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Angels tell Anaheim they're opting out of their lease on Angel Stadium


Gothamite

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13 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

A’s jacked. 

 

Gotta admit, I admire the civic pride Vet’s showing, still salty about the A’s leaving Philly. That’s dedication. 

I'm with Vet. I'm trying to avenge the loss that my then 30 year old grandfather had to endure. Long live the Philadelphia Athletics!

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20 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I'll pop in here to mention that, while the talk along the lines of "why should Atlanta fans care about the Boston Braves?" is very interesting, the important issue with relocated teams is not fans' perceptions but the official records. And, on the question of records: Washington Senators and Winnipeg Jets = the right way; Cleveland Browns and Charlotte Hornets = the wrong way.

 

But in the case of the Yankees and the 1901-02 Orioles, what exactly is the point?  How is the club, the city, or the sport benefited by incorporating those 118 wins into the over all total? 

 

I used to think the way you do, but the whole thing seems kind of silly to me now. Stories end. Histories can stop and new ones can start. 

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2 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

But in the case of the Yankees and the 1901-02 Orioles, what exactly is the point?  How is the club, the city, or the sport benefited by incorporating those 118 wins into the over all total? 

 

I used to think the way you do, but the whole thing seems kind of silly to me now. Stories end. Histories can stop and new ones can start. 

 

I’m in the same boat. I used to be far more hardcore about this before I realized, it’s just sports. It’s just the stories of the games we play, and as long as independent accounts say what really happened, teams and leagues can do whatever the heck they want. The stakes are fairly low and localized.

 

Still, dumping the A’s identity with a Portland move is stupid, even if the A’s have spent nearly as much time in Oakland as they have in Philadelphia.

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RE: The Browns Deal and the reason I've never had a problem with it - The Ravens never played a single game under the lineage of the Browns. It was understood by everyone that mattered that the franchise in Baltimore was a new line and it was understood how records were to be kept from that point forward. Art Modell agreed to forfeit his franchise in order to take over a new one, the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade, and the Browns franchise was put on hold until the time when a new group could get the franchise back on the field. That's exactly what happened and that's exactly as it was recorded. That is the official record. They didn't "leave their history in Cleveland" so much as the franchise stayed in Cleveland and took a break while a new one started in Baltimore. Clean. No lie ever took place, no historical revisionism ever took place. There's no "pretending" the Ravens aren't the Browns because the Ravens aren't and have never been the Browns. Their origin is rooted with the Cleveland Browns, yes, but that's where the connection ends. 

 

Really the argument is based on precedent. The only reason the Cleveland deal rankles people is because it wasn't the usual procedure, but because everything was so cleanly spelled out, agreed upon, and took place in real-time, it's not any less "real" or valid a history. 


But even if everyone wants to go back after the fact and pull a Bobcats-Hornets-Pelicans, which will happen whenever the Seattle Sonics are returned to the NBA, what does it even matter? People in Charlotte care more about the Charlotte Hornets history than do New Orleans Pelicans fans. It's fine to me if they want to bundle all of that into their current Bobcats franchise. It doesn't hurt anything or anyone. Why do people in Arizona care about Dale Hawerchuk? Why do people in Winnipeg have to think about Laine breaking Ilya Kovalchuk's Thrashers records and how is that a better system? Even if some post-move revisionism with the Browns had taken place - It's just sports. None of this is real. Isn't it right that people in Cleveland get to cheer for the same team as their parents/grandparents? Wouldn't it feel weird and sad that Jim Brown and all those Browns would be tied to some purple bird team in Baltimore? Wouldn't Baltimore rather still have the same franchise tied to the Johnny Unitas Colts if they had a choice? 

 

Just write down what happened and call it a day. 

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3 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

But in the case of the Yankees and the 1901-02 Orioles, what exactly is the point?  How is the club, the city, or the sport benefited by incorporating those 118 wins into the over all total? 

 

I used to think the way you do, but the whole thing seems kind of silly to me now. Stories end. Histories can stop and new ones can start. 


I count records the way I think they should be counted, not the way someone (even the league) tells me to. The '01-'02 Orioles are part of the Yankees. The old Cleveland Browns are the Ravens, and the new Cleveland Browns are an expansion team. The records of the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, Brooklyn Nets and San Antonio Spurs count their ABA time as much as their NBA time, and indeed so do the records of defunct ABA teams. As do the  BAA, the NBL, AAFC, the three earlier AFLs, the Federal League, and the National Association. As you said, it's just sports; I can count it the way I want.

