Introduction: Time for Expansion Baseball

The title of this book, Time for Expansion Baseball, was adapted from Vin Scully’s signature expression that began each of his broadcasts, “It’s time for Dodgers baseball.” Writers and analysts alike have argued that expansion was the natural conclusion to Scully’s Dodgers moving west from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

The major-league geographical atlas of 1951 was a virtual carbon copy of a map printed one half-century earlier. Apart from the St. Louis Browns, who relocated from Milwaukee, and the New York Yankees, who moved from Baltimore, none of the franchises had shifted locations as far back as 1903. The same way America underwent significant changes in the 1950s, so too did baseball. Inside a span of three years beginning in 1953, the Braves left Boston for Milwaukee, the Browns departed St. Louis for Baltimore, and the Athletics moved west from Philadelphia to Kansas City. Even so, Gordon Cobbledick of the Cleveland Plain Dealer had validity to describe baseball as a “sectional game” rather than a national one.1 As seven of the 16 franchises were located within a 225-mile radius along the Eastern Seaboard, baseball left little appeal for fans outside the northeast and midwest.

In 1952, the Pacific Coast League (PCL) was given an “Open” classification above the AAA level. The move restricted American and National League teams from drafting PCL players and was considered a step towards becoming a third major league.2 Any such plans ended in 1957 when the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants relocated to the Golden State. In 1959, Branch Rickey developed a plan to introduce the Continental League as a third major league but this idea, too, had short circuited before coming to fruition. How would major-league baseball respond to the American population moving south and west in increasing numbers? The solution was expansion. Hence the title, Time for Expansion Baseball.

The American League was the first to expand, adding the Los Angeles Angels and a new Washington Senators franchise in 1960. A year later, the National League welcomed the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets. Ten additional franchises were awarded before the expansion process concluded in 1998 with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The full list is illustrated as follows:

• Los Angeles Angels: 1961, American League
• Washington Senators: 1961, American League
• Houston Colt .45s: 1962, National League
• New York Mets: 1962, National League
• Kansas City Royals: 1969, American League
• Montreal Expos: 1969, National League
• San Diego Padres: 1969, National League
• Seattle Pilots: 1969, American League
• Seattle Mariners: 1977, American League
• Toronto Blue Jays: 1977, American League
• Colorado Rockies: 1993, National League
• Florida Marlins: 1993, National League
• Arizona Diamondbacks: 1998, National League
• Tampa Bay Devil Rays: 1998, American League

MAXWELL KATES is a CPA who lives and works in Toronto. He has worked in commercial radio and he writes a monthly column for the Houston-based Pecan Park Eagle. Maxwell’s articles and essays have appeared in The National Pastime along with several SABR BioProjects. He served as Director of Marketing for the Hanlan’s Point Chapter for 12 years and has spoken at SABR meetings and conventions in Seattle, Montreal, and Houston. His baseball highlights include to have witnessed Magglio Ordonez’s home run to win the 2006 American League Championship Series for the Detroit Tigers, along with the final out of the 2017 World Series. This is his first SABR project in an editorial capacity.

Notes

1 Gaylon H. White, The Bilko Athletic Club: The Story of the 1956 Los Angeles Angels (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 44.

2 “Pacific Coast Year-by-Year Standings” in 2017 Pacific Coast League Sketch and Record Book (Round Rock, Texas: The Pacific Coast League, 2017), 141.