Interesting and ironic

[soberdennis]

I read somewhere that around WW1 Cardinal owner John Robison decided that St. Louis coulsd not support two teams and wanted to move his Cards. To Baltimore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wonder what would have happened to the Browns had Robison done this 40 years before another St. Louis team actually did move east.

[Bill_McCurdy]

Soberdennis,

Your question is one of the biggest "what if" questions in Browns history. We Browns fans never really put it to bed. When we seem to have done so, someone else will bring it up and stir us to kick the thing around again.

I don't think there's much argument about the turning point in Browns history. It happened when new owner Phil Ball fired, chased, or forced Branch Rickey to the Cardinals. All the things that Rickey did in developing the farm system went with him to the NL redbirds and those efforts resulted in the 1926 World Series Cardinal victory that won the hearts of St. Louisans and pulled fans away from the Browns.

After the loss of Rickey and the first-blood victory in a World Series by the NL Cardinals, the future of the forevermore-losing AL Browns was all but sealed. - Twenty-seven years after the 1926 Cardinal World Series win, it would be the Browns who would bounce on off to Baltimore as the eventual fate of Ball chasing Rickey away.

That's my take, anyway.

PS: I have a ball signed by the 1939 Yankees you list in your signature that also includes Lou Gehrig and Lefty Gomez, but not Hildebrand or Rolfe. I bought it through an auction house in 1995. The signatures are all quite clear, but I keep it in a safe deposit box because of the damage that would befall it from direct sunlight. - My interest in the '39 Yankee ball came from my lifelong adulation of Lou Gehrig. I also doubted that there are many balls floating around out there that featured the 1939 signatures of Lou Gehrig and Babe Dahlgren, the man who technically took his place at 1st for the Yankees at the end of the streak. - The history of the ball is that the '39 Yankees signed it for the son of a wealthy Yankee fan. It remained in that family until it was placed for auction in 1995. The ball used was not an AL ball, but the kind of ball that kids bought for play. It's the same size as an AL official ball and just as hard. - I'm just glad the kid didn't play with this one! - Come to think of it, there may not be another ball in this world signed by Gehrig and Dahlgren. It's pretty obvious from the care that went into the signing of this ball that it was not the result of some kind of team signing as we know them to be in 2006. This was 1939. The sigs were going down from fountain pen to baseball. They had to take time and care with a team ball to keep from smearing the other signatures.

[soberdennis]

Bill
People always talk about Rickey and the signing of Robinson. But he was an innovator in many ways. The farm system was almost as important as the integration of baseball. the Browns definitely would have been wise to keep him in their organization.
That ball is a treasure any baseball fan should be honored to have.
The lineup was the lineup of game 4 of the WS against the Reds.
My curent sig shows the 1941 lineup from game 5 against the Dodgers. Next time the Yanks win, I will change it to the 43 team, which got sweet revenge from the embarassment the year before. Throughout this year I hope to show lineups from all of the Yankee championship teams.
Lou Gehrig had to be a special man. I got my only real experience of him by watching Gary Cooper play him in "Pride of the Yankees." To me Coop made me feel like I knew the Iron Horse personally. IMO it was the greatest baseball movie of all time.
What Lou meant to the Yanks is exemplified by the fact the Yanks did not have another captain for almost 40 years.
Dennis

[hubkittel]

wasn't there also talk of moving the cards in the early 50's before the brewery bought them? i can' remember but i think there was something about milwaulkee before the braves moved there. but once AB bought the club the browns saw the writing on the wall and started looking for a new home.

[Brownieand45sfan]

there was talk of moving the Brownies to LA right before WWII but the idea got scotched when the war hit.

There was talk of driving the Cardinals out of St. Louis before the Brewery bought them. But Bill Veeck's finances caught up with him; he had to sell the stadium. Then he tried to move them back to Milwaukee.

One wonders what would have happened had the Browns extracted a ransom from the Cards for playing at the stadium all those years, instead of a sweetheart deal. That's how the St. Louis Post-Dispatch eliminated the Globe-Democrat, wasn't it? The latter owned the printing press and gradually turned the screws?

[Bill_McCurdy]

In 1953, before the beleaguered, tax-evasion convicted Cardinals owner Fred Saigh sold the club to August Busch, there was news coverage here in Texas that the team was considering a move to Houston. The idea made some sense. The Cardinals already owned the local Houston Buffs club of the AA Texas League and Buff Stadium, the ballpark that Branch Rickey had built for the Buffs in 1928. The Buffs already were starting to outdraw the Browns in season attendance during good years and Houston was on the brink of major population growth driven by the petrochemical industry and the increasing introduction of air conditioning that would change the city's way of life for good by 1960.

