alternatehistory.com

((Total note here; much of the actual baseball action, which will take a decent amount of the focus, will be simulated using Baseball Mogul 2015. You will notice that the rosters of our main beginning year, 1958, are different than IOTL. To account for the divergence in history, I've begun simulation in our year of divergence, 1952, and have simulated forward to 1958.))

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CURRENTLY ON HIATUS

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BACKGROUND

Bill Veeck was perhaps the most contemptible owner in the American League, viewed by his fellow owners with detest and generally as an opportunist, but a generally capable owner. His various schemes to have a city all to himself - including an effort to push the much more famous St. Louis Cardinals out - had previously gone for naught, and by now, his scheme was to move the St. Louis Browns out. For their part, the Browns were oft-beleaguered and had little success. Veeck had, earlier in the year, begrudgingly allowed his team's road games to be showed on television, part of a grander strategy to gain favor with the other owners. Though this had not worked in a gambit to convince the league to forbid Anheuser-Busch from buying the Cardinals, though the concession would come out in his favor.

In July of 1952, facing flat-lining attendance (only several thousand) and poor on-the-field performance, the St. Louis Browns announced, following approval from the American League owners, that they were moving to Milwaukee. The Boston Braves and American League came to an agreement where the Braves would acquire the lucrative and successful San Francisco Seals as a minor league affiliate in exchange for losing the Milwaukee Brewers minor league club. The deal was soon finalized and the St. Louis Browns, it was announced, were to become the Milwaukee Brewers and would play in Municipal Stadium, which had been partly constructed as an effort to lure them.

The last move that the St. Louis Browns made was to sign a Negro-league player named Henry Aaron from Alabama, outbidding the New York Giants and Boston Braves for the privilege.

The baseball fan, of course, knows the tragedy that struck the fan of the New York National League fan in 1957. The struggles between Walter O'Malley and Robert Moses strike the old Dodger fan with sadness and are generally the stuff of legend. Regardless, by the fall of 1957, it became clear that New York's oldest ball clubs, arguably its most-loved teams, were both moving to the West Coast. In Boston, another agreement was brewing. Lou Perini, owner of the Braves, had tried unsuccessfully several times to move to Kansas City and elsewhere, but he failed in all efforts. A new opportunity presented itself, however; the new San Francisco Giants were impeding on the grounds of the San Francisco Seals. Perini, with New York lawyer William Shea in tow to help him, came to an agreement that the Boston Braves would relocate to New York for the 1958 season and beyond, filling the void left by the fabled Giants and Dodgers. For their part, the Boston club would rename itself the New York Atlantics, taking the "New York" moniker as a nod to the old New York Giants, and "Atlantics" as a nod to one of the Dodgers original names. Playing in the Polo Grounds until 1961, the Atlantics would eventually take permanent residence in Moses's planned coliseum in Flushing.

In Boston, few were upset to see the Braves leave. The team ran constant losses in the 1950s and had bottomed out in 1957, finishing 71-83, in sixth place. For those diehards that had remained fans of the oft-beleaguered team, a trip to New York lay ahead, and many would make that trek in the coming years. The team's best player, Warren Spahn, had been traded to the Yankees at the end of 1955, but several young stars - ones that the New York fans, and not the Boston fans, would come to know - would eventually define the team, such as first baseman Willie McCovey.

John Quinn, who decided to stay on as the General Manager of the New York Atlantics, decided that the best move for the short term was to try to acquire young players in the developmental leagues while bringing in old Dodgers and Giants stars to bring the fans to the park and try to win some games in 1958 as well. The 39-year old Jackie Robinson, who had bat .292-9-42 in 1957 for the Dodgers, was the first acquisition of the winter of 1957 for the Atlantics. Having been displaced by the more talented young Charlie Neal, the Atlantics purchased the civil rights pioneer for $90,000 - a considerable sum. Around him were a team of what Quinn's scouts had considered promising young players such as eighteen year old Claude Osteen and popular young star Eddie Mathews, who had been the team's starting third baseman since 1952.

The New York Atlantics were ready to do business in New York.



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Veeck's move had lead to significant tumult in the mid 1950s, as other teams - besides the Giants and Dodgers - looked to move as well. In 1955, the Mack family of Philadelphia decided to part with their inheritance - the Philadelphia Athletics - Arnold Johnson, who owned not only facilities in Kansas City, where the team was to move, but also Yankee Stadium[1]. The Athletics, who soon moved to the aforementioned Kansas City, joined the new Brewers club as one of the newer western baseball teams, beginning the exodus that would eventually sweep the Giants and Dodgers to California. Another founding member of the American League experienced change in 1955, when Clark Griffith - longtime owner of the Washington Senators - died, and his adoptive son Calvin took control of the franchise. After the sale of Griffith Stadium to Washington D.C., Griffith began to pursue a way out of the nation's capitol, looking at Denver and Oakland before controversially settling on Toronto, at which point the agreement was vetoed by the other American League owners due to the unpopularity of a team called from the nation's capital city moving elsewhere[2]. At the urging of politicians, the team eventually decided to move just a few miles north to Baltimore, beginning play in 1958 as the Baltimore Orioles. Of the major relocation in the history of baseball, this has been regarded by historians as the most "gentle" of all the moves of the tumultuous 1950s and 1960s, allowing fans of the Washington club to travel just forty miles north to see the club play. Though initial rumors of relocation meant Washington business interests threatened to begin a new expansion league in the team (as had been going on in Minneapolis)[3], they eventually lost popular support as they found themselves outflanked by Griffith. Between 1953 and 1958, six of baseball's sixteen teams had moved, and other cities throughout the country - such as Houston, which would appear in the top ten of cities population wise for the first time in the 1960 census - began to smell blood in the water for a baseball franchise.​

MLB Arrangement by 1958

American League:
Boston Red Sox
Chicago White Sox
Cleveland Indians
Detroit Tigers
Kansas City Athletics (from Philadelphia Athletics, 1955)
Milwaukee Brewers (from St. Louis Browns, 1953)
New York Yankees
Baltimore Orioles (from Washington Senators, 1958)

National League:
Chicago Cubs
Cincinnati Red Legs
Los Angeles Dodgers (from Brooklyn Dodgers, 1958)
New York Atlantics (from Boston Braves, 1958)
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates
San Francisco Giants (from New York Giants, 1958)
St. Louis Cardinals

WORLD SERIES RESULTS BY YEAR to 1958[4]

1957: New York Yankees (96-58) over St. Louis Cardinals (88-66)
1956: Detroit Tigers (102-52) over Pittsburgh Pirates (90-64)
1955: New York Giants (95-59) over Detroit Tigers (101-53)
1954: New York Yankees (92-62) over Brooklyn Dodgers (92-62)
1953: New York Yankees (103-51) over New York Giants (90-64)
1952: St. Louis Cardinals (101-53) over New York Yankees (105-49)​

[1] - OTL
[2] - In OTL, he reached a first agreement with Minneapolis before eventually moving the team there
[3] - OTL expansion interest came from New York under William A. Shea, who has been included in this timeline in the Braves move
[4] - Year-by-year results were OTL through 1952
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