MLB: What cities would get a team?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

If Major League Baseball began today, what 30 cities should have a team?

Here is what I have come up with given the population of the United States. I have decided for my league that all teams will be within the 50 states. You may decide to include Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, or any other country. I’ve ignored the local political climate about building stadiu,s.

New York
Boston
Newark, NJ
Philadelphia
Baltimore
Washington, DC
Charlotte, NC
Atlanta
Orlando
New Orleans
Dallas
Houston
San Antonio
Phoenix
Albuquerque
San Diego
Los Angeles
Orange County, CA
San Francisco
Sacramento
Portland, OR
Seattle
Minneapolis, MN
Columbus, OH
Indianapolis
Las Vegas
Chicago
Detroit
Denver
Salt Lake City

#2

This is harder than I thought it would be!

If I got to choose I’d go with:

New York City (3): Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens (or one could go across the river in New Jersey)
Boston
Mexico City (22 Million people in the region!)
Los Angeles (2): LA Proper, Orange County
Chicago (2): North Side, South Side
Toronto
Havana
Houston
Philadelphia (Maybe could be 2)
San Diego
Phoenix (Too good a spot with all the spring training games there)
Miami/Ft Lauderdale
Dallas-Fort Worth
San Antonio
Atlanta
Charlotte
Washington, DC
Baltimore
Denver
San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose (2)
Detroit/Windsor
Cleveland
Seattle/Vancouver
Monterey, MX
Minneapolis

So my Divisions would be:

American League:
North East:
Manhattan
New Jersey
Boston
Toronto
Cleveland (Geography surrenders to convenience)

North Central:
Chicago - North
Chicago - South
Minneapolis
Detroit/Windsor
Denver (See Cleveland)

West Coast:
Los Angeles
San Francisco/Oakland
Orange County
San Diego
Seattle/Vancouver
San Jose

National League:
Mid-Atlantic:
Washington, DC
Baltimore
Philadelphia
Charlotte
Brooklyn (see Cleveland)

Southwest:
Dallas/Fort Worth
San Antonio
Mexico City, MX
Monterey, MX
Phoenix

South:
Miami/Fort Lauderdale
Havana
Atlanta
Houston (see Cleveland)

#3

Jonathan, Seattle and Vancouver are like 100 miles apart.

My choices:

New York, on Long Island
New York, Manhattan
New York in the Bronx or across the river in New Jersey
Los Angeles
Orange County
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington
Baltimore
Atlanta
Miami
Toronto
Montreal
Detroit
Cleveland
Chicago
Chicago again
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Seattle
Denver
Phoenix
Houston
Dallas
San Diego
Monterrey
Mexico City
St. Louis
San Francisco
Oakland
Cincinnati

So my divisions are:

Northeast:
New York
New York - Long Island
New Jersey
Boston
Montreal

Great Lakes:
Toronto
Detroit
Cleveland
Chicago
Other Chicago

Atlantic:
Washington
Baltimore
Atlanta
Miami
Philadelphia

South:
Dallas
Houston
Phoenix
Monterrey
Mexico City

Midwest:
St. Louis
Cincinnati
Minneapolis
Denver
Seattle (I can’t fit them anywhere else)

Pacific:
L.A.
Orange County
San Diego
San Francisco
Oakland

I could easily expand to 36 teams.

#4

Yeah, I know about Vancouver. But I wanted a western Canadian team and thought they could share. It sort of works for Green Bay.

You really think St Louis qualifies? It’s an awfully small town in the larger scheme of things.

#5

Here’s a go at it:

New York (3)
Boston (2)
Chicago (2)
Los Angeles
Anaheim
Philadelphia
Washington
Baltimore
Miami
Toronto
Montreal
Detroit
Cleveland
Minneapolis
St. Louis
Pittsburgh
Cincinnatti
Houston
Dallas
San Antonio
San Francisco
San Diego
Denver
Seattle
Phoenix
Vancouver

So basically getting rid of Tampa Bay, Oakland, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Atlanta from the current setup, in favor of a third NY team, a second Boston team, a team back in Montreal, and new teams in San Antonio and Vancouver. The big surprise is obviously Atlanta; they are having trouble getting attendance now with a team that has won every year in recent memory, the other sports teams in the city that don’t win have huge attendance issues (even more so than most places that are chronic losers)… I just have a hunch that if we start up from scratch and they lose the first year or two, we’re looking for places to move them. Boston is certainly smaller than the other double-team cities, but it was able to handle two in the past, and the demographics and baseball passion of the area would likely make it a great place to put two again. Divisions I suppose would look something like this:

AL:
East:
New York (Bronx)
Boston (Fenway)
Toronto
Baltimore
Miami

Central:
New York (Long Island) - I just don’t like having two NY in the same division, and there are 11 “east” teams anyways
Cleveland
Detroit
Minneapolis
Chicago (South Side)

West:
Anaheim
Dallas
Seattle
San Antonio

NL:
East:
New York (Queens)
Philadelphia
Washington
Montreal
Boston (Cambridge?)

Central:
St. Louis
Cincinnatti
Pittsburgh
Houston
Chicago (North Side)

West:
San Diego
San Francisco
Phoenix
Denver
Los Angeles
Vancouver

I don’t think Puerto Rico could handle a team in a full-sized stadium over the course of an entire season. I don’t think Cuba could handle a team where MLB prices applied, even once we ignore the other problems there. I don’t feel comfortable with Mexico City yet for an entire 81 game home schedule; if I were going to move into the southern Spanish-speaking areas, though, that’s probably where I’d start.

