EPISODE 254: American League Baseball Expansion/Relocation History - With Andy McCue

Long-time Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) contributor and "Mover and Shaker: Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion" author Andy McCue joins the podcast to discuss his provocative new book "Stumbling Around the Bases" - a persuasive account of the American League's consistently haphazard approach to expansion and franchise relocation during baseball's modern era:


​"​From the late 1950s to the 1980s, baseball’s American League mismanaged integration and expansion, allowing the National League to forge ahead in attendance and prestige. While both leagues had executive structures that presented few barriers to individual team owners acting purely in their own interests, it was the American League that succumbed to infighting—which ultimately led to its disappearance into what we now call Major League Baseball. "Stumbling Around the Bases" is the story of how the American League fell into such a disastrous state, struggling for decades to escape its nadir and, when it finally righted itself, losing its independence.

​"​The American League’s trip to the bottom involved bad decisions by both individual teams and their owners. The key elements were a glacial approach to integration, the choice of underfinanced or disruptive new owners, and a consistent inability to choose the better markets among cities that were available for expansion. The American League wound up with less-attractive teams in the smaller markets compared to the National League—and thus fewer consumers of tickets, parking, beer, hot dogs, scorecards, and replica jerseys.

​"​The errors of the American League owners were rooted in missed cultural and demographic shifts and exacerbated by reactive decisions that hurt as much as helped their interests. Though the owners were men who were notably successful in their non-baseball business ventures, success in insurance, pizza, food processing, and real estate development, didn’t necessarily translate into running a flourishing baseball league. In the end the National League was simply better at recognizing its collective interests, screening its owners, and recognizing the markets that had long-term potential.​"​

     

Stumbling around the Bases: The American League’s Mismanagement in the Expansion Eras - buy book here

Mover and Shaker: Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion - buy book here

EPISODE 229: US Soccer's First Pro Leagues - With Brian Bunk

Quiz any fan of soccer in the US as to the origin of the professional game on American soil, and you're likely to get a myriad of answers - usually rooted in generational identity.

​If you're under 30, the 1996 launch of Major League Soccer looks like a logical starting point - 25 years old, 29 teams strong, and dozens of soccer-specific stadiums befitting a "major" sports league.

Older MLS fans in places like Seattle, Portland, and San Jose point out the original versions of their current clubs being domiciled in something called the North American Soccer League - which featured a bevy of international stars and drew huge crowds in the late 1970s/early 1980s as the then-"sport of the future."

Others with longer memories (and often soccer-playing lineages) will recall the decades-long, ethnically-flavored heartbeat of the sport known as the American Soccer League - dating back to 1933, or even 1921, depending on your guideposts.

But, as soccer historian Dr. Brian Bunk ("From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States") reveals to us this week, the true birth of the pro game dates all the way back to 1894 - when not one, but two leagues sought to bring England's popular fast-growing sport to the colonies - introduced (interestingly) with the financial backing and operational resources of baseball's National League.

From Football to Soccer: The Early History of the Beautiful Game in the United States - buy book here

EPISODE 191: National League Baseball's 1900 Contraction - With Bob Bailey

We celebrate the Society for American Baseball Research's fiftieth anniversary with a look back at one of the most pivotal events in major league baseball history - and featured in the group's newly-released commemorative anthology "SABR: 50 at 50".

Longtime Society contributor Bob Bailey ("Four Teams Out: The National League Reduction of 1900") revisits his 1990 Baseball Research Journal article describing how a fledgling 12-team, 1890s-era National League pro baseball monopoly found itself on the brink of implosion - as financial imbalance, competitive disparity, self-dealing common ownership, and a pronounced national economic Depression collectively threatened the circuit's very survival by decade's end.

As a result, the NL eliminated four franchises for the 1900 season - all former refugees from the previous American Association:

  • Ned Hanlon's "small ball"-centric (original) Baltimore Orioles (AA: 1882-92; NL: 1893-99);

  • The Cy Young-led Cleveland Spiders (AA: 1887-88; NL: 1889-99);

  • The woeful original Washington Senators (AA: 1891 as the "Statesmen"; NL: 1892-99); AND

  • Louisville's first and only major league baseball team - the Colonels (née Eclipse)

By 1901, Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington each had new franchises in Ban Johnson's NL-challenging American League - with Louisville never returning to major league play.

SABR 50 at 50: The Society for American Baseball Research’s Fifty Most Essential Contributions to the Game - buy book here

EPISODE 170: The 1969 Washington Senators – With Steve Walker

When the original version of the modern-era Washington Senators announced its intention to relocate to Minneapolis-St. Paul in 1960 to become the Twins the following season, Major League Baseball moved up part of its planned 1962 expansion by a year to help stave off dual competitive threats of both a new challenger Continental League and the potential loss of its longstanding federal antitrust exemption.

To placate regulators, the American League reworked its plans and replaced the departing DC franchise with an entirely new expansion club – to also be known as the Senators – to commence immediately in its wake for 1961.  After an “inaugural” season at old Griffith Stadium, the new Senators moved to the new District of Columbia Stadium under a 10-year lease.

For most of their second incarnation, the “new” Senators were just as woeful as their predecessors, losing an average of 90 games a season and perennially finishing below .500 – helping preserve the traditional lamentation to which DC area fans had become accustomed: “Washington: First in War, First in Peace and Still Last in the American League.”

