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TheMajor League Baseball relocations of the 1950s–1960s brought severalMajor League Baseball franchises to theWestern andSouthern United States, expanding the league's geographical reach. This was in stark contrast to the early years of modernbaseball, when theAmerican League placed teams inNational League cities.Chicago,Boston,Philadelphia, andSt. Louis had two teams;New York City had three. With no teams west of St. Louis or south ofWashington, D.C., baseball was effectively confined to theNortheast andMidwest.
Baseball's expansion mirrored the westward movement of the U.S. population during a flourishing postwar economy that saw the arrival of commercialjet travel. Economic push and pull factors caused many teams to move, and the emergence of cities in the new frontier allowed baseball teams to pop up across the country. The moves of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to California in 1958 opened the West Coast to the market of baseball.
Since 1960, the National and American Leagues have added a total of 14 teams (seven in each league).[1]
During the early years of the American League as a major league, the league placed franchises in cities that were either in direct competition with National League teams (New York City,Chicago,Boston,Philadelphia, andSt. Louis) or in markets abandoned by the National League after the 1899 contraction (Cleveland;Washington, D.C.; and brieflyBaltimore). OnlyDetroit, home of theDetroit Tigers, was a true "new" baseball market for the American League, although the National League had previously hosted theDetroit Wolverines between 1881 and 1888.
In these early years, only two National League markets had no American League counterpart:Cincinnati andPittsburgh. The American League agreed not to place a team in Pittsburgh, home to the then-dominantPittsburgh Pirates, as part of theNational Agreement in 1903.[2] No second team was placed in Cincinnati to compete with theCincinnati Reds.
After the remains of the original American League Baltimore Orioles went to New York in 1903, where they ultimately became reborn as theNew York Yankees, no major league team moved for 50 years. This also reflected the population at the time, as most of the major population areas were in theNortheast andMidwestern United States in the aftermath ofReconstruction and later theGreat Migration. An abortive attempt to move theSt. Louis Browns to Los Angeles in December 1941 was derailed by the entry of the U.S. intoWorld War II.[3] Until the 1950s, Baseball was tied to the history and culture of New York City, home to three of the best teams: the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers.[4]
Over the years, though, it became apparent that one team would be more popular than the other in a given market. In cities with multiple teams, owners would be competing with each over the same fan base. The economics of the game began to change with the increase in live media coverage, especially television. The owners had a plan, and that was to have one team in each city, so that owners would not need to fight each other over customers. Boston would lose the Braves. Philadelphia would lose the A's. St. Louis would lose the Browns. New York would lose the Giants and the Dodgers.[5]
In Boston, despite theBoston Braves having been established much longer in the city and arguably being the oldest continuingprofessional sports franchise in North America, theBoston Red Sox were by far the more popular team at the gate and with fans. In addition, the Red Sox were largely successful on the field (except in the immediate years after sellingBabe Ruth to the Yankees) while the Braves were an also-ran and often in thesecond division of the National League. In stark contrast, the National League was able to hang on to St. Louis, where theSt. Louis Cardinals were more successful than theSt. Louis Browns.
One oddity would be Philadelphia, where the American League'sPhiladelphia Athletics were by far the more popular team in the city, led by longtime managerConnie Mack, as thePhiladelphia Phillies were mostly losing during this period. However, with the Phillies enjoying rare success in 1950 at the hands of theWhiz Kids, the tables instantly turned on the Athletics. Additionally, a "spite fence" built atShibe Park in 1935 (to keep spectators outside of the ballpark from watching the game for free), had the unintended result of the Athletics alienating their fan base in Philadelphia.[6] Still, the Phillies would not win aWorld Series until 1980, the last of the "original 16" teams to win a series and 25 years after the Athletics left town, during which they would win three more World Series championships before the Phillies broke through.
In New York City, the Yankees had long passed theNew York Giants in popularity, though the Giants remained popular and theBrooklyn Dodgers were gaining popularity as well.
Chicago would see the Cubs as roughly equal in popularity to the White Sox despite their constant losing seasons and theCurse of the Billy Goat allegedly preventing the Cubs from making the Fall Classic from 1945 to 2016. This can likely be attributed to the after effects of theBlack Sox Scandal of 1919 still apparent on the White Sox, who on several occasions nearly moved out of the Windy City. However the White Sox have not threatened, nor been considered a candidate for moving, since the opening of new Comiskey Park (nowRate Field) in 1991, with their 2005 World Series victory further cementing their future in Chicago.
The first moves were initially lateral moves. As they were tied down to slow railroad timetables, the first teams that moved stayed within Major League Baseball historical geographical core: the Northeast and upper Midwest, and to markets which did not have Major League Baseball.
