March 18, 1953: Baseball On the Move

Milwaukee County Stadium, as it appeared during the Braves' tenure

March 18, 1953: For the 1st time in 50 years, a major league baseball team moves from one city to another. And it does so right on the heels of a new season.

For years, several cities in "the high minors" had tried to get the major leagues to put a team there. Milwaukee, where the Boston Braves had their top farm team, was the first to break through. Moving there meant that they already owned the rights to have a major league team there, and wouldn't have to pay someone else a territorial indemnification fee.

The case for the Braves staying in Boston was actually stronger than you might think. They had won the National League Pennant as recently as 1948. They still had Warren Spahn, a Hall of Fame pitcher. They had Eddie Mathews, who turned out to be a Hall of Fame 3rd baseman, coming off a good rookie season. They had Hank Aaron, who turned out to be a Hall of Fame right fielder, in their farm system. Many of the other players who would win Pennants in Milwaukee in 1957 and '58 were also in their farm system.

In contrast, the American League's Boston Red Sox had one bankable star: Ted Williams. At the end of the 1952 season, Williams was in the U.S. Marine Corps, flying a jet in the Korean War. He wouldn't be back until late 1953 -- and no one knew that would be the case in the preceding Winter. For all they knew, he could have ended up missing all of '53, '54, and so on... maybe even retire.

The Red Sox had Fenway Park. But Fenway wasn't considered special in the early Fifties. Its Fenway's age (40 years old) didn't make it special: 8 of the other 13 major league ballparks (2 of them having 2 teams sharing) opened in April 1912 or earlier. Nor did the other things that are now considered to make Fenway "special": Other parks had big, close walls, and most had a hand-operated scoreboard. The CITGO sign? Didn't go up until 1965. The bleachers on top of the Green Monster? 2002.

No, the Red Sox weren't special because of their players, or their ballpark, or their history. They hadn't won the World Series since 1918, and as for their 1946 Pennant, well, the Braves had won one more recently. Neither team was a glamour team, but the Braves were, at the least, not far behind the Sox by that measure.

If the Braves had just hung on in Boston one more season, they would have had Mathews' 47 home runs (or thereabouts; Braves Field was roughly as hitter-pitcher balanced as Milwaukee County Stadium), and the attendance would have gone up. One more, and Aaron would have arrived. The team was getting better.

Despite the manpower shortage of World War II, and having a really inadequate ballpark in Borchert Field (it was older than any major league park, and its dimensions were similar to those of the Polo Grounds), the minor-league version of the Milwaukee Brewers drew rather well.

This was mainly because they were winning. They won the American Association Pennant in 1943, '44 and '45. They also had success because their owner was Bill Veeck, and this was where he became the king of the baseball promotion. This included starting games at 8:00 in the morning so people working the overnight shift at Milwaukee-area defense plants could come to a ballgame right from work.

But Veeck and his Brewers proved that Milwaukee could support a major league team. So the County of Milwaukee began building a stadium, confident that they could get a team. By then, Veeck had owned the Cleveland Indians, and was owning the St. Louis Browns, and intended to move them to Milwaukee. There was also a group trying to buy the St. Louis Cardinals from Fred Saigh, who had to go to prison and sell the team due to tax fraud, and move them to Milwaukee.

So if the Braves hadn't exercised their option before the 1953 season, some major league team would surely have been playing home games at Milwaukee County Stadium in April 1954. But the Braves, literally and figuratively, made their move. Gussie Busch bought the Cardinals, keeping them in St. Louis. Veeck tried to move the Browns to Baltimore, but MLB voted that the move could only go forward with another owner, so he sold them, and they became the Baltimore Orioles.

Milwaukee was a good market. The Braves ended up bringing in more fans in their 1st 13 home games in Milwaukee in 1953, 312,936, than they did in all 77 games in Boston in 1952, 281,281. In 1954, they set an NL record for highest attendance, and did it again in 1957. O'Malley got jealous of the attendance and the parking spaces, and the rest is history.