But in 1969, when new owner Bob Short successfully coaxed Hall of Fame batting legend Ted Williams out of retirement to become the club’s rookie manager, things immediately changed.  Williams' maniacal approach to hitting helped ignite the moribund Senators to its one and only winning season during its 11-year run – winning 86 games (21 more than in 1968) – and vaulting from last in the previous year’s ten-team American League to just one game out of third in the new divisional AL East.

Attendance at the newly renamed RFK Stadium zoomed above 900,000 for the season (not to mention a Senators-hosted MLB All-Star Game featuring a booming 2nd inning HR by hometown hero Frank Howard), and Williams was voted AL Manager of the Year.  For the first time in decades, it seemed baseball in Washington was “back.”

But, as 1969 Senators chronicler Steve Walker (“A Whole New Ballgame: The 1969 Washington Senators”) tells us, the excitement was not to last; the club soon reverted back to its forlorn ways – exacerbated by an increasingly impatient and already-conspiring Short – who relocated the franchise to the Dallas Metroplex after the 1971 season, to become today’s Texas Rangers.

It would be 33 years until another major league team would call DC home again.

This week’s episode is sponsored by the Red Lightning Books imprint of Indiana University Press – who offer our listeners a FREE CHAPTER of pioneering sportswriter Diana K. Shah’s new memoir A Farewell to Arms, Legs and Jockstraps!

A Whole New Ballgame: The 1969 Washington Senators - buy book here

EPISODE #104: Big League Baseball in WWII Wartime Washington – With David Hubler & Josh Drazen

On a cold and ominous Sunday, December 7, 1941, Major League Baseball’s owners were gathered in Chicago for their annual winter meetings, just two months after one of the sport’s greatest seasons. For the owners, the dramatic news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor earlier that morning was not only an assault on the United States, but also a direct threat to the future of the national pastime itself.

League owners were immediately worried about the players they were likely to lose to military service, but also feared a complete shutdown of the looming 1942 season – and perhaps beyond.  But with the carefully cultivated support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, organized baseball continued uninterrupted – despite numerous calls to shut it down.

Authors David Hubler and Josh Drazen (The Nats and the Grays: How Baseball in the Nation’s Capital Survived WWII and Changed the Game Forever) join host Tim Hanlon to discuss the impact of World World II on the two major professional teams in Washington, DC – the American League’s Senators (aka Nationals), and the Negro National League’s Homestead Grays – as well as the impact of the war on big league baseball as a whole, including:

  • How a strong friendship between Senators owner Clark Griffith and Roosevelt kept the game alive during the war years, often in the face of strong opposition for doing so;

  • The continual uncertainties clubs faced as things like the military draft, national resources rationing and other wartime regulations affected both the sport and American day-to-day life; AND

  • The Negro Leagues’ constant struggle for recognition, solvency, and integration.

PLUS: The origin of the twi-night doubleheader!

AND: The ceremonial first-pitch ambidexterity of President Harry Truman!

Show some love for the show by making a purchase from one of our great sponsors: Streaker Sports, Old School Shirts, 503 Sports, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, and/or Audible!

The Nats and the Grays: How Baseball in the Nation's Capital Survived WWII and Changed the Game Forever - buy here

Homestead Grays classic T-shirt & low profile cap from 503 Sports - buy here

Homestead Grays classic T-shirt from OldSchoolShirts.com - buy here

EPISODE #96: The National Pastime in the Nation's Capital – With Fred Frommer

We throw another chunk of firewood into our baseball hot stove this week, as we warm up with the surprisingly long and rich history of the National Pastime in the Nation’s Capital with sports PR veteran Fred Frommer (You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions).

While historically smaller in population than its more industrial neighbors to its north and west, Washington, DC was regularly represented in the highest levels of baseball dating back to the earliest professional circuits – including the 1871-75 National Association’s Olympics, Blue Legs, and two named the “Nationals”; two new and separate Nationals clubs in the competing Union and American Associations of 1884; and two teams each in the American Association (another Nationals in 1884; Statesmen in 1891), and early National League (yet another Nationals from 1886-89; and “Senators” from 1892-99).

But it was the creation of the American League in 1901 that solidified the city’s place in baseball’s top echelon, as the (second) Washington Senators launched as one of the junior circuit’s “Classic Eight” charter franchises – establishing an uninterrupted presence for Major League Baseball in the District that endured for more than seven decades.  (Technically, the original AL Senators stayed until 1960, when the franchise moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN to become the Minnesota Twins – only to be immediately replaced by a new expansion Senators the next season, that lasted 11 more seasons until they moved to Arlington, TX to become the Texas Rangers in 1971.)

Frommer joins host Tim Hanlon to look back on DC’s deep and oddly curious relationship with baseball, including:  

  • The Senators’ often-lamentable on-field performance that entrenched Washington as “First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League;"

  • The advent of the ceremonial Presidential season-opening “first pitch” tradition;

  • New York’s rival “Damn Yankees;”

  • The Negro National League’s Homestead Grays’ second home; AND

  • Why it took 33 years for Major League Baseball to finally return to the Nation’s Capital.

Thanks to our great sponsors: 503 Sports, SportsHistoryCollectibles.com, Streaker Sports, and OldSchoolShirts.com!

You Gotta Have Heart: A History of Washington Baseball from 1859 to the 2012 National League East Champions - buy here