Cities that have lost multiple teams

Or, things that pop into my head at 1 a.m…

I actually started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago, when the Rams were in the NFL playoffs, in their second year back in L.A., and after their tenure in St. Louis ended with a long run of mediocre-to-bad teams.

Not including the early years of the various major pro leagues (in which it was common for teams to fold or move), St. Louis has lost five teams in the four major pro sports:

Football:

  • Cardinals (moved to Phoenix in 1988)
  • Rams (moved to Los Angeles in 2016)

Baseball:

  • Browns (moved to Baltimore, and became the Orioles, in 1954)

Basketball:

  • Hawks (moved to Atlanta in 1968)
  • Spirits (folded when the ABA and NBA merged in 1976)

I suspect that that’s a record for franchise losses in one city, but I may be mistaken. Are there other candidates?

Cleveland

Rams (NFL) moved to LA
Browns (NFL) moved to Baltimore
Barons (NHL) folded (technically merged with Minnesota)
Crusaders (WHA) folded I think
Cleveland Pipers (ABL) folded

Not a contender to the above, but I find it interesting that Atlanta has lost two NHL teams:

– Atlanta Flames, moved to Calgary to become the Calgary Flames in 1980.
– Atlanta Thrashers, moved to Winnipeg to become the Winnipeg Jets in 2011.

I guess hockey just doesn’t work in Atlanta.

It looks like they actually moved to Minnesota, and became the WHA’s second incarnation of the Fighting Saints, but then folded partway through their one season there (1976-77).

From here. New York City

And as a state, Ohio has lost 20 teams.

I can’t believe there are too many kids who play hockey growing up in Atlanta.

And Washington DC has lost the Senators twice (though there was an instant replacement the first time.)

The current Milwaukee Brewers of MLB played all of one season in Seattle as the Seattle Pilots.

And Seattle lost the NBA’s SuperSonics.

The Twin Cities lost the Lakers to LA (NBA), and the North Stars to Dallas (NHL).

Yeah, the Pilots were a disaster of an idea, but mostly for reasons beyond their control.

They were forced to start play two years early, because the AL had been pressured into letting the Royals start play in 1969 instead of 1971, and the league needed to expand by two teams at once. They played in a rundown, minor-league stadium (ironically called Sicks’ Stadium), because the planned new stadium for 1971 hadn’t yet been built. They had terrible attendance, and an owner who wasn’t interested in throwing more money at a losing proposition.

Several attempts to sell the team to owners who would keep it in Seattle fell through, and the sale of the team to Bud Selig (and its move to Milwaukee) literally happened days before Opening Day, 1970.

(The resulting lawsuit against the American League by Seattle, King County, and Washington state eventually led to the creation of the Mariners.)

Melbourne “lost” South Melbourne to Sydney and Fitzroy to Brisbane. They have been increasing pressure & incentives for North Melbourne to go to Tasmania for years.

Curiously enough, were that to succeed South Melbourne have gone north while North Melbourne would go south.
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Going on 21, if you count MLS as a “major sport”.

Though, as the author notes, most of those came from the early years of MLB and the NFL (during which franchise moves and closures were much more common).

Philadelphia lost the (now Golden State) Warriors, and lost the Athletics to Kansas City.

KC then lost the A’s to Oakland, the Kings to Sacramento, and the Scouts to Denver (they’re now the Colorado Avalanche).

Dallas lost TWO pro football teams called the Texans. One moved to Baltimore and became the Colts, while the other moved to KC and became the Chiefs.

Kansas City has lost:

The Athletics, to Oakland
The Scouts, to Colorado
The Kings, to Sacramento

They also had an early NFL team, the Cowboys, but I don’t know if we’re counting those.

ninja’ed by astorian, but the Scouts aren’t the Avalanche - they became the Colorado Rockies, who later became the New Jersey Devils. The Avalanche are the re-located Quebec Nordiques.

When the Scouts moved to Denver in 1976, they became the Colorado Rockies; they moved to New Jersey six years later and became the Devils.

The Avalanche came to Denver as the Quebec Nordiques.

Technically true, though the NFL records don’t officially acknowledge the first one as a “move.”

Dallas definitely lost the first Dallas Texans (which only played one season, 1952). The owners of the Texans turned the franchise back to the NFL midway through the season, and they played their final few games all on the road, as wards of the league.

The NFL then folded the Texans franchise folded after the season, and shortly thereafter, awarded a new franchise to Baltimore, which became the Colts. Despite the fact that the new Baltimore team was awarded assets from the defunct Texans (including a number of players), neither the Colts nor the NFL officially acknowledge that the franchise’s lineage traces back to the Texans. As far as NFL records are concerned, the Texans folded after 1952, and a brand-new franchise began in Baltimore in 1953.

When the Raiders relocate to Las Vegas in 2020 (or possibly 2019), the city of Oakland will have lost the same team on two separate occasions.

And the Blue Jays, to my delight; they needed two teams to keep it balanced, and Toronto had owners who were desperate for a team and had come a whisker from poaching the Giants from San Francisco.

That seems to be only marginally related. For example, the NHL teams in California have been doing pretty well for years, and kids don’t play hockey here either.