Downtown Milwaukee, circa 1957

Oddly, the Braves made their move during Spring Training, with 45 days before the regular season opened. On April 14, 1953, they played, interestingly enough, the Cardinals, and beat them, 3-2 in 10 innings. Spahn went the distance, and Billy Bruton hit a home run off Gerry Staley to win it.

The Braves broke the ice:

* 1953-54: The St. Louis Browns moved, becoming the Baltimore Orioles.

* 1954-55: The Philadelphia Athletics moved, becoming the Kansas City Athletics.

* 1957-58: The Brooklyn Dodgers moved, becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers. Horace Stoneham, owner of the New York Giants, was preparing to move his team to Minneapolis, where they had their top farm team. But, needing a reasonably close team to cut down on travel costs, Dodger owner Walter O'Malley talked him into San Francisco instead.

* 1960-61: The Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis, becoming the Minnesota Twins. The AL expanded, creating a new Washington Senators, and the Los Angeles Angels.

* 1961-62: The New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s began play. In 1965, the Colt .45s changed their name to the Houston Astros.

* 1965-66: The bloom had come off the rose for the Braves, who moved to Atlanta.

* 1967-68: After threatening to move to Dallas and Louisville, Charlie Finley moves the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland.

* 1969: Another expansion creates the Kansas City Royals, the Seattle Pilots, the Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres.

* 1969-70: After a disastrous first season in Seattle, the Pilots move, becoming the Milwaukee Brewers. The Chicago White Sox had been threatening to move to Milwaukee.

* 1971-72: The "new" Washington Senators move to the Dallas area, where they became the Texas Rangers. The White Sox threaten to move to Denver.

* 1973-74: The Padres nearly move to Washington, before they are sold.

* 1975-76: The White Sox again threaten to move, this time to Seattle, before being sold and kept in Chicago.

* 1976-77: The San Francisco Giants nearly move to Toronto, leading to the creation of 2 new expansion teams, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Seattle Mariners.

* 1977-78: Finley nearly moves the A's to Denver.

* 1978-79: Finley nearly moves the A's to New Orleans. He sells them in 1980.

The Tampa Bay nearly got the White Sox for 1989 and the Giants for 1993, before last-minute moves kept those teams where they were. Denver and Miami finally got teams in 1993, the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins (later the Miami Marlins). In 1998, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks were created. In 2004-05, the Expos moved, becoming the Washington Nationals.

Catcher Del Crandall was the last living former Boston Brave, living until May 5, 2021.

UPDATE: The Atlanta Braves have a team Hall of Fame. The Boston Braves they've inducted into it are Harry Wright, Kid Nichols, Herman Long, Hugh Duffy, Fred Tenney, Rabbit Maranville, Wally Berger, Johnny Sain, Tommy Holmes and Warren Spahn. The Milwaukee Braves they've inducted are Spahn, Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Del Crandall, Joe Adcock and Joe Torre.

Aaron, Spahn, Mathews and Braves broadcaster Earl Gillespie have been elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame.

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March 18, 1953 was a Wednesday. As I said, baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. One game was played in the NBA: The Indianapolis Olympians beat the Milwaukee Hawks, 74-69 at the Milwaukee Arena. In 1974, it was renamed the Milwaukee Exposition, Convention Center and Arena, or "The MECCA." Since 2014, it has been named the UW-Panther Arena.

Ironically, just 2 years after getting the Braves, and only 4 years after getting the Hawks, Milwaukee would lose the Hawks: They moved to St. Louis in 1955, and then to Atlanta in 1968, the year Milwaukee got a new NBA team, the Bucks.

There were 2 games in the NHL. The Boston Bruins beat the New York Rangers, 2-1 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Chicago Black Hawks, 4-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Montreal Canadiens and the Detroit Red Wings were not scheduled.