Browns in LA: 1939

It's well documented that the St. Louis Browns researched thoroughly a move to Los Angeles: owner Don Barnes and others looked at the logistics during the 1941 season and had their ducks in a row to put it to the American League at the winter meetings in December 1941. Of course, Pearl Harbor put an end to that.

But suppose the idea had been floated during the abysmal 1937 or 1938 season, and Barnes had done due diligence then? Would the AL have gone along with the idea? I would bet the other owners would, if only to get larger crowds and thus more revenue from the erstwhile Browns. Moreover, the notion of traveling to Los Angeles (= Hollywood) three times a season (instead of four, given the constraints of rail travel) would likely have been a selling point: imagine, for example, Clark Griffith rubbing elbows with W. C. Fields or Groucho Marx.

If there's any interest in this, a timeline could result: could be that there might even be a World Series on the Left Coast in the '40s.
 

Xen

Banned
Couldnt happen without another team on the West Coast, so unless the Browns can get another team to go to say SF, they arent going anywhere. Perhaps we can work it where there is an earlier expansion? Maybe San Francisco gets one and Milwaukee/Baltimore/Buffalo/Kansas City gets the other
 
Couldnt happen without another team on the West Coast, so unless the Browns can get another team to go to say SF, they arent going anywhere. Perhaps we can work it where there is an earlier expansion? Maybe San Francisco gets one and Milwaukee/Baltimore/Buffalo/Kansas City gets the other

Not only could happen; almost DID happen. I refer you to an account of wartime baseball titled "Even the Browns" by William Mead.
 

Xen

Banned
I never read it, however its going to be hard to convince me a team is going to go to LA without another one on the west coast somewhere without an eventual expansion. Baseball owners have a history of greed, and penny pinching. A trip out west especially in the 1930s and 1940s just to play a five game series would be ridiculously expensive and the travel time would be horrendous. East Coast owners will claim their players are too tired to play and the Los Angeles club's long homestands give them an unfair advantage {which of course will be made up for with long road trips, but other owners wouldnt see that}. Also in the 1930s you have the great depression, even baseball suffered, the Philadelphia Athletics were dismantled so old man Connie Mack could pay the bills, add on top of that the expenses of traveling out west, and owners become restless.

Twenty years after your POD, when travel time was better and the country's economy was booming, Walter O'Malley a far more saavy businessman than anybody who has ever owned the St Louis Browns could only get permission to move to the west coast if he could convince another NL team to go with him, and cut back on expenses. Its not really until the early 1960's that either league could afford to have just one team on the west coast, as was the case with the LA/California Angels from 1961-1967, it wasnt until the arrival of the A's from Kansas City to Oakland in 1968 was another AL team placed on the west coast.

The best case scenario for the LA Browns is Don Barnes requests permission from the league and is allowed, but after a couple of years of ridiculously high expenses, of spending a week in LA before traveling back to the other side of the Mississppi the AL is forced to expand, placing one team in Kansas City and the other in San Francisco. KC is likely to be the jump off point before the long trip out west, and besides the teams on the west coast will be the only team west of the Mississippi River, since the departure of the St Louis Browns. Given the economics of the time it is the only way to make it work, which is doable, and not far fetched. Both leagues had considered expansion since 1920, and with the depression on the expansion is baseball doing its part to contribute to the economy. Baseball teams mean jobs, not only for players but for grounds keepers, ticket masters, concession stand workers, etc. It is also a way to alleviate the pains of the depression through entertainment.

If you want to do a TL I'd go that route, but of course if the AL expands so too will the NL.
 
I never read it, however its going to be hard to convince me a team is going to go to LA without another one on the west coast somewhere without an eventual expansion. Baseball owners have a history of greed, and penny pinching. A trip out west especially in the 1930s and 1940s just to play a five game series would be ridiculously expensive and the travel time would be horrendous. East Coast owners will claim their players are too tired to play and the Los Angeles club's long homestands give them an unfair advantage {which of course will be made up for with long road trips, but other owners wouldnt see that}. Also in the 1930s you have the great depression, even baseball suffered, the Philadelphia Athletics were dismantled so old man Connie Mack could pay the bills, add on top of that the expenses of traveling out west, and owners become restless.

All I can say is: read that book. It has first-person accounts by those involved in the planning and logistics. Moreover, it certainly appears that it would have gone through had it not been for Pearl Harbor (imagine teams traveling out of Chicago on the Super Chief: not too shabby riding varnish to LA).
 
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