Inside the Diamond Trade: Relocation in Major League Baseball
In 1876 eight baseball clubs — the Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Louisville Grays, Mutual of New York, Philadelphia Athletics, St Louis Brown Stockings — reached an agreement to become charter members of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, heralding the start of what would eventually become the MLB of today. 142 years on and only two of those initial franchises remain standing, and Major League Baseball is now 30 teams and two divisions strong, home to one of the most valuable and recognisable team brands in world sport, and six months away from hosting two regular season games on the clay in England for the first time ever, having already put markers down in Mexico, Japan and Australia in recent years.
Followers of baseball in the late 1800s — at a time when it was a struggle to hold together an eight-team National League from one season to the next due to the financial pressures of keeping a team afloat — could be forgiven for expressing surprise at the thriving success of modern day baseball in America. Yet, more so than the success of MLB as a sporting institution, what may be more surprising to observers from the 1800s, given the turbulent nature of the league at the time, is that any of the contemporary franchises of the era continue to exist through to the present day. Chicago and St Louis residents of an 1870s vintage would no doubt be filled with pride to discover their clubs still standing strong, albeit under the guise of the Cubs and the Cardinals as opposed to the White Stockings and Brown Stockings as they were then. Likewise, fans of 1870s Boston baseball would no doubt be thrilled to hear their Boston Red Stockings franchise survives to this day, albeit slightly less than thrilled to learn they’re now the Braves and play out of Atlanta.
Original Boston Red Stockings fans would likely be faced with a slightly easier decision of where to place their allegiance today (given a reincarnated Boston Red Sox franchise survives to this day) than their Chicago White Stockings counterparts. The White Stockings of Chicago still exist — albeit as the White Sox — but are a different franchise altogether from the original White Stockings franchise. That lineage has passed down to the Cubs of Chicago, creating quite the dilemma for these hypothetical, time-travelling, 19th Century Chicago baseball fanatics. Is it the institution or the identity that matters more — where does the allegiance lay?
The history of Major League Baseball (MLB) as an entity dates back to 1903, to the partnership established between the National League — founded in 1873, the world’s oldest current professional sports league — and the fledgling American League founded just two years prior. By this point, 29 years after its founding, the National League had been home to 28 different baseball franchises, only 8 of which survived into the 1903 season.
The graveyard of National League franchises going into 1903 included teams from four states that to this day, remain without an MLB franchise of their own: Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky and Rhode Island. Whilst Indiana has the NFL’s Colts and the NBA’s Pacers for consolation, Connecticut, Kentucky and Rhode Island are without a franchise in any of the four major leagues. That despite two attempts at baseball’s National League from Kentucky in the late 1800s with the Louisville Grays and the Louisville Colonels, and a crack at both baseball (Hartford Dark Blues) and the NHL (Hartford Whalers) from Connecticut. Likewise, Rhode Island had an eight-year spell in the National League between 1878–85 with the Providence Grays, and a short-lived stint of major league football in the NFL between 1925–31 with the Providence Steam Roller, yet were unable to sustain either franchise despite a championship win for both the Grays and the Steam Roller during their short existences.
Montreal would later join this less-than-illustrious list of teams to lose an MLB franchise and never have a replacement when the Expos were relocated to Washington in 2005 to become the Washington Nationals — more on that later. That move would reduce Montreal’s count of major league teams down to just one — the Montreal Canadiens — but a move that doesn’t exactly leave Montreal short on championships. It also left the Toronto Blue Jays as the sole Canadian representative in MLB, a role Toronto has also filled in the NBA since 2001.
Back in 1903 the days of franchise relocation were mostly confined to the future — brought about by the spread of the growing American population westward and the increasing accessibility of air travel in the 50s and 60s — but the early 20th Century was the heyday for name changes and team re-branding. By 1903 the Chicago White Stockings were already the Chicago Cubs, but not before stints as the Chicago Colts and Chicago Orphans in between. St Louis had settled on the Cardinals after experimenting with the names Brown Stockings, Browns, and during a humble year of 1899, the Perfectos. Stockings were a thing of the past by the time 1903 came around, with Boston, Cincinnati, St Louis and Chicago (twice) having dropped the name in favour of a short-hand version — Sox or Reds — or a different name altogether in the case of the Cardinals, Cubs, and Beaneaters, as the original Boston Red Stockings were then known in 1903.
