A prescient idea

[soberdennis]

In the teens Cardinal owner John Robison was talking of moving his team because he did not think St Louis could support two teams. Where did he propose to move them?
.

[soberdennis]

In the teens Cardinal owner John Robison was talking of moving his team because he did not think St Louis could support two teams. Where did he propose to move them?
.
Since nobody has tried this, I'll give a hint. Robison's idea took an ironic twist 4 decades later.

[Erik Bedard]

Since nobody has tried this, I'll give a hint. Robison's idea took an ironic twist 4 decades later.

That should make the answer Baltimore. It's ironic because the other St. Louis team moved their in 1954.

[soberdennis]

That should make the answer Baltimore. It's ironic because the other St. Louis team moved their in 1954.
Exactly Robison wanted to move the Cards to Baltimore around 1917.
Could you imagine St. Louis still rooting for the Browns instead of the Cards.
Of course they would not be the Baltimore Cardinals. Every Baltimore team has been called the Orioles.
I had to laugh at the irony when I first read that.

[DTF955]

I knew I'd read this somewhere.

The only problem with the idea is that I think he died in 1910 or 1911; either way, he wound up witht he team going to his daughter or niece, who then sold in 1917.

So maybe she's the one who almost sold? Or, did Robison come close to moving in 1910-1, and his death prevented more talk of it? The Browns did draw 600,000 in 1908, their high water mark except for the early 1920s.

[Trivia Guy]

If I remember correctly, I read somewhere that Bill Veeck had plans to move the Browns to Los Angels following the 1941 season but Pearl Harbor happened a couple days before the owners could vote on it and the idea was scrapped.

[Brownieand45sfan]

If I remember correctly, I read somewhere that Bill Veeck had plans to move the Browns to Los Angeles following the 1941 season but Pearl Harbor happened a couple days before the owners could vote on it and the idea was scrapped.

That was owner Donald Barnes. There is a thread here that discussed this in detail. http://www.baseball-fever.com/archive/index.php/t-34696.html The move to LA was far from a done deal.

Fred Saigh, Cardinals owner in the 40s and 50s, turned down higher offers from MIL and HOU as well in order to stay loyal to St. Louis. Saigh was a good man. This is how all the owners should have been. Baseball should have done more to preserve its 'golden era', IMO, even if it involved consideration of a revenue-sharing model. Most of the franchise shift cities ended up being shifted again .. or very close to the cusp of being shifted.

Baltimore attendance was dropping fast in the early 60s and had not Paul Richards, Lee McPhail, Billy Hitchcock, Hank Bauer not righted the ship ... and had the neighboring Senators of Washington had a competitive team, the Baltimore Orioles would have went the way of the Milwaukee Braves and the K.C. A's, probably.

The only problem with the loyalty theory is that it almost certainly would have spawned a competitor league. Which might not have been a bad thing. It wouldn't have been the Continental League, however, because without Wm. Shea and the drive to make NY a 2-team town again, that league would never have gotten off the drawing board. But what would have happened probably if there had been a situation of city-loyal owners is a competitive "Western League": spending a year or two as a minor league first (like the AL and Federal League did) and then declaring itself a major league. Eventually it could have been merged with MLB just like the AFL and NFL did after the AFL proved its worth. The teams would have been LA, SF, Houston, Denver, Minnesota ... maybe Dallas or Toronto. And some or all of those could have easily come in through direct expansion into MLB as well. ( (as the NHL would do in '67 ... again playing in their own division at least ~ save the Blackhawks ~ to preserve rivalries and until they got their chops.)
MLB played a game of one-upmanship with the Continental League and ended up breaking their backs with expansion.

I am not saying that the Browns, or other teams wouldn't have had to move if circumstances became truly dire, just that MLB should have tried harder, and that the chaos caused by the franchise shifts of '53-'70 did not do baseball credit, in fact, gave it a black eye.

My point is, baseball had nothing to lose by promoting a policy of city loyalty .. they had full command of the scene and no competitor was going to knock them off the throne. Greed triumphed over fan-loyalty.