The first move was the Boston Braves, who moved (for 1953) toMilwaukee, home of their top farm team, the Milwaukee Brewers. The City of Milwaukee fell in love with the Braves, with fan support of the team high, making the move highly profitable. The Milwaukee Braves would remain popular until the team moved to Atlanta in 1966.
Other owners took notice and began to issue similar threats. The St. Louis Browns moved toBaltimore for 1954, becoming theBaltimore Orioles (this was the era's sole west-to-east move). The Philadelphia Athletics moved toKansas City for 1955, briefly displacing the Cardinals as the westernmost town in the majors. Save for some controversy with the Athletics, these moves were not controversial, as these were three of the least successful teams in the majors, although the Browns and Braves had both won league championships in the 1940s.
Baseball experts considerWalter O'Malley to be "perhaps the most influential owner of baseball's early expansion era".[7] Following the1957 Major League Baseball season, he moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles.[8] For years O'Malley had tried to secure a site for a new stadium for the Dodgers in Brooklyn to no avail. The Dodgers' home at the time,Ebbets Field, was old and obsolete. Despite the Dodgers dominating the league, attendance at Ebbets Field dwindled, likely because of its age and the difficulty of accessing the stadium by car. Another explanation for the decline in attendance is the migration to the suburbs. People living in the suburbs did not want to attend games at night in the inner city.[9] Frustrated, he began to look elsewhere.
With the post–World War II population shifts south and west and the rise in transcontinental airplane service, many West Coast cities were actively pursuing Major League Baseball to move there; among them Los Angeles and San Francisco.Rosalind Wyman, the then-head of theLos Angeles Chamber of Commerce, was one of those championing a major league team in Los Angeles. Beginning in 1955, with the city's blessing, she began to solicit several major league teams, including the Dodgers, with the idea that they move to Los Angeles. Wyman and city officials attended the1956 World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees, at Ebbets Field, initially to meet withWashington Senators ownerCalvin Griffith who was attending the game, to convince Griffith to move his ailing Senators to Los Angeles. O'Malley, upon hearing of the planned meeting, immediately summoned Wyman for a meeting and earnestly began negotiations with her expressing his intent to have a new modern stadium built for the team, a request Wyman and city officials assured O'Malley would be no problem. Initially O'Malley planned to use his negotiations with Los Angeles as a ploy in his dealings with New York's all-powerful public building and development czarRobert Moses, who was preventing O'Malley from obtaining the site he was looking for in Brooklyn for hisnew stadium. However, as negotiations with Moses deteriorated—Moses wanted the Dodgers to move to a new stadium site inFlushing Meadows–Corona Park inQueens, which eventually becameShea Stadium—O'Malley realized that a deal with Los Angeles began to seem more of a reality. In addition, in Los Angeles, the Dodgers would be given land atChavez Ravine free of charge to build a stadium, which would eventually becomeDodger Stadium.[9]
At the same timeNew York Giants ownerHorace Stoneham was considering a move for the Giants. The Giants' aging home, thePolo Grounds, was becoming dilapidated by the mid-fifties, leading to a drop off in attendance for the team. Stoneham, like O'Malley, was also unable to secure a new stadium site for the team and initially was looking to move the Giants toMinneapolis, home to the Giants' top farm team, theMinneapolis Millers.[10] O'Malley invitedSan Francisco MayorGeorge Christopher to New York to meet with Stoneham and convinced him to join O'Malley on the West Coast at the end of the 1957 season, thus bringing the two teams' New York rivalry out to California. O'Malley needed another team to go west with him, for had he moved out west alone, theSt. Louis Cardinals—1,600 mi (2,575 km) away—[11][12] would have been the closest National League team. The joint move would make West Coast road trips economical for visiting teams.[13] Since the meetings occurred during the 1957 season and against the wishes ofCommissioner of BaseballFord Frick, there was media gamesmanship.[14] When O'Malley moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn, the story transcended the world of sport and he found himself on the cover ofTime magazine.[15] Thecover art for the issue was created by sports cartoonistWillard Mullin,[16] long noted for his caricature of the "Brooklyn Bum" that personified the team.