It seems by the 20th Century gray had also gone out of fashion with no less than four teams having adopted the name and subsequently dropped out of the league (Milwaukee, Louisville, Providence) or rebranded to something a bit more colourful — in the case of Brooklyn this was to be the Superbas, after short spells as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, and the Bridegrooms again for a second time. This was only the start for Brooklyn who would then go on to adopt the name of the Trolley Dodgers — a nod to the newly electrified trolley cars that criss-crossed Brooklyn at the time, becoming faster and more dangerous than the horse-drawn trolleys car they replaced — before reverting back to the Superbas for a season in 1913. They would then go on to become the Robins and then finally settle on the Dodgers as their chosen name, before Dem Bums eventually jumped ship to LA in 1958 becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers as we know them today.
The early 20th Century was however notable for one early move in particular — the relocation of the Baltimore Orioles franchise from Maryland to join the Giants and the Brooklyn Superbas in New York where they would go on to become the famed New York Yankees, winning 27 World Series titles along the way. New York would of course go on to lose both the Giants and the Dodgers in 1958 as the pair upped-sticks to take baseball to the West Coast for the first time. Having been a three-team city for so many years, New York would have to make do with having just the Yankees for a few years, until a wave of MLB expansion brought the Mets in to fill the void left by the two recently-departed franchises.
One of the most notable things about this early piece of Yankees history is the involvement of the Baltimore Orioles, a present-day divisional rival of the Yankees. The Baltimore Orioles prior to their relocation to New York were already the second reincarnation of the Orioles, having spent 18 years in the National League at the end of the 19th century before reforming two years later as members of the newly-founded American League. This life as the Orioles would last only two years before New York beckoned, leaving Baltimore Oriole-less until 1954, at which point the St Louis Browns (originally the Milwaukee Brewers) lost the fight for St Louis. In the mid-50s, an era of westward relocation, the Browns were moving East to bring baseball back Baltimore, for chapter three of the Orioles.
The Brewers of course are also a current MLB franchise, but can only lay claim to being the fourth such franchise in Milwaukee history. The first two Milwaukee franchises — the Grays and the Brewers — combined for a total of just two major league seasons, not exactly selling Milwaukee as a prime major league baseball spot. Nonetheless, major league baseball returned to Milwaukee in 1953, bringing about the eighth name change for the original Boston Red Stockings franchise. The Red Stockings adopted the Braves moniker in 1912, and then re-adopted it in 1941 after a brief spell as the less-intimidating Boston Bees between 1936–41. Departing Boston in 1952 would leave the Red Sox to rule the roost in Boston and give the Braves a stomping ground of their own in Milwaukee. However, we know the story doesn’t end there, for the Braves play out of Atlanta. Despite the Milwaukee Braves, to this day, being the only major league team to have played more than one season and never had a losing record, their days were numbered in Milwaukee once new owner William Bartholomay acquired the franchise in 1962 and immediately started shopping around for a larger television market. A fast-growing Atlanta — earning the right to the ‘Braves’ name — was desperate to lure a major league franchise to the city, and in pursuit of that ambition undertook the construction of an $18 million, 52,000 seat arena in the space of a year, and immediately went shopping around MLB and the NFL. After a failed attempt to entice the Kansas City Athletics to Atlanta, Bartholomay found his match and the Milwaukee Braves were off to Atlanta to become the Atlanta Braves. Despite the transitory nature of the franchise during the mid-1900s, one constant during this whole period was third baseman Eddie Matthews, the only Braves player to have played for the franchise in Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta.
That would obviously leave Milwaukee, again, without a Major League Baseball franchise, and when Milwaukee missed out on being awarded one of the four new expansion spots offered in 1969, Major League Baseball’s return to Milwaukee must have felt a long way off. However, after the Seattle Pilots’ first-season struggles with an inadequate stadium, lack of finances and poor attendance, the team was declared bankrupt six days before opening day of the 1970 season and a relocation to Milwaukee was pushed through at the last. The last-minute move to Milwaukee meant the Pilots’ legacy lives on through the blue and gold uniforms (rather than the Brewers’ desired navy and red).
This wasn’t to be the end for the Brewers, who would go on to move across from the American League into the National League in 1998, a season that saw the league expand to its current 30-team structure. Two new expansion franchises were awarded in 1998– the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays — taking the count to 15 teams in each league. At a time when interleague games were fairly limited the odd number of teams in each league created a situation where at least one team from each league would end up idle on any given matchday. The solution was to move the Brewers across into the National League, thus creating an even number of teams in each league.
By 2011 interleague play would become part and parcel of the game, at which point a 16:14 split of teams no longer made much sense. This provided an opportunity for the Houston Astros to jump across to the American League, giving themselves a shot at becoming the first (and so far only) team to win both an American League and National League pennant, which they duly did during their World Series winning season of 2017.
The Astros thus became the 23rd current MLB franchise to win the World Series, leaving just seven franchises yet to win the ultimate prize in baseball. The Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays and Texas Rangers have all made it to the World Series but left empty-handed, whilst the Seattle Mariners and the Washington Nationals are the only teams yet to make an appearance on the big stage.
