DBWI: WI Mantle doesn't play for the Braves?

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the death of, arguably, the player who ensured that the Milwaukee Braves have stayed in Milwaukee: Mickey Mantle. Mickey Mantle, as most baseball fans know, was signed by the Boston Braves in the winter of 1951 and would debut with the Braves in 1952, quickly becoming one of the star players on the Braves when they moved to Milwaukee in 1953.

Along with Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews, and Hank Aaron, among others, he became one of the central players of the Milwaukee Braves dynasty of the late 1950s and 1960s, reaching the World Series seven times (in 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, and 1969) and winning five (1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1969), breaking Babe Ruth's record (Hank Aaron would also break Ruth's home run record in the mid-1970s, before making a run at Mantle's record; he'd serve as a pallbearer at Mantle's funeral) and hitting 782 home runs before retiring in 1971. Mickey Mantle was right at home in Milwaukee, becoming popular with the Braves fandom (the fact that he helped beat the hated Yankees three times was a factor in his popularity).

So, WI Mantle hadn't played for the Braves? Mantle admitted that he was considering offers from several teams, but he decided on the Braves pretty much at the last minute. One of the other teams that considered him was the New York Yankees; one shudders at how well he would have done on the Yankees...

It certainly butterflies away the Braves dynasty of the 1990s and 2000s with Derek Jeter, IMO...
 
Where would the Braves have moved? There weren't a lot of good markets during the Mick's career. The Browns moved to Baltimore, the A's to Kansas City, the Senators to LA, and the Giants to Minnesota. The National League was much more integrated and wasn't going to consider any Southern cities, and unlike the AL with the Senators/Angels they didn't want a single West Coast team. Every market north of the Ohio River and east of St. Louis was taken.

Plus the PCL threatened to become a major league in 1962, so the NL added the Stars and Seals and the AL added the Padres and Rainiers for 1964. That locked down most of the west coast.
 
They could move back to Boston or actually just move to DC :)

Mantle would have been a great addition, I guess other items would depend on pitching prospects panning out. By 69 the braves were getting long on the teeth. The next crop of talent would need to be coming up soon, this is still almost 10 years before free agency too

Milwaukee could assuradly continue to support the braves especially if they are on a winning binge like that.
 
If DC got a good team to put in rfk during the 60s-70s then DC would still have a team.. People were Disapointed when the original senators left, then felt cheated by the misery that was senators 2.0. The braves in otl if the managed to stay just a while longer would have been a good fit there. Of course someone was going to go to Atlanta, the market is just to large- being the team of the south east with no other team to take your wind any where near you. Market being the Carolinas, virgina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama, hell even Tennessee. That's a market

There would also be salt lake as a possibility.

NL

Brooklyn
Minissota Giants
MILWAUKEE BRAVES
Philadelphia phillies
St Louis cardinals
Pittsburgh pirates
Chicago cubs
Cincinnati reds

La stars
San Francisco seals

Depending on things you could have the Houston colt 45's/ astros

AL

New York Yankees
Baltimore orioles / browns
Kansas city athletics
Chicago white sox
Boston Red sox
Detroit tigers
Cleveland Indians
LA senators/ANGELS

San Diego Padres
Seattle rainers

So question would be.. Did DC get a new senators team in 61.. AND DO THEY STAY IN DC.. If they did then we have unbalanced leagues and the American league then has a division with 1 too many TEAMS. UNLESS OF XOURSE THE COLT 45-S join
Toronto and Montreal don't enter till 79

Do the athletics stay in KC? If so no royals expansion club

In the south you have Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans, out west you have oakland/Sacramento, Salt Lake, Denver

No pilots - brewers move
No mariners or royals
Since the dodgers stay this means no Mets?

So depending on when.. Let's say on our schedule the braves move in 66, then yes options are limited - Dallas, Atlanta, maybe Oakland since the A's haven't moved yet, and New Orleans. I don't think Miami or Tampa are ready yet for a major league club, but maybe Miami.

I know finly thought of moving the A's to Louisville, but hell you think KC and Milwaukee are small market, would be like moving a team to Cheyenne or flint Michigan. Plus anything in Kentucky is too close to the Reds.
 
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OTOH, this is the 60th anniversary of the 1959 home run race between Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron to break Babe Ruth's single-season home run record--Mantle would have 67, while Aaron would have 62 and Mantle would break it first (and both would hit crucial World Series home runs against the Cleveland Indians).

Most people don't remember this, but Hank Aaron got a ton of hate mail and racist threats when it seemed like he might break Ruth's record first, to the point that he had to have police protection during every game he was in; Aaron has stated that, without Mantle's (and his teammates') support (the Mick did so publicly as well as privately, denouncing the racist threats), he didn't know how he would have handled it. There's a reason why Mantle was loved among Milwaukee's African-American population...

Indeed, the shows Laverne and Shirley and Happy Days (both set in Milwaukee during the late 1950s) had several plots centered around the Braves...

(OOC: The threats, sadly, are from OTL when Aaron was breaking Ruth's home run record; ITTL, it's much worse when it looks like he might break the Babe's single-season record...)
 
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