As the joke goes, If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it one.

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12 hours ago, McCarthy said:

the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade

And what exactly did the Browns get for that whopper of a trade? A three-year vacation?

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14 hours ago, Gothamite said:

But in the case of the Yankees and the 1901-02 Orioles, what exactly is the point? 

 

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

In this particular case, the principal was violated just so the Yankees' history wouldn't be contaminated by events in another city. Even when I was a Yankee fan I would have thought that that was cheesy.

 

And in the Browns' case, it was done in order to ensure that there would be no lawsuits. This reasoning is less cheesy than the reasoning in the Yankees case, but no less dishonest.

 

 

12 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

I used to be far more hardcore about this before I realized, it’s just sports. It’s just the stories of the games

 

13 hours ago, McCarthy said:

It's just sports. None of this is real.

 

This "it's just sports" line of argument just will not do at all.

 

Earlier in the thread, the phenomenon of anti-Stratfordianism was mentioned. Someone could similarly dismiss that assault on history: What does it matter? It's just a bunch of stories.

 

You might wish to  retort that literature matters, and sports do not. But we could easily find people who would maintain that sports matter and literature does not.

 

The truth is that both of these things matter — and for the same reason. That reason is that both literature and sports are pillars of our culture.

 

 

13 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

and as long as independent accounts say what really happened, teams and leagues can do whatever the heck they want.

 

But no independent accounts will ever have the weight of a league's official record book.

 

 

11 hours ago, mjrbaseball said:

I count records the way I think they should be counted, not the way someone (even the league) tells me to.

 

As you should. However, your good practice influences precisely no one, while a league's official history informs what the vast majority of people now and in the future will accept as real.

 

 

13 hours ago, McCarthy said:

the Browns players' contracts were shifted to a different franchise the same way they would be in a trade, and the Browns franchise was put on hold until the time when a new group could get the franchise back on the field.

 

This describes how it would have been if the NFL had created a new expansion team in Baltimore and had granted it to Art Modell, and if the Browns had actually gone on hiatus in the way one NFL team did during World War II.

 

But what actually happened was that the franchise moved, and was originally going to be called the Baltimore Browns. Then litigation was threatened, so the league came up with the plan to play "let's pretend" with the facts of history in order to appease the would-be litigants.

 

 

13 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

The stakes are fairly low and localized.

 

The stakes are neither low nor localised, because every act of this sort encourages more of them. MLS specifically cited the Cleveland Browns when it cooked up the fantasy version of the history of the San Jose Earthquakes' move to Houston.

 

More fundamentally, this practice erodes the value of intellectual honesty.

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1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

You might wish to  retort that literature matters, and sports do not. But we could easily find people who would maintain that sports matter and literature does not.

 

I'm not going to maintain literature doesn't matter, but it's ridiculous that people on this site say sports don't matter. Sports are a major part of our identity. Hell, you can't truly understand the history of the United States without baseball. Sports have played a major part of the civil rights movement, played a role in the cold war, helped repair relations with Japan after WW2, created some of our most noted celebrities, provides insight to labor issues, antitrust, regularly gets roped into politics, national and local. 

 

Sure, what name a team uses may not appear that big of a deal, but recording those histories correctly can provide insight on how capitalism and consumerism impact sports in more ways than people realize. Hell, we talk about that every single day here. 

 

We should preserve history as best we can, even if the matters seem trivial, because that's how future generations learn and adapt. Besides, isn't it easier to just pretend the new Hornets are the old hornets if it means that much to you than bending over backwards to rewrite history?

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1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

 

I'm not going to maintain literature doesn't matter, but it's ridiculous that people on this site say sports don't matter. Sports are a major part of our identity. Hell, you can't truly understand the history of the United States without baseball.

 

 

Except you can. You can give it a few lines, but you’ll find that it’s easy enough to downplay. Going into the historiography demonstrates that the sport doesn’t necessarily need mentioning outside of a few key figures.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Sports have played a major part of the civil rights movement,

 

I certainly wouldn’t deny that, I would support that assertion.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

played a role in the cold war,

 

Yes, but an negligible one. You can do an entire Cold War history book without it (as I’ve encountered many). Yes, there are books that argue that baseball was a crucial part of American imperialism, but what does that have to do with relocated franchises?

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

 

helped repair relations with Japan after WW2,

 

That’s certainly true, even if it was part of larger efforts that tackled cultural issues and adjusting existing stereotypes/ideologies on both sides of the conflict. War Without Mercy explains it in great detail. But official (as in, league-sourced) histories of individual franchises matters very little in this regard.  

