Get off my lawn!
As a kid, I was a big fan of the Senators, even if they never won anything. That was back when baseball tickets were cheap enough for an average person or family to regularly see the team play.
When I first posted that, I thoght you meant the present Minnesota Twins, then I looked it up and was going to edit my post; but— still thought you must really be old. 
Yeah, but that was back when players were paid what they were worth, not what they think they are worth.
Speaking as a ex Browns fan, Cleveland’s lawsuit was based on the team’s breach of the lease with the municipally owned stadium, which expressly required that all of the team’s home games be played there through a couple more years. Cleveland threatened to get an injunction that would’ve required the team fulfill the obligations of its lease (and play to empty grandstands) and it was unlikely that the judge (who had to stand for reelection eventually) would’ve been too eager to side with the Browns/NFL. Thus, the City had a pretty good case.
Personally, when the Browns left town back in '95 I quit closely following either the team or the NFL. I follow college football now since I’m pretty sure that neither Notre Dame nor Ohio State are going to pull up stakes and relocate.
Notre Dame and not Michigan (or even Michigan State)?
Big10 all the way!!!
Back in the town where I grew up, only slightly further from Baltimore than Philadelphia, you’ll still find plenty of people who will root for whoever’s playing the Colts because “they snuck out of Baltimore in the middle of the night”. The fact that the Ravens moved into Baltimore from Cleveland seems to be a more forgivable transgression, somehow.
They get no sympathy from me. It was Canada’s own Norm Green who took the North Stars from us. He said something to the effect of “growing up in Alberta, it was naturally my dream to own a hockey team in Texas.” Huh?
The move of the North Stars (or “Stars” as he always called them) was downright bizarre. He dressed the issue up as a matter of economics, but really the team was moved because of Green’s wandering hands. He grabbed the breasts of one of his employees and when she filed a harassment lawsuit he was heard to say “that’s it, we’re out of here.” It seems he imagined that Texas would have a culture more to his liking.
So he made financial demands from the state he knew he wouldn’t get so he could move his team from hockey-crazy Minnesota to Texas - where no one plays hockey and few people followed it. The NHL made no effort to stop him. It later came out that the financial terms he got in Texas were really bad. His TV deal paid him no money. He lost tons of cash on the move and he was forced to sell the team. The Minnesota Wild, on the other hand, have been the most profitable team in the NHL for several years despite sucking.
For me the loss of the North Stars really helped to open my eyes. I had loved the team in my youth. Now I look back and wonder why. I’ve never been to a Wild game. I haven’t seen the Twins in 15 years. They have threatened to move too. As have the Vikings and the T-Wolves. Go ahead, who needs you.
The Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens. Two years later the NFL gives Cleveland another team named the Browns.
The Colts left Baltimore and took the name and the history. The city then went 13 seasons without football. That would piss you off, especially when, in '93 when Baltimore lost out to Charlotte and Jacksonville for the expansion team, we were told by the NFL commisioner to ‘go build a museum’.
Do you think that HOFers like Artie Donovan, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti, John Mackey, Raymond Berry and the late Johnny U wanted to be recorded in Canton as simply ‘Colts’? Not Baltimore Colts. The fact that many of the old Colts still live in and around Baltimore and can be seen on the sidelines at M&T not the RCA Dome should tell you something.
I have personally met Donovan and Moore and a good friend was Johnny U’s immedate neighbor before Unitas passed. They all despise the Indianpolis Colts.
Nobody here would have hard feelings if the Colts were called the Indianapolis Five Hundreds or something similar and the history remained in Baltimore.
We do have the SB V trophy though 
A lot depends on how the team was doing when it moved. The Dodgers, Colts, and Browns were still doing very well attendance-wise when they made the switch, and it left a lot of unhappy fans.
But teams with poor attendance just aren’t missed in the same way. There are always a few who get upset over it, but if people aren’t going to the games, then they don’t get as upset when the team leaves.
Also, for some reason, the loss of basketball franchises doesn’t seem to raise the same objections as other sports. Minneapolis didn’t seem to miss the Lakers, even when there were no Timberwolves (but back then, pro basketball was not as big). Buffalo didn’t make much of a fuss when the Braves left, nor did San Diego when the Clippers moved to LA.
Sometimes it was accepted if there were two teams: the Boston Braves, St. Louis Browns, and Philadelphia Athletics moved easily since they were the second-choice team in a two team market.
I dunno about that.
– Poly (who lives 20 miles from Wake Forest and 150 miles from the relocated Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem)
I’ve learned since making my post that technically, the Brown never moved from Cleveland. Art Modell was granted a new franchise in Baltimore (and somehow got to keep all the players on the Browns) and Cleveland actually retained the original franchise which simply didn’t operate for a number of years.
Why don’t the new cities change the names?
Why didn’t the New Orleans Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies, Indianapolis Colts, or Utah Jazz rename into something more regional?
What made it so they couldn’t but there is no Washington Expos or Tennessee Oilers or Carolina Whalers?
Cities don’t control the name choice. The owners do. They may wish to keep the name if it has merchandising value for example.
I’ve personnally lost three favorite teams in a dozen years: the Nordiques, Expos and Browns. No way would I root for the Avalanche, Nationals or Ravens (the new Browns are OK). The happy cuckhold thing is not my thing.