The dual moves broke the hearts of New York's National League fans, but ultimately were successful for both franchises and for Major League Baseball.[8] The move was an immediate success as well, because the Dodgers set a major-league, single-game attendance record in their first home appearance, with 78,672 fans at theLos Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which would be their temporary home for several years until their new stadium was ready.[13]
The moves received considerable controversy: the loss of the Dodgers was especially painful because the team was one of the last vestiges ofBrooklyn's status as acity in its own right prior to 1898. Professional baseball would not return to Brooklyn until 2001, in the form of the minor-leagueBrooklyn Cyclones team playing at Coney Island, but Brooklyn would not receive another major league sports franchise until theNational Basketball Association'sNew Jersey Nets moved to the borough in 2012.[17]
New York City mayorRobert F. Wagner asked attorney William A. Shea to head up a committee to acquire a new National League team for New York. After pitching to Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh, Shea realized he was asking a team to do what he couldn't—that was move a team from a market that supported it. Almost immediately the goal was switched from moving franchises to expanding the league. Using contacts in government, he was able to force MLB (by lobbying for the end of MLB's Anti-Trust exemption) to add two American League teams and two National League teams.[18] TheNew York Mets were eventually added as anexpansion team, beginning play in 1962. Ironically, the Yankees' attendance declined slightly in the years immediately following the Dodgers' and Giants' departure, and the Mets consistently drew more fans than the Yankees through the early- to mid- 1970s. The Mets today are often considered "New York City's team" while the Yankees have a wider fanbase, similar to that of football'sDallas Cowboys.[19]
The Braves and Athletics did not stay in their locations for very long. The Braves, despite success in Milwaukee, moved toAtlanta for 1966 while the Athletics set up shop inOakland for 1968. Both markets would eventually get replacement teams: theMilwaukee Brewers andKansas City Royals, respectively. The Braves would not have consistent success in Atlanta until the 1990s, while the A's were intermittently successful.
In 1970, the one-year-oldSeattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee to become the Brewers.
The other moves for the next several decades involvedWashington, D.C. The original Washington Senators moved to theTwin Cities region to become theMinnesota Twins (beginning play as such in 1961), and the expansion Senators that replaced them moved toArlington, Texas (in theDallas–Fort Worth region) to become theTexas Rangers (beginning play as such in 1972). The owners of the Giants, White Sox, and Pirates (in the latter's case, as a result of thePittsburgh drug trials) all threatened to move, though none made good on them; and all three markets to which these teams threatened to move (Toronto, theTampa Bay Area, andDenver, respectively) would later receiveexpansion teams of their own.
There were no more moves until 2005, when MLB moved theMontreal Expos to D.C. and renamed them theWashington Nationals.
The most recent move is currently ongoing. After the 2024 season, theOakland Athletics left for an eventual permanent home inLas Vegas. While theirnew Las Vegas ballpark is being built (expected to open in 2028), the team is playing as theAthletics (without a geographic identifier) inWest Sacramento, California.
Oakland and Montreal are the only cities since 1901 that lost a major league franchise without getting another one. This is not counting the short-livedFederal League of 1914 and 1915; however, all Federal League markets save two—Buffalo andIndianapolis—either had a franchise in one of the two established leagues at the time or got one later. As of 2022, MLB officials have expressed an interest in the return of baseball to Montreal, and the city is a leading candidate for a proposed expansion to 32 teams.[20]
Most moves during this time did not involve a change in ownership. This means that the main economic incentive for the MLB to expand was not large offers from prospective buyers in western cities. The expansion occurred because franchise owners expected higher profits in the other location.[21]
Expansion of MLB to all cities capable of supporting a franchise in the sport is economically beneficial for the league as a whole. This reduces the possibility of the formation of a rival league, a problem that baseball dealt with in its early history. Monopoly control of the sport is essential to many aspects of player contracts, drafts and other parts of the game. Baseball's anti-trust exemption was important in the development and expansion of the league.[21]
In MLB, all local TV revenue is assigned to the home team. The league has complex revenue sharing rules, but data shows that media revenue was an economic pull factor for the franchise moves. The yearly gains in media revenue associated with the moves are:
Data is unavailable for the moves of the Dodgers and the Giants. Based on this data, TV revenues influenced the franchise move of Washington, Milwaukee, and Kansas City and perhaps St. Louis. TV revenues have played an important role in roughly half of the moves that have taken place. James Quirk argues that under a TV sharing arrangement similar to the National Football League, or even under a split with visiting teams, the TV lure would be much less of an incentive for moves.[21]
The protection of the league from competition and economic benefits of media revenues are direct economic pull factors. Other advancements in the U.S. during this time also had an effect on the ability and desire of teams to move and the league to expand. The expansion of MLB coincided with an increase in the ease of travel by commercial jets, making it easier for players to fly across the continent. This is important given that when Walter O'Malley moved his Dodgers to Los Angeles, the closest team, other than the San Francisco Giants, was in St. Louis.
The expansion of baseball is also accompanied by the increase in popularity of television. Baseball expanded, in large part, because interest in the sport grew leading up to and during the 1950s and 1960s. In home televisions allowed for this increase in popularity and helped make New York's pastime, America's pastime.
From 1903 to 1952, no major league baseball team moved to a different city. From 1953 to 1969, there were eight moves.