A look at the history books though reveals that Washington aren’t in fact without a World Series title, with the Washington Senators having beaten the New York Giants in the 1924 World Series. This championship however belongs in Minnesota, where it sits alongside the two subsequent Twins’ championship victories of ’87 and ’91. Likewise, the Athletics (Philadelphia: 5, Oakland: 4), Braves (Boston: 1, Milwaukee: 1, Atlanta: 1), Dodgers (Brooklyn: 1, Los Angeles: 5) and Giants (New York: 5, San Francisco: 3) are all multi-city World Series winners.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, given the Braves’ and Dodgers’ early proclivity for name changes, all 3 Braves titles and all 5 Dodgers titles were won under the Braves and Dodgers monikers — sadly depriving us of championship wins for the fantastically named Boston Beaneaters and Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers.
Name changes have been a common occurrence throughout the history of Major League Baseball, but primarily as a rebranding of the name — Gothams to Giants, Alleghenys to Pirates, Colt .45s to Astros — as opposed to the team’s physical location. However, because teams tend to represent both a state and a specific city within the state, there can sometimes be an underlying tension in the team identity. Most Major League Baseball franchises have their identities rooted in their home cities — whilst of course still representing the wider state — but there are a few that have elected for a broader representation of the state as a whole. The Texas Rangers, Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies and the Minnesota Twins all derive their names from the state rather than their cities, and with justifiable reason.
The Texas Rangers, established in 1972, lent on Texas heritage for their identity, taking inspiration from the famous Texas Ranger Division of law enforcement for their name, making redundant any Texas/Arlington debate. In a similar vein, the Diamondbacks and Rockies were named for the Diamondback snakes native to the deserts of Arizona — as opposed to the streets of Phoenix — and Colorado’s Rocky Mountains respectively. The Minnesota Twins effectively have both, with the Twins being a nod to the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, two cities that have grown to encompass a single, shared metropolitan area now known as Minneapolis-Saint Paul.
The Angels and the Marlins remain the only teams to have undergone a state-city rebranding, both a result of ballpark relocations and investment politics. The Florida Marlins — as they were originally known — became the Miami Marlins in 2012 after moving to Marlins Park (a City owned ballpark) and reaching an agreement with the City to adopt a new name, logo and uniforms as a result.
The story of the Angels starts and finishes in the same place, with the franchise beginning life as the Los Angeles Angels and taking 51 years and four name changes to get back to square one. With a move out of Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field and into Anaheim for the 1966 season the Angels of LA became the California Angels, and would remain so for the next 30 years. That is until The Walt Disney Company took ownership of the team in 1997 and undertook a major reconstruction of Anaheim Stadium, to which the City of Anaheim contributed $30 million under the proviso that ‘Anaheim’ feature in the team’s name. Thus, they then became the Anaheim Angels.
Under new ownership again in 2005, a desire to see Los Angeles represented in the Angels’ name would see the team rebranded the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim — the team legally required to retain the ‘Anaheim’ suffix until the lease agreement was re-negotiated in 2016, at which point the Angels reverted back to their original name: the Los Angeles Angels. The ‘Angels’ name itself comes from the English translation of Los Angeles — The Angels — effectively making them The Angels Angels, the modern-day Worcester Worcesters — a team name that should never be forgotten.
Given we’re now 14 years removed from the league’s most recent relocation — the Expos to Washington — and 20 years on from the last round of expansions — which saw the Diamondbacks and Devil Rays join the NL and AL respectively — you could be forgiven for thinking MLB may have reached a permanent state of stasis. The acrimony around the league’s proposal for contraction, which ultimately ended in the relocation of the Expos to Washington appears to have blown over to be replaced by a renewed desire for further expansion. Having threatened Montreal — and the Minnesota Twins — with the prospect of the contraction of the league to 30 teams in 2001, shipped the team out to Puerto Rico for 22 ‘home’ games a season in 2003 and 2004 chasing increased revenues, and eventually relocated the franchise to Washington in 2005, there is understandably a feeling that Montreal was wronged, and is thus very near the top of the list for any potential future expansion franchises.
Another city near the top of that list, with an ownership group — the Portland Diamond Project — financial backing and state support for a stadium already lined-up is Portland. Back in 2003 Portland was manoeuvring to try and attract the departing Expos to Oregon, and in order to do so was granted a $150 million state grant towards the construction of a new stadium, a grant that’s available to this day, aiding Portland’s continued push for major league baseball. The City of Roses certainly has grand plans for that grant, recently releasing stunning plans for a landmark, state-of-the-art riverside stadium. Beyond Portland other potential expansion destinations touted by League Commissioner Rob Manfred include Charlotte (North Carolina) — the most populous state currently without an MLB franchise — Nashville, Vancouver, Vegas, and a longer-term prospect of the potential for expansion into Mexico.
