The Los Angeles Browns?

[westsidegrounds]

1) Probably would've been renamed the "Angels" in accordance with local tradition, just as it was in Baltimore.

2) Probably would've done well - having all SoCal to themselves would've meant much more $$$ to spend on salaries, scouting, farm teams, etc. than being #2 in the Mound City.

3) Probably would've soon been joined by the Athletics (in SF - or Oakland??), who were the second most financially troubled team in the AL. Connie Mack was never one to put sentiment ahead of realism.

4) But even without another team on the Coast, the Brownies had approval - going to St. Louis had meant a financial loss for visiting teams since the late '20s. Even with the extra travel expense, LA promised a better return.


(tip o' the Hatlo hat to B. McCurdy for inspiring these thoughts)

[Bill_McCurdy]

WSG -

Good thinking on the subject. Check out the 7-post thread on Page 3 of this forum entitled "St. Louis Browns?" by Hammerin Hank. Maybe some of those people will care to continue the discussion here - or else, cut & paste the comments they made on the previous discussion to this thread. There is much room for more "what might've been" speculation here.

Had the Browns gone to LA in 1942, ..... hmmm! ... who knows? Maybe Gene Autry would've eventually bought this version of the Angels. :noidea

[Aa3rt]

Before joining this board I'd never known that teams were setting their sights on the west coast prior to World War II. Two other threads that discuss this in detail appeared in the Brooklyn Dodgers forum:

The Los Angeles Senators?

And also in the Trivia forum:

63 Years Ago Today (Dec. 8)

Let me say that with air travel in its' infancy, I think a move to the west coast for the 1942 season would have been a bit premature. It took the use of jet airliners to become commonplace before the Dodgers and Giants could realistically consider the move.

BTW-Bill, I referred to an article in Trains magazine titled "Abner Doubleday never intended teams to fly" subtitled "Planes are a mode of travel, but trains were a way of life" for some of my information. In the article there's a story of the Pittsburgh Pirates and St. Louis Browns killing time at a train station in southern California. (The article doesn't elaborate as to why these two teams were there so I can only surmise it must have been spring training or maybe an exhibition series?-No year given.) Anyhow, it seems that Clint Countney and a sportswriter by the name of Milton Richman, a former minor-league ballplayer, then in the employ of UPI, held a race at trackside, with Clint losing his balance and scraping his hands on the cinders at trackside. The incident was hidden from Browns manager Rogers Hornsby for fear of his reaction.

[Bill_McCurdy]

"Anyhow, it seems that Clint Countney and a sportswriter by the name of Milton Richman, a former minor-league ballplayer, then in the employ of UPI, held a race at trackside, with Clint losing his balance and scraping his hands on the cinders at trackside. The incident was hidden from Browns manager Rogers Hornsby for fear of his reaction." ... Aa3rt

Milton Richman and his younger brother Arthur Richman are stories unto themselves. As two street urchins in the Bronx during the late 1930s, the Richman boys became Browns fans after being treated much kinder by the St. Louis club than they ever were by the mighty Yankees. Both ended up as sporstwriters and Milton even had a brief whirl at minor league ball. Now deceased, Milton Richman received the prestigious Taylor G. Spink Award from Cooperstown in 1980. See the following link. ...

http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers%5Fand%5Fhonorees/spink%5Fbios/richman%5Fmilton.htm

Arthur Richman is now considered the No. 1 Browns fan by the Browns Fan Club. He still works in baseball as senior advisor to George Steinbrenner.

[westsidegrounds]

Arthur Richman is now considered the No. 1 Browns fan by the Browns Fan Club. He still works in baseball as senior advisor to George Steinbrenner.

Criminy, where will it end? Last year I heard something good about Garth Brooks, and now this, making the steinmeister look OK. Jeekers!

Checked the old thread, it didn't really have much going on except the suggestion that the Nats might've joined the Browns out west instead of the A's. Unlikely, Griffith's club had a solid fan base (government jobs, the #1 local industry, had actually increased during the Depression), plus Griff got to have his picture taken with the President of the United States several times a year - giving him a season pass to the ballpark every Christmas, standing next to him on Opening day, etc. He was happy where he was.

[larrystaley]

Changed Scheduled for Los Angeles team in 1942

As a native of the Los Angeles area, I found it interesting that we could have had a major league team some nine years before I was born rather than as a six year old when the Dodgers moved west.

In any case, has anyone though I how the Los Angeles Browns / Angels would have had their schedule? I assume the projected schedules, even with limited United Air lines flight service (as was likely very expensive in that era) would have required extended single team and home stands and vice versa on the road. I would guess each American League team would have made only two visits each season to Los Angeles so as teams would have featured 11 games at home versus each team than each visit would have been either a 5 or 6 game homestand. Also, each home stand would have featured probably three teams or in total a three week home stand for the Browns / Angels (and the same on the road.

So you could picture the team starting the season with a homestand first a series from Tuesday to Sunday with the Washington Senators followed by a Tuesday to Sunday series with the Philadelphia A's, and perhaps concluding with a Tuesday to Saturday series with the New York Yankees before heading out on the road for a comparable three week road trip. I suppose teams could get used the scheduling but one could imagine after three or four seasons greatly renewed pressure to have a team in San Francisco.