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

created some of our most noted celebrities, provides insight to labor issues, antitrust, regularly gets roped into politics, national and local. 

 

Again, that’s all true.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Sure, what name a team uses may not appear that big of a deal, but recording those histories correctly can provide insight on how capitalism and consumerism impact sports in more ways than people realize. Hell, we talk about that every single day here. 

 

I agree with you here, with the caveat that I’m ok with league sources saying one thing and the non-league historical records (e.g., academia, third-party reference materials, the internet, city and national history books/articles, and non-league affiliated researchers). Just because the leagues says one thing doesn’t mean that the rest of the world will follow their lead. In fact, they’ll see fit to contradict them and correct them. How many times to people use the phrase “Cleveland deal” to describe a process for an expansion team. That act alone acknowledges the move and expansion.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

We should preserve history as best we can, even if the matters seem trivial, because that's how future generations learn and adapt.

 

That’s obvious, but franchise lineages according to league sources, are absolutely trivial compared to many other disciplines within the field.

 

1 hour ago, Lafarge said:

Besides, isn't it easier to just pretend the new Hornets are the old hornets if it means that much to you than bending over backwards to rewrite history?

 

That’s the thing: nobody is rewriting that the two Charlotte Hornets are the same team outside of the league and their licensees. Any history besides the league’s official documentation (e.g., record books and press kits) acknowledges this. Just because one organization says this one thing doesn’t mean that the rest of the world (outside of a few licensees) has to listen to it. Anybody with enough interest can find this stuff out in a matter of seconds. This isn’t chiseling the faces off of hieroglyphs or denying war crimes.

 

When you study history, even microhistories, you find that some material is fairly trivial in the larger scope. If one source wants to connect one franchise to another, let them. It’s just one additional source in a wide array of sources to interpret and craft a thesis about any certain topic.

 

Heck, the “Cleveland deal” can speak to the connection any certain municipality had to their team (either due to their storied nature or impactful branding/placement in the city’s history). It may also reveal league processes unbeknownst to insiders, like how the NBA ties franchise lineages to intellectual property (i.e., vintage logos and uniforms) and the NHL doesn’t (i.e., the Jets have the trademarks to the previous club’s designs but not the records - as it should be). Even if it’s disingenuous for the league to do it, describing the process is incredibly useful in talking about the shifting understandings of branding and civic importance of sports franchises.

 

This is my long winded way of saying, it’s just sports. As long as the real history outweighs the league’s history in widespread acknowledgement, we’re cool and no harm has been done.

 

Besides, I like seeing teams adopt new identities upon moving and I wish that it was always the standard. But since it wasn’t for so long and many important brands traveled across the country, we just have to live with it and embrace it. Should the A’s move to Portland, they shouldn’t rebrand. Should the Rays abandon Montréal and focus on Portland or another market, they should rebrand. The difference between a storied heritage club and an expansion team created from litigation is a vast one.

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History should very much stay with the team. It's "what happened."

Not to say that the new Browns being the Browns is wrong. They can be the Browns if all parties involved are ok with it (see Jets, Winnipeg). Just don't lie to me and tell me the Browns of 1999-present are the same team Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar played for, because they aren't.

 

7 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Besides, I like seeing teams adopt new identities upon moving and I wish that it was always the standard.

Eh, I think it's a mixed bag. The fact that teams like the Oakland Athletics and Sacramento Kings have had (more or less) the same names since their early days across a number of locales is cool to me.

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16 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

History should very much stay with the team. It's "what happened."

Not to say that the new Browns being the Browns is wrong. They can be the Browns if all parties involved are ok with it (see Jets, Winnipeg). Just don't lie to me and tell me the Browns of 1999-present are the same team Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar played for, because they aren't.

 

Only the league and their press/licensees are pretending. The rest of the world (outside of some deluded fans, who are probably just happy to be rooting for a team with the same name and not caring about obscure records or the minutia of franchise transfers) and historical sources know damn well that they’re two different entities.

 

The non-league sources/real historical cataloguing (academia, periodicals, encyclopedias, etc.) are why I call the current San José Earthquakes the “Fake Quakes,” because the real team plays in Houston now and even a cursory glance into team history will tell you this. The minute somebody looks into the history of the New Orleans Pelicans, they’ll see a Hornets design and be instantly aware of their team’s true origins. They’ll be similarly alerted to the true history by seeing the logos and uniforms of the Charlotte Bobcats, especially when they hear the history of that name. 