Last Five Out:
Milwaukee
Sacramento
Oakland
Las Vegas
New York (Brooklyn)

Oh, and I almost forgot - if you let me go with 28 instead of 30, we can drop Vancouver and San Antonio, move one team to the AL, and go old school with a 7-team East and West in each league - I’ll even let you keep the next two best records as wild cards if you have some fetish about playing the World Series into November.

#6

Honolulu
New York, Albany
New York, Manhattan
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
Boston
Philadelphia
Washington, DC
Baltimore
Atlanta
Miami
Burlington, VT
Detroit
Anchorage
Chicago
Minneapolis-St. Paul
Seattle
Denver
Phoenix
Dallas
Austin
San Diego
St. Louis
Billings
New Orleans
Las Vegas
Columbus
Salt Lake City
Portland, OR

#7

You guys all know that San Jose has more people than either San Francisco or Oakland, right?

#8

Mine isn’t based on population. It’s based on location, so that ALL Americans have a reasonable opportunity to enjoy a little live baseball from time to time.

#9

Yeah, I figured that from the inclusion of Billings.

#10

:smiley:

They should be deprived of baseball just because they live in a remote location?

#11

The reminds me of something: The “I never have to look at the paper and see my local team starting at 10pm again” MLB:

New York (4)
Boston (2)
Chicago (2)
Philadelphia (2)
Providence
Buffalo
Pittsburgh
Baltimore
Washington
Atlanta
Miami
Charlotte
Cleveland
Indianapolis
Detroit
Minneapolis
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Cincinnatti
Toronto
Montreal
Houston
Dallas
San Antonio

Where we will have the central, north-central, south-east, mid-atlantic, north-east, and north-east-er divisions. Mmmmmm, good!

#12

Well…yeah. If they want to see a baseball game, they should move to civilization, like the rest of us. If you want to call Cubs and Sox fans civilized, anyway. (Ahaha! Mocking Chicago baseball fans is one of my hobbies.)

#13

I don’t know if I’d call Houston “civilization.” :wink:

Besides, Honolulu alone has 371,000 people. Why doesn’t it have a baseball team? Kansas City has a team, and it has only 146,000 people.

It’s. Just. Not. Right.

#14

If you’re not asking this rhetorically… it’d be even more unfair than what the MLB did to the Expos in their last years, when they played some home games in Montreal and others in San Juan, P.R. You’d either have some enormous homestands and roadtrips for the Hawaiian team, or a huge number of very long flights, for them and for everybody who played them in Honolulu. I think the closest major league city to Hawaii is San Diego, some 5 hours and 45 minutes away. That’s the equivalent of a cross-country flight just to play a team in your own division.

#15

There’s also what I call “The Vegas Issue.” People love going to Hawaii, but is anybody going to want to go there to see a baseball game? I’m not so sure.

#16

I’m confused. I’m talking about a major league baseball team **for the people of Hawaii, **not the people of San Diego, or any other mainland city. San Diego has its own team. Hawaii does not.

Yes, the team would have to fly 11 hours to reach New York. Big deal. New York has to fly 5 1/2 (or is it 6?) hours to reach San Diego. It’s a 4 1/2 hour flight from LA to Honolulu.

#17

The issue is that you need to find a way to fill the baseball stadium with people, which means you need to draw them away from whatever they’d usually be doing. I think that would be hard to do in Hawaii.
You’re talking about millions of seats every season, and not everyone in the Honolulu area is going to buy season tickets. That’s why I mentioned Vegas. People sometimes say that if you put a baseball team there, the out-of-towners would go see them play. I think that’s wrong. If you go to Vegas, you’re probably going there to gamble and see all the craziness. Same with Hawaii: people go for the weather and all of that wonderful stuff, and I don’t think baseball is going to compete well with those things on people’s limited vacation time. So I’m not sure you’d get enough people to go to the games.

The Padres are the MOST DISTANT team from the Mets. They’re in different divisions, so they don’t play very much. The teams the Mets play the most are in Philadelphia, Florida, DC, and Atlanta, and none are more than 3 hours away.

The Pineapples would be 5 1/2 to six hours from the CLOSEST team. I’m hypothetically sticking the Honolulu team in today’s NL West, they have to fly for five to six hours each to get to San Diego, LA, Phoenix, and San Francisco, and 7 1/2 or 8 hours to get to Denver. Also, any road game would involve a time change of three hours, minimum. I think this would be hell on the players.

And actually, if you just threw this team in there next year, they’d probably go in the AL West, with Oakland, Seattle, Anaheim, and Texas. The teams would all be a little farther away, and Texas is 8+ hours away.

#18

Yes, but you’re making it sound as though the stadium would be built for out-of-towners. It wouldn’t. It would be built for the people who live in Hawaii. There are 900,000 on the island of Oahu alone, and this state LOVES baseball. I don’t think they’d have any problem filling a slightly smaller stadium.

I think you mean “The Sharks.” :smiley:

Perhaps, but I’ll bet you’d find players willing to give it a go.

#19

Note that **I[/b[ had a team in San Jose.

Also, the argument against KC regarding Honolulu shouldn’t apply. The smaller populations are ALWAYS going to have trouble drawing. That includes Pittsburgh, St Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, et al. That’s why I like including San Antonio and such.

#20

That’s 160 miles. And many folks have suggested both Seattle and Portland which are about the same distance.

I also noticed a few folks picked Montreal. Didn’t recent history just teach us something?