Just curious that I did hear the American League had drawn up projected schedules in the event the deal was to have gone through (prior to Pearl Harbor) and if any one can substantiate the fact that these schedules did in fact include these extended home stands and road trips for the Browns / Angels.

Thanks!

[Bill_McCurdy]

home stands of all home stands ...

Larry -

I can't substantiate that actual schedules already had been worked out for the 1942 Los Angeles Angels (ne: Browns), but it's the only logical way the move could've worked in that era. That club would've been in for home and road stands that lasted 4 to 6 weeks at a time, and possibly longer.

You're also right that such an uncomfortable, irregular scheduling situation for the Angels and the entire league would soon enough also have brought about a clamoring for a second club to move to San Francisco. Try to figure out which club that might have been. The answer isn't as easy as it first seems, especially since that 2nd transplanted franchise needed to be an American League club.

The only other answers would have involved (1.) approving an expansion club for SF and increasing the AL to 10 clubs; or (2.) moving an NL franchise to SF in 1943 and approving inter-league play for the sake of allowing both leagues to share in the opportunity/pain of dealing with taking MLB coast to coast. Both of these alternatives would've required some bold thinking and action among the moguls who ran MLB in the 1940's, but, if that first move of the Browns to LA had happened, there's really no telling what may have followed.

[CaliforniaCajun]

1) Probably would've been renamed the "Angels" in accordance with local tradition, just as it was in Baltimore.

2) Probably would've done well - having all SoCal to themselves would've meant much more $$$ to spend on salaries, scouting, farm teams, etc. than being #2 in the Mound City.

3) Probably would've soon been joined by the Athletics (in SF - or Oakland??), who were the second most financially troubled team in the AL. Connie Mack was never one to put sentiment ahead of realism.

4) But even without another team on the Coast, the Brownies had approval - going to St. Louis had meant a financial loss for visiting teams since the late '20s. Even with the extra travel expense, LA promised a better return.


(tip o' the Hatlo hat to B. McCurdy for inspiring these thoughts)

I did read this in a book I had a long time ago about old ballparks. The Browns were going to go and play in the Coliseum until the attack on Pearl Harbor skewered the idea. With the nearest AL venue at the time being the White Sox, I have a feeling that MLB would have required that a second team locate there. O'Malley had to talk Horace Stoneham into moving the Giants so he could move the Dodgers to California.

Kind of like Wrigley Field and the lights. Wrigley was set to install lights at the ballpark in 1941 but instead donated them to the war effort. After that the Cubs didn't want night baseball until MLB threatened to move any World Series venues elsewhere and never let them have another All-Star Game.

[Big Whiskey]

I did read this in a book I had a long time ago about old ballparks. The Browns were going to go and play in the Coliseum until the attack on Pearl Harbor skewered the idea. With the nearest AL venue at the time being the White Sox, I have a feeling that MLB would have required that a second team locate there. O'Malley had to talk Horace Stoneham into moving the Giants so he could move the Dodgers to California.

If the Browns did jump at that, who would the other team be? Connie Mack wasn't in good financial shape after the depression; maybe he'd have moved the A's out there 25 years before they actually did.

I can't see any other AL teams abandoning their markets for either L.A. or San Francisco in 1940. Yankees - obviously not. The White Sox were plodding along in Chicago and going to L.A. would mean a smaller market than the South Side (remember, the Bay Area was a LOT smaller back then). Cleveland, D.C. and Boston were all larger markets than S.F., while Detroit was the nation's fourth largest city (the largest market served by only one team at the time) larger than both L.A. and S.F., and the Tigers certainly wouldn't have moved.

[64Cards]

In a book called "Spirit of St. Louis" which is a history of the Cards and Browns franchises, it is stated that the AL had given permission for the Browns to move to LA, it would have been announced on 12/8/41. As Larry said in his post, they were going to have the other 7 franchises make just 2 trips a year in LA, instead of the customary 4 trips and arrangements had been made with one of the airlines to fly them out in charters. I'm not sure if the commercial aircraft of that era would have held more than about 30 passengers.

Although it would have been a scheduling nightmare, anything had to be better than playing 11 road games in St. Louis are drawing only 15-20K fans for those ENTIRE 11 games. The Browns in the 30's had a couple seasons where they couldn't draw 100K for the season.

What I can't figure is why the Browns didn't go ahead with the plan to move to LA after WW2.

[wamby]

What I can't figure is why the Browns didn't go ahead with the plan to move to LA after WW2.

To keep the PCL from going off as an independent league, the Majors compromised with them and both organiztions decided that certain criteria had to be met in the immediate post-war era for a Major League team to come to California.

In the late 40s, Browns still wanted to move to LA, but there were so many hoops they had jump through, that Browns management said the hell with it.

By the early 50s, the situation had changed and the restricitions to moving into California. I believe this coincided with Bill Veeck's attempt to move the Browns to Milwaukee.

For a detailed discussion of this, you should read Baseball's Pivotal Era by William Marshall.