 

Ultimately, if the leagues and fans want to pretend that the two teams are the same entity due to some suspended franchise certificate or IP transfer, let them. It’ll just make us historians that much more vigilant in describing what really happened. The real history is never forgotten, despite what some people in Cleveland or Charlotte (read: localized interests) want. Let them play pretend, as the rest of the world can correct them. The stakes are fairly trivial.

 

Sharing names is cool and all (see my name here), but adopting new identities (while preserving the record books, despite localized interests) should have been the standard. I’d have enjoyed seeing the Giants-Dodgers rivalry transcend New York by becoming the Seals-Angels conflict. The Braves becoming the Brewers (a name the former Pilots would subsequently adopt) and then a bird-themed name (to tie in with the Falcons/Hawks and to avoid the unmarketable “Crackers” name) would have also been cool. But that’s not what happened. 

 

Keeping transient identity around, one’s that don’t conflict with the location, is fine. If the name has been around for generations and offers no significant conflicts with the new spot, let it stick around.

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7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

But did they happen the way you insist they did?  That’s not actually clear. 

 

And in the case of the Cleveland Browns that you cite, the way the NFL records it is the way it actually happened.  It was recorded as sick at the time, and those who insist on pretending there is no franchise continuity at all are the ones trying to re-write history. 

 

Similarly, I’m not entirely sure that those trying to maintain a direct unbroken line between the 1902 Orioles and the 1903 Highlanders aren’t the ones imposing their own narrative on events.  If the 1902 club was truly defunct in the eyes of the league, if its assets were liquidated and the new 1903 club was created largely from scratch, then perhaps the story we’ve been telling ourselves isn’t quite as accurate as we thought. 

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And let me be clear - I love history.  I’ve spent a lot of my life wandering down its trails and yelling for others to pay attention.  I’ll get the Brewers to do a Milwaukee Chicks “Turn Back the Clock” game if it’s the last thing I do. 😁

 

But historical records should not be confused for objective fact.  As Betty Reid Soskin puts it, “What gets remembered is determined by who is in the room doing the remembering.”  Not to mention the errors often carried forward by people who don’t care, don’t know any better, or who have an agenda of their own.  Especially in an era when Wikipedia puts facts to a vote.

 

So I have no problem going back and re-examining an event like the foundation of the Yankees.  And if what I’ve read is true, that the assets of the Baltimore club were liquidated and it was truly defunct, then maybe I was wrong to presume it was a simple and standard franchise relocation.

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22 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Why do people in Winnipeg have to think about Laine breaking Ilya Kovalchuk's Thrashers records and how is that a better system? 

 

Because bloggers who hate that Winnipeg is in the NHL tell them they have to!

♫ oh yeah, board goes on, long after the thrill of postin' is gone ♫

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44 minutes ago, the admiral said:

 

Because bloggers who hate that Winnipeg is in the NHL tell them they have to!

 

Compare that to mentioning the Expos on a Nationals fan community, where you’re met with calls of “I don’t care about the Expos,” “Why should I care about players who didn’t play for Washington?,” or “If Montréal gets another team, I’d love for the Nationals to give them back the history, as it’s not ours.”

 

While we ultimately follow the franchise model (with these few exceptions), sports ultimately reflect a regional kind of tribalism that is very location-specific. A lot of that originates from the popular cultural fallout of the Giants and Dodgers moving out west, where Walter O’Malley gets elevated to the level of Satan himself (even though Robert Moses was far more to blame). Even to the modern day, people will still wax romantic about that time and wrongfully curse O’Malley for ending it. No relocation really inspired this much ire until the moves of both the Colts and the Browns, which built upon this precedent for tying a team so thoroughly into the city. It was Cleveland that ultimately took it to court and set up this cockamamie scheme with the franchise certificates.

 

Quite frankly, all the people of Cleveland needed to do was to convince the NFL to get an expansion team and tell Modell to rebrand his team upon moving. The market had enough clout and a potential legal battle to force it. I doubt many fans would have cared about a franchise certificate or beating some AAFC records. If they were concerned about the records of the previous team, they could just refer to the “city history” (separate from franchise records), a la the Nationals or the Winnipeg Jets. They didn’t have to go as far as they did, and even when they did, it didn’t really hurt anybody. It was just sports. It’s OK to not take it as some great attack on anything. It was just a way of manifesting some location-based tribalism and “striking back” at the man who took their prestigious team away. Little did they know that the Ravens would have immensely more success than the expansion franchise that honestly doesn’t deserve to carry the name or records of Paul and Jim Brown’s club. 