So I’ve turned to fantasy sports. Now I own teams and players, and if they move, it’s because I will have decided to move them. 
My family, from the Bronx, was traditionally NY Giants fans. When the National League Giants moved to San Francisco, some of us transferred allegiance to the Bronx team, the Yankees, while the others went with the Mets, the new National League team.
By and large the first faction have had a better time of it.
It isn’t whining, it’s a legitimate complaint. There’s something wrong with a sports league that puts teams in places where there aren’t any fans of the sport. There’s also something pathetically irrelevant about it.
I went to a Florida Panthers game once, in Ft. Lauderdale. There were fewer fans there than some OHL teams draw. I would guess maybe six thousand, tops. Either that or there were 12,000 fans very cleverly disguised as empty seats.
Going back to the OP,
When an American sports team moves to a different city, nearly all of its old fanbase gives up on the team. There are some exceptions with diehard fans who continue to root for the team, no matter where it is.
There is still a not insignificant number of Raiders fans in the LA area, although that’s a very weird situation since the Raiders are one of the few teams to move back to the city it moved from. But in Los Angeles, there are very few Rams left.
Some franchises will try to bring someone from the old city along as a broadcaster to help things out. Sometimes, as in the case of Vin Scully and the Dodgers, it was one of Walter O’Malley’s best moves.
When the Rams moved to St. Louis (and they started off in Cleveland anyway), they took along Jack Snow as a radio analyst. He was one of the few connections to the LA Rams outside of the ownership. When Snow passed away recently, I don’t know who the Rams still have as an LA connection as a player.
In baseball, some teams when they move forget about their past. The Baltimore Orioles almost never mention that they began play as the St. Louis Browns (actually as the Milwaukee Brewers in their very first season in 1901.). The Minnesota Twins have an on again/off again relationship with the old AL Washington Senators. The Washington Nationals aren’t quite sure if they are lineal descendants of the Montreal Expos.
The Los Angeles Lakers were a curious case because only until about three years ago did they ever have anything displayed in their arena about the Minneapolis Lakers. And it’s not as if the Minneapolis Lakers were bad. They were very good and won several NBA championships and had a lot of Hall of Famers and one of the NBA’s first great stars in George Mikan. Yet, the Lakers seemed to forget about that history for over 40 years.
Weren’t the Yankees (or their predecessors, The Highlanders) originally from Baltimore?
mm
Both are correct. As I understand it, today’s Yankees have their roots from a team known as the Baltimore Orioles, but I do not believe it is the same “bloodline” if you trace the history of today’s Baltimore Orioles going back to the St. Louis Browns. I always forget the history as to how this unfolded…
Ever hear of the man who bought and moved the London Bridge to AZ? I never thought this was true until I saw an article about it in an engineering journal. Anyhow, what if it had been Big Ben or Buckingham Palace? Even worse, what if the people of AZ acted like it had belonged to them all along thereby re-writing history? Wouldn’t you be angry?
Baltimore is angrier than other city being the first to have this all done TO them them BY underhanded people: owner Irsay and co-conspirators then-mayor of Indianapolis (who now resides in Maryland of all things) and Taglie-oh-poo (sic), Commish of the NFL! Moving the Colts may have been his right, but owning a name is treason because the name Colts has every tie to MD and no ties, ziltch, to Indie. Even worse, Tagliopooh (sic) denied Baltimore an NFL expansion team every chance he got…including the birth of the Ravens, a bastard expansion team which had to be stolen from Cleveland, but even Cleveland got to keep their beloved name, Browns. Why? Because the name Browns have no tie to Baltimore! Gee…that sounds familiar! Baltimore should have named their football team “The Baltimore 500” to slap Indianapolis in the face.
Add to all of this that the holy name of Johnny Unitas as well as official Colts logos have been usurpted by Indianapolis. Congrats to all those who supprt this kind of action for sullying both the name of Indianapolis and the name of the Colts. Congrats on committing the perfect crime! - Jinx
The Yankees franchise started play in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles. After the 1902 season, team manager and majordomo John McGraw moved to the National League’s Giants in a dispute with the AL league president, and the Giants gained some interest over the Yankees and stole all their usefulk players (at this time the american and National Leagues were in open warfare, trying to destroy each other.) The rights to the franchise were sold to New York investors and the team moved to New York in 1903, where they were known as the “Highlanders,” and eventually become known as the Yankees. The 1903 New York team is therefore the same franchise as the 1902 Baltimore team, although the players were nearly completely overhauled.
The Orioles franchise started play in 1901 as the Milwaukee Brewers, moved to St. Louis and became the Browns in 1902, and moved to Baltimore and became the new Baltimore Orioles in 1954. These were straight up franchise moves, with the rosters moving as well.
In case anyone cares, this makes them one of three major league teams to be located in three different cities (the others at the Athletics of Philadelphia, Kansas City and Oakland and the Braves of Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta) and the only major league team to have three completely different names, both city and nickname. It also makes Milwaukee the only city that has had three different franchises represent the city in the modern era, without ever having two teams in the city at the same time; the original Brewers, the Braves, and today’s Brewers, who were originally the 1969 Seattle Pilots. Confused yet?
There’s no lineage connection between the two franchises at all. That they were both known as “Baltimore Orioles” at some point is simply because the one franchise named itself after the previous franchise.