The success, both on and off the ice of the Vegas Golden Knights in their inaugural season, and the impending arrival of the Raiders to Sin City has opened-up what was up until recently a bit of a no-go area for major league sports. The changing attitudes towards sports betting are also playing no small part in elevating Vegas’ status as an up-and-coming sports city.
Texans — certainly those from San Antonio and Austin — would no doubt put forward a compelling case of their own for why they should become the home of what would be a third Texas-based MLB franchise. Already the second most-populous state in the US, Texas could end up growing by as much as 50% over the next 25 years if current population trends continue, bringing the population count up to around 40 million, creating real demand for a third franchise. By way of context, California, the US’s most populous state at 40 million people currently supports 5 MLB franchises. In fact, San Antonio and Austin could make compelling arguments for a franchise each — San Antonio is the larger of the two population-wise, but Austin has a faster-growing population and higher per capita income due in part to its status as a haven for tech firms and start-ups. This of course gives Austin the advantage of having the desirable millennial demographic MLB is so desperately coveting for the future of the game. Additionally, Austin is currently without a franchise in any of the four major leagues, this the eleventh most-populous city in the US.
The appeal of expansion into Mexico is obvious, although not without its challenges. Monterrey would appear the obvious destination for any potential future Mexican franchise given the city has previously hosted seven MLB international games and doesn’t have the issue of elevation that a Mexico City franchise would cause. Mexico City sits at an elevation of over 7,300 feet above sea level, that’s more than 2,000 feet higher than Denver, home to the league’s highest ballpark at present — Coors Field. That in itself sits 4,100 feet higher than the next highest ballpark in the league — the Diamondback’s Chase Field — so a ballpark in Mexico City would only intensify the hitter-friendly conditions at Coors Field created by the dry and thin air. With a number of other viable candidates on the list a Mexican franchise certainly doesn’t seem likely any time soon.
Any talk of expansion will likely remain on the back-burner until the League has resolved its current stadium issues with Tampa Bay and Oakland, where a potential for relocation lingers in the background. Nonetheless expansion to 32 seems inevitable, and optimal, given that it would facilitate the realignment to two 16-team leagues, and even divisions — whether that be four divisions of four teams or two divisions of eight teams in each league. There is of course also the small incentive of collecting two very lucrative expansion fees.
The inaugural wave of MLB expansion back in 1961 brought with it a price tag of just $2.1 million for the two new franchises — the Los Angeles Angels and the then Washington Senators (now Texas Rangers). The league would go through a further five rounds of expansion over the preceding 37 years, culminating in the expansion to 30 teams in 1998. By this time the asking price for a coveted spot on MLB’s roster had increased to $130 million apiece, a price tag happily paid by the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Two years prior the NBA had charged a $125 million expansion fee to the Grizzlies and Raptors as the league expanded into Canada for the first time, whilst the NHL would set their price at $80 million for the buy-in of the Nashville Predators in 1998.
Just twenty years on from Nashville’s buy-in to the league, Seattle has just recently been confirmed as the league’s 32nd franchise and is set to fork out $650 million for the privilege. That fee is some $150 million more than the Vegas Golden Knights paid in 2016 — partly reflective of the huge success of bringing hockey to the desert and partly reflective of the relative value of a team in the Seattle market. The $500 million that Vegas paid immediately put them middle-of-the-road in terms of franchise value in the NHL, just below the average team value of $594 million at the time, but comfortably above the least-valuable franchise, the Arizona Coyotes, valued at $300 million.
When you consider that the least-valuable MLB franchise is currently the Tampa Bay Rays at $900 million — the only franchise worth less than $1 billion — and the MLB average sits at $1.65 billion, it’s obvious we’re looking at big money for any potential buy-in to the MLB in the near future, potentially even in the region of a 10 figure sum. Regardless of the potential price tag there certainly won’t be a shortage of suitors lining up at MLB’s door when they do eventually open up the doors to their next expansion.
@cj_freestone
References and further reading:
https://www.si.com/mlb/2016/04/22/mlb-expansion-montreal-mexico-city-charlotte-portland
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/24078578/where-nfl-nba-mlb-nhl-wnba-mls-nwsl-look-expansion
https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/19/major-league-baseball-expansion-proposal-realignment
http://www.dfsstrategy.com/ballparks-effect-batters-mlb-dfs-part-1/
https://www.nhl.com/news/seattle-can-begin-nhl-expansion-process-says-bettman/c-293782092
https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2018/04/11/baseball-team-values-2018/#b67eca03fc09
