Do you think I should have said DiMaggio?

Pondering the effects...

In a WIP (& unlikely to be finishedx'D) TL, I had the St. Louis Browns moving to San Francisco in 1931. There, they draft a young Joe DiMaggio (&, incidentially, his brother Vince, but that's not OT).

So, my question(s): could this actually happen? Could the Brownsmen actually have drafted DiMaggio? And if they had, what effect would it have had on the team's performance?
 
Pondering the effects...

In a WIP (& unlikely to be finishedx'D) TL, I had the St. Louis Browns moving to San Francisco in 1931. There, they draft a young Joe DiMaggio (&, incidentially, his brother Vince, but that's not OT).

So, my question(s): could this actually happen? Could the Brownsmen actually have drafted DiMaggio? And if they had, what effect would it have had on the team's performance?
The draft was first held in 1965...
 
Is the premise workable? That's a hell of a road trip by train. You might as well have MLB teams play Japanese teams, as tough as it would have been. Furthermore, just one team on the West Coast? Without a team in LA, Seattle, or even Denver, we're making the difficult damn near ASB.

Of course, this is Bill Veeck we're talking about, and there's not a whole lot that is straight-up ASB with him involved. It would just take one like-minded person to see an opportunity and it could work.
 
:cool: So, any thoughts on the impact? Judging by his record in the minors, he could have helped the Browns a lot... Pennant win? Even World Series win?
Yankees had too much firepower in the 30's, Joe or no Joe...Browns might get out of the 2nd division...
 
Yankees had too much firepower in the 30's, Joe or no Joe...Browns might get out of the 2nd division...
I'd say that's probable, but...I did game it out (on a baseball sim) & managed a first place finish. (Can't recall, now, if it was enough for a Series win...) (Vagaries of the game system meant I could only do it once, tho...:mad::confused:)
 
Frisco wouldn't have been the first choice for a would-be shift as early as 1931; the first pick would have been LA given the climate and the larger population base (and as I've noted elsewhere, the Browns tried to pull it off for real for the '42 season). Not sure if Chicago-to-LA rail schedules in 1931 would have supported the move; seven to ten years later (after the advent of diesel-powered streamliners), they would have, in theory.

If you force the issue for a shift in '31, more likely it would have been one of the bigger cities in the Midwest or east still with a minor league team: Baltimore is the first that comes to mind, followed by Milwaukee and Buffalo. Those moves would have kept travel costs down, which was probably something of a consideration.
 
One of the potential issues with moving into PCL territory in the 30's might be a bidding war for talent. The PCL was a very special league in those days, with considerable lure for talented players. They could look forward to better deals than the MLB teams were offering, while the cities were nicer, presented more opportunity, and boasted much better weather as opposed to the sole lure of the "prestige" of playing for an AL or NL franchise. If the PCL turned it up a notch, teams from say, Philadelphia, might be loathe to visit the West coast for fear that their players would get the bug and "jump ship". I used the Philly teams as an example because both franchises were trundling along at under 400k annual attendance while compiling 100 losses and 8th place finishes with regularity. Understanding today's minors is useless when trying to fathom the minor league structure and operational model pre-Branch Rickey; a bidding war could break many of the AL and NL owners while PCL owners could grab another $100 bill to light their cigar.
 
Frisco wouldn't have been the first choice for a would-be shift as early as 1931; the first pick would have been LA given the climate and the larger population base... Not sure if Chicago-to-LA rail schedules in 1931 would have supported the move
I had imagined an L.A. move, too, plus some (higher speed) rail developments, plus a schedule deal (three in a row for any visiting team; as I think about it now, that might be the most unlikely part...)
If you force the issue for a shift in '31, more likely it would have been one of the bigger cities in the Midwest or east still with a minor league team: Baltimore is the first that comes to mind, followed by Milwaukee and Buffalo. Those moves would have kept travel costs down, which was probably something of a consideration.
One of the potential issues with moving into PCL territory in the 30's might be a bidding war for talent.
I did want to emphasize, to some degree, the transport changes, but if improbability is such a factor, I'll think it over... I did want to bring the brothers onto one team, too...& that may create more trouble than it's worth; a bidding war that wrecks MBL...:eek::eek: (What I imagined was a forced PCL-MBL merger, actually: a changed USG AG saying to MBL, in effect, "Merge or die". {Whether SCotUS would've agreed, given the "just a game" fiction it'd bought the last time...:confounded:})
 
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