It didn't happen, but it could have worked out as another way the Browns stayed alive in St. Louis. Of course, getting the Cardinals out of town could not have been the complete answer in 1953. The Cardinals had taught St. Louisans that winning was not only possible, but expected. Had the Cards left St. Louis and the Browns continued to field a losing club, it's likely that St. Louis could have ended up losing major league baseball altogether in a short while. Even though it meant the death of the Browns, St. Louisans should remain forever grateful to August Busch for buying the Cardinals. He saved big league baseball for the baseball history-rich St. Louis area.

Come to think of it, I guess St. Louisans, including the DeWitt family, are grateful to Mr. Busch. They kept his name on the new ballpark - and in an era in which most names of new venues are simply sold to the highest bidder.

Thank you again, St. Louis, for placing the value of loyalty above the usual rule of marketplace greed.

[soberdennis]

Some cities have a greater sense of baseball history. I am glad to see the Busch name continued on the new stadium.

[64Cards]

Some cities have a greater sense of baseball history. I am glad to see the Busch name continued on the new stadium.
The Cardinals ownership just didn't do it out the goodness of their hearts. AB is paying to have the place called "Busch Stadium"

[Brownieand45sfan]

Thanks Don for your scholarly thoughts.

I have one question and comment though:

Didnt A-B buy the naming rights on the new stadium? Or wasnt it included as a requirement of the purchase agreement that whatever stadium the Birds played in, it would have to be named Busch?? After all, the owners could have sold the naming rights to Busch II rather than dip into the public pocketbook as they did. But, no, they kept the name.

I don't think we would have lost baseball. When MLB is moving teams in the 50s to cities like Baltimore and KC, I dont think a city of the size and historical importance of St. Louis loses MLB.

[soberdennis]

I am glad we didn't have to find out. Of course St. Louis was the city that the owner took all his star players to from Cleveland-begatting the 1899 Spiders. He felt St. Louis was the better Baseball city and he owned both teams.

From what I've seen, it is one of the best BB cities in America, although I am partial to NY.

[DTF955]

The problem was, the new Browns' owner probbly would have forced Rickey out, anyway - too many egos involved. Hedges, who owned the Browns, sought to make a big profit by sellng to him and establishing peace witht he Federal league.

Now, Robison could not have tried to move the team during WW I, because as Casey would say, "he was dead at the present time." His niece, I think it was, took over in 1911. SHe sold late in 1917. The original plan was to give the Cardinals to the Terriers' owner, but she kept pushing the price up because she saw what it was - an attempt to push her out at least partly because she was a woman.

Now, let's say that Hedges sells the team in 1910-1, when he was close but a deal fell through. Then, you might have something different; but maybe not. But does Mr. Rickey get hired by the Browns in that case?

I was just curious and reading about it, and their owner really deserves some of the credit for the farm system idea, too, though Btranch Rickey is the one who really put it into practice and greatly expanded the concept. Apparently, Hedges was really concerned about the richer teams in baseball dominating, even 100 years ago.

[disgrig]

there was talk of moving the Brownies to LA right before WWII but the idea got scotched when the war hit.

The issue of moving the Browns came up twice in 1947. During the second half of the season a group of investors from Chicago, led by Emory Perry, looked at trying to buy the Browns from Richard Muckerman with the idea being to move the Browns to Los Angeles. The transplant Browns potentially would have played their home games at the Coliseum. The deal never got off the ground and the Browns stayed put.

A move came up again in the fall of 1947, right before the winter meetings, when East St Louis native, Robert Rodenberg (then president of the football Baltimore Colts) wanted to buy the Browns and move them to Baltimore. The deal hinged on Rodenberg convincing the new Cardinals' owners (Fred Saigh, et al. who had just purchased the team from Sam Breadon) to buy Sportsman's Park in the deal. Rodenberg thought he could get the money together to buy the Browns but Sportsman's Park was a liability. If he could get the Cardinals to buy the ballpark, he planned to pitch the deal to the owners at the winter meetings to get approval to move the Browns to Baltimore. Rodenberg supposedly already had the civic backing of the mayor and others in Baltimore, but this deal, also, never really got off the ground.

[EdTarbusz]

LA interests also looked at purchasing the Browns from Richard Muckerman in 1948. I believe that two different groups contacted hi after he publicly chastised fans for not coming to see the Browns. I believed he was interested in selling the team or moving the team, but the PCL put up so many hoops for a big league to jump through to move into there territory that Muckerman gave up.

If the Browns had wanted to move to Baltimore in the WWI era, they had a golden opportunity in 1916. The Baltimore Orioles found that they couldn't compete with the Baltimore Terrapins and moved to Richmond. If the Browns moved, the Orioles may have decided that there was no way they could have competed with an AL team, and never returned to Baltimore.

[DTF955]

Which could, ironically, have happened if Hedges sells in 1910-1, thus he wouldn't be around to make peace witht he FL.

Or, if the Robison story is true, if he'd lived a while longer and moved the club in 1911 or 1912.