MLB team expansion is always a tempting topic, because it allows us to dream of new possibilities. New stadiums, new nicknames, new logos, new rivalries. Baseball people often chat about which cities would be a good fit for a major league club, whether it’s the return of the best baseball in the world to Montreal or a new franchise in Las Vegas, Nashville, San Antonio, Charlotte, Portland, Vancouver or in any other city that people imagine.
Indeed, for as long as MLB has existed, there have been entities interested in bringing a major league club to new venues. The current 30-team format includes the stories of the venues that have survived.
Just a few examples: Seattle received and lost an expansion franchise in 1969, but then received another expansion opportunity in 1977. Milwaukee lost the Brewers and Braves, but got the Brewers back after taking the original franchise from Seattle. The Rays struggled big, but in the end they brought baseball to Tampa Bay. And the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex was turned down in several bids for an expansion team, before the Washington Senators moved there to become the Rangers before the 1972 season.
But what happened to the cities that haven’t been able to have a major league franchise?
Next, a group of venues that came to be highly regarded but ultimately came up empty-handed.
Louisville, Kentucky
Many of you know that the A’s moved from Kansas City to Oakland prior to the 1968 season. But what you may not know is that there were other potential relocation sites for the team that preceded that move.
Frustrated with the lease on Kansas City Municipal Stadium, owned by the city itself, A’s owner Charlie Finley went looking for potential venues to relocate. A bid to move to Dallas was scrapped by the other American League team owners in 1962. There was also talk of a possible move to Seattle or Milwaukee. Finley even fantasized about the (completely absurd and unlikely) possibility of moving the team to the small town of Peculiar, Missouri, about 45 minutes south of Kansas City, and setting up temporary bleachers in a pasture.
More serious was the idea of moving the Athletics to the state of Kentucky.
Finley met with Louisville Mayor William Cowger and Kentucky Governor Edward Breathitt and announced that he had signed a two-year lease for his team to use Fairgrounds Stadium as their home. Again, American League club owners rejected the proposal. When Finley floated the idea of signing a 20-year deal with the city of Oakland to move the team to a stadium that had yet to be built, the owners scrapped that too, threatening to kick Finley out of the league if he didn’t agree to what they wanted. them was a fair rent extension proposal from Kansas City.
Ultimately, Finley had to relent and sign the four-year contract, but after it expired in 1967, the league and owners finally let him pack up and move to Oakland. Too bad, but the house where the famous Louisville Slugger bats are made has been home to several Negro League teams, as well as the minor league team, the Colonels. The minor league franchise now known as the Louisville Bats has been in operation since 1982.
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo got to have an MLB team – on loan – when the Blue Jays combined to play 49 “home” games at Sahlen Field, home of its affiliate of the Triple-A Bisons (who have been around since 1979), in the seasons altered by the 2020 and 2021 pandemics. But this city already had a National League franchise — the original Bisons — from 1879 to 1885, another variant of the Bisons in the American League in 1900 (before it became became the Major League the following year), as well as the BufFeds and Blues in 1914-15 in the Federal League (which is recognized as the Major League).
And the War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo was used as the headquarters of the fictional “New York Knights” or “New York Knights” in the filming of the movie “El Natural”, which has to count for something.
But several efforts to land a Buffalo-based American League or National League franchise in the modern era have floundered. As detailed in this article on the Padres’ volatile early years, Buffalo initially had the support of NL owners to host one of two expansion franchises in 1969, but some last-minute politicking and pressure deflected that. I vote for San Diego.
In the mid-1980s, Buffalo built Sahlen Field (originally known as Pilot Field) with major league facilities in hopes of securing an MLB franchise, but missed the opportunity for expansion, which was instead won by Denver (Rockies) and Miami (Marlins) for the 1993 season and Arizona (D-backs) and St. Petersburg (Rays) for the 1998 season.
Indianapolis, Indiana
Indianapolis has a rich baseball tradition that began in the 1870s, when the Indianapolis Blues became a franchise in the National League. The Indianapolis Indians (now the Triple-A Pirates) debuted as an American Association franchise in 1902. Indianapolis also had a Negro Leagues franchise — the Clowns — that was established in the 1930s. and was the last Negro League team disbanded in the 1980s.
In 1985, a group of local Indianapolis investors were so hopeful of landing a major league team, either via relocation (the Pirates and A’s were for sale) or expansion, that they held a press conference to announce the name. of the team. The NFL Colts had just moved to Indianapolis the year before and there was enough fan interest to secure deposits for 12,000 season tickets.
But the Indianapolis Arrows, as they might have been called, never got off the ground. It was determined that repurposing the Hoosier Dome for baseball would be too difficult a challenge and generating the funds for new facilities would be impossible. The proximity of cities such as Cincinnati, San Luis and Chicago also provoked resistance from the owners of those teams.
It was not the first time that the city of Indianapolis was rejected as a venue. Indianapolis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Buffalo had teams in the American League in 1900, which was a minor league circuit at the time. Each of those clubs was eliminated when the circuit was reorganized as part of the Major Leagues in 1901. Kansas City and Minneapolis eventually returned to the American League, but sadly neither Indianapolis nor Buffalo did.
Arlington, Virginia
In the years before the Expos moved to Washington DC and became the Nationals, there was a serious – and almost successful – effort to establish a major league team across the river from the US capital.
Representatives from Northern Virginia made a pitch to Major League Baseball in 1990, proposing sites in Pentagon City. Instead, the league went ahead with expansion teams in Miami and Denver in 1993, but Virginia left good pressure. When the expansion talk resumed in 1995, Arlington was among the final four for two new teams, but Phoenix and St. Petersburg ended up prevailing.
When MLB took control of the Expos and looked at options to relocate them, Arlington made another bid, proposing a stadium along the Potomac River with views of the capital. The plan had the support of Arlington County Board President Charles P. Monroe. But Monroe died suddenly of an aneurysm in early 2003, so the Board took another course and Washington, DC stayed with the Expos.
Orlando, Florida
Like Arlington, the city of Orlando was passed over for an expansion team in 1998. Although the final decision was made in March 1995, everything seemed to be against Orlando. There was no way Central Florida was going to get two franchises; Tampa Bay entities had made six attempts over 18 years to buy a team and move it to St. Petersburg, including the San Francisco Giants, a transaction Major League owners rejected in 1992.
Therefore, the owners possibly felt they owed a team to Tampa Bay, so priority was given to it.
At the end of 2019, the co-founder of the Orlando Magic of the NBA, Pat Williams, held a press conference in which he announced his intention to create a Major League team called the “Dreamers” (Dreamers), but for now that remains a dream.
New Orleans, Louisiana
The Rays’ recent proposal to split their home games between Tampa Bay and Montreal is unusual, but not unprecedented.
In 1971, Cleveland owner Vernon Stouffer was strapped for cash and cut a deal for the Indians to play 30 games a season for 25 years in New Orleans. Businessman David Dixon had raised funds for the Superdome in an attempt to attract an NFL franchise to New Orleans, but it was designed to serve baseball and basketball as well.
Dixon and Stouffer approached American League president Joe Cronin and the other owners with their idea, but it was not approved.
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