was a reason why.
Baltimore, which hadn’t had a major league team since 1901, welcomed the Browns-slash-Orioles with open arms and open wallets. In their final season in St. Louis, the Browns drew fewer than 300K; in their first season in Baltimore, the Orioles drew over a million.
There would be some lean years before the Orioles finally became a perennial AL favorite at top MLB sportsbooks. The Browns’ move east also factored into an AL team relocating the next season.
3 NY-San Francisco Giants / Brooklyn-LA Dodgers
No two teams are more synonymous with franchise relocation than the Dodgers and Giants, and their moves to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, impacted more than just baseball.
Economics were behind the move, as well as politics, and it was Walter O’Malley of the Dodgers who first drove the relocation. O’Malley fought for a new stadium – and for the city to build it – for years, didn’t get it, and Los Angeles offered him a sweetheart deal.
Had Horace Stoneham of the Giants known he wasn’t getting nearly as sweet a deal to go to San Francisco as O’Malley got from LA, it’s possible the moves wouldn’t have happened. At least it would have delayed baseball coming to California.
The deal LA gave O’Malley also caused a rift between the City of Los Angeles and the Latin residents of an area known as Chavez Ravine. The city claimed the property and booted the residents out, originally with the plan to build public housing. Instead, several hundred acres went to O’Malley and is presently the site of Dodger Stadium.
The folks back in Brooklyn hated O’Malley, and Latin residents in LA also hated him. It wasn’t until Fernando Valenzuela’s arrival in 1981 that Hispanics cheered the Dodgers.
With MLB stretched from the East Coast to the West, the game was forever changed, and the continued growth in the western half of the country eventually led to more expansion.
4 Washington Senators II / Texas Rangers
Troubles at the turnstile led Calvin Griffith to move the original Washington Senators to Minnesota in 1961. That put a new team in the nation’s capital for the 1961 team, along with the expansion Angels out West.
The second-coming of the Senators had the same problem with attendance as their predecessors, and moved to Texas after 11 seasons.
The Dallas-Ft. Worth area had been seeking an MLB team for more than a decade by then, and made a case to be included in the 1969 MLB expansion. But two men were working against them: Warren Giles and Roy Hofheinz.
Giles, then the NL president, wanted a team in Montreal. Hofheinz owned the Astros and wanted the state to himself, throwing his full support to Giles’ effort to favor Montreal over D-FW.
Bob Short was the owner when the team moved from Washington DC to Texas, and he sold to a group headed by Brad Corbett in 1974 for $9.5 million. To put that in perspective, shortstop Corey Seager pulled down $35 million during the team’s first World Series campaign in 2023.
5 Philadelphia-KC-Oakland-?? Athletics
When the franchises were fastened down to their original locations during the first half of the 20th century, the one constant with the Athletics in Philadelphia was Connie Mack. He built championship teams, dismantled them, rebuilt them, dismantled them, time and time again.
He was their only manager from 1901-50, and owned at least a share in the franchise from 1901-54. While attendance improved some after WWII, it wasn’t enough and Mack’s health was failing. Three of his sons also were part of the ownership, but they constantly quarreled and the team was ultimately sold to a group headed by Arnold Johnson.
Johnson was a master at putting together business deals with other peoples’ money, and he changed the entire way baseball was run from an accounting standpoint when he took the Athletics from Philadelphia to Kansas City before the 1955 season.
He had several business partnerships at the time with the New York Yankees, one being Johnson owned the lease on Yankee Stadium. The AL owners in Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago were anxious to approve the sale and get a team in KC after the Browns left St. Louis in 1954, and the deal with Johnson went through.
At the time, groups in LA, Houston, Toronto, Dallas, Montreal and San Francisco were also trying to buy the A’s, and that interest ultimately led to more expansion. Charlie Finley bought controlling interest when Johnson died in 1960, and moved the team to Oakland in 1968.
The A’s have had several different owners since, and they’re on the move once again. Las Vegas appears to be their eventual destination, but where the A’s play until a stadium is built in Sin City is anyone’s guess.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman wants the Oakland Athletics to remain in the Bay Area, revealing the team rejected an offer for land in the city’s Historic Westside. https://t.co/Yq5ICjTnuR
— KSNV News 3 Las Vegas (@News3LV) February 6, 2024
