Supposedly, when Los Angeles was looking for a baseball team they were interested in the Washington Senators. So, let’s say Robert Moses, in a case of cosmic irony, gets hit by a city bus one day in 1956 and Walter O’Malley manages to get his domed stadium in Brooklyn. How would baseball changed if Calvin Griffith and the Washington Senators had made the move out west instead?
Four extra years of sub-.500 seasons before the Angels would have arrived?
Moving thread from IMHO to The Game Room.
The New York Mets would probably have never existed. The Mets were created specifically to fill the void in New York of no NL baseball. If the Dodgers never leave, there is no reason to create the Mets.
The Minnesota Twins would very likely have been created either when they were, as an expansion team along with the other 1961-1962 teams; the expansion Twins simply replace the expansion Mets, and so are probably a National League team. So while you’d end up with teams in effectively the same cities, of course baseball history as played on the field changes completely.
IIRC the mayor of Los Angeles at the time had been a Congressman and was afraid that a mostly mediocre team like the Senators would move out west. He wouldn’t have been in a much of a position to stop them, would he? Although the Senators reputation as “first in war, first in peace and last in the American League” is a little overdone. They were pretty successful in the mid 20s and 30s although the 1950s were bad. The Griffith family which owned the team was generally reasonably smart but under financed. The team in the 1960s was good with stars like Oliva, Killebrew and Kaat. Interesting although the Senators were slow to integrate (Washington was a Southern city and team), they were pretty good in signing Cuban players.
I think also in late 1941 the pitiful St Louis Browns were talking about moving to Los Angeles but Pearl Harbour happened.
Another thing is would another AL team had moved to San Francisco like the Giants were willing (they had originally planned to go to Minnesota where they had a successful minor league team before O’Malley changed Horace Stoneham’s mind). The AL might have been leery about allowing only one team west of the MIssissippi because of “travel expenses” in making an airplane flight for one series.
The Twins are an original franchise. The Rangers are the expansion team (Like the Twins, originally called the Washington Senators)
No Kirby Puckett. No Paul Molitor. No Minnesota Champions. No Toronto Jays.
He knows this. What he’s writing is just an alternative history. IF the Senators hadn’t moved to Minnesota, the Twins would still have been created–just through expansion rather than through franchise relocation.
It’s also possible that the Giants might’ve moved there since there would have been no reason for them to go to SF without an NL team in LA.
Given what actually DID happen with the Giants, it’s very likely that some AL team would have moved to SF. Interesting to speculate on which one that might have been. Attendance-wise, the teams having the most difficulty at that time were Cleveland and KC. Kind of fun to think about the A’s moving to SF in '58 instead of to Oakland a few years later…
Looking up Cleveland Indian attendance, it is kind of puzzling. They were generally 2nd or 3rd in the AL until 1956 when they dropped to 7th despite going 88-66. They stayed there until going 89-65 in 1959 and were second. But after the infamous Colavito for Kuenn trade, the team was mostly bad for about 35 years and the fans stayed away. Bill James once wrote that in the mid 50s the lifeforce for Cleveland seemed to drain out and it went to the Chicago White Sox as a lot of front office people (e.g. manager Al Lopez) went to the South Side.
I suppose if the Senators had gone to Los Angeles, the two baseball expansions of the 1960s would have been delayed. After the Dodgers and Giants left, Mayor Robert Wagner was re elected and got off his usual “we have a committee studying that” to actually having a committee do that. William Shea and Branch Rickey first tried to get various other teams to move and then threatened to form a new league, the Continental League. Baseball didn’t want a war, they had declining attendance and bonuses for rookies were getting higher (no amateur draft until 1965) so they took in four teams and made vague promises to other cities, four of which got teams in 1969.
Maybe baseball would have expanded just the same. There was money to be made with expansion fees given to the owners and the NFL, NHL and NBA did end up with wars against upstart leagues like the AFL, ABA and WHA.
Yes, I know, but if the Washington Senators move to Los Angeles, they don’t move to Minnesota. Instead, as I explained, the 1961 expansion would likely have created the Twins as an expansion outfit.
However, by now, teams would probably be in effectively the same cities, even though their origins would be different. The Giants would likely have moved to SF along with the Senators moving to LA; you then have no Mets, but the Dodgers remains in Brooklyn. Then in 1961, you’d probably see re-expansion into Washington, plus the Angels get created. After that I imagine expansion would have continued more or less as it did.