 

Often times, you only care about what happened to your team in another city because:

a. Overlap in rosters of all-time greats (e.g., Mays, Aaron, Matthews, Koufax, etc.)

b. It makes your team’s championship count seem more impressive (I’d rather say that my team won eight titles, not three)

c. The team achieved something truly historical (e.g., Robinson breaking the color barrier, the careers of one of the greatest deadball-era pitchers - Mathewson, and two impressive dynasties) 

d. The relocation had a replacement team (e.g., the Mets, Brewers, Mariners, Nationals, Royals, etc.).

 

When these conditions are absent, you can default to a location-based sense of identity. They’re not “this team from another place that came in and brought their great history with them,” but are rather a blank slate upon which fans and marketers can project a sense of local tribalism. The St. Louis Browns, both the Sens/Nats and second Sens, the Pilots, and the Expos were such blank slates.

 

That last point ties back into my pro-Anaheim argument, but since this thread clearly isn’t about that anymore (does somebody want to split it off), I’m sure we’ll keep going in this discourse.

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Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history. I have a degree in it, obsess over it, and even have the only thread on the boards that uses Turabian citations to prove that I’ve done my primary and secondary source research. Heck, I’m one of the few Sharks fans who will list the team’s establishment date as “1967, re-established 1991” since I believe in the un-merger, not a traditional expansion. I want statues of John McGraw, Carl Hubbell, and Mel Ott outside of Willie Mays Park, alongside Lefty O’Doul in a Seals uniform. If you’re promoting the history in your branding, go all the way!

 

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

 

The Cleveland Browns misrepresenting themselves in the record books didn’t obscure conspiracies or lead to systemic oppression, all it did was set the bar too high for an expansion club and give the Ravens a clean slate. The Hornets/Pelicans/Bobcats switchover was a mess and points to a significant problem in NBA branding policies (tying logo trademarks to team records), but it didn’t misrepresent artworks influential to the development of popular literature or performance art. 

 

Yes, sports are important, but they’re not that important.

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On 6/27/2019 at 7:32 AM, Gothamite said:
On 6/26/2019 at 11:55 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The point is the principle that historical events should be recorded as they actually happened.

 

But did they happen the way you insist they did?  That’s not actually clear.

 

The move of the Browns to Baltimore is an objective fact.  The business of the "leaving the history" is a pure fiction.  We know this because, in the real world, it is not possible to "leave one's history", as one's history is the record of what one actually did.  (You know that drunken night of debauchery that ended with me belting out "Purple Haze" with my trousers around my ankles?  OK, from now on, I didn't do that.  Some other guy did that.  I have left my history with him.  Egad, man.  The Browns deal is no less insane.)  I certainly realise that the private entity the NFL has the legal right to record its history any way it wants to.  But any honest observer has the ethical duty to call that out as bunk, and to make clear that it's a lie to people who would otherwise not know this.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 7:32 AM, Gothamite said:

Similarly, I’m not entirely sure that those trying to maintain a direct unbroken line between the 1902 Orioles and the 1903 Highlanders aren’t the ones imposing their own narrative on events.  If the 1902 club was truly defunct in the eyes of the league, if its assets were liquidated and the new 1903 club was created largely from scratch, then perhaps the story we’ve been telling ourselves isn’t quite as accurate as we thought.

 

At the time this was definitely not seen as the creation of a new club.  The American League could have folded the Baltimore club after the tumultuous 1902 season, as the National League had done with four of its clubs (including Baltimore) a few years before.  But it did not do that; rather, it took over the club's ownership, and then sold the club to new owners.  The continuity is a matter of fact. 

 

The "new franchise" story was concocted much later at the behest of the Yankees, who were approaching some milestone win mark, and wanted to count only those wins since 1903.  The Yankees petitioned the Major League Baseball historian John Thorn, who ultimately acquiesced.  Thorn gave a very unconvincing justification for his ruling, citing the difference in the rosters of the 1902 Baltimore team and the 1903 New York team (and glossing over the fact that that is completely irrelevant to the question of franchise continuity).  Before the ruling officialising this fiction, Baseball Reference had counted the 1901 and 1902 Baltimore team as part of the Yankees' franchise, because any honest reading of history established that that is what it was.  After the ruling, it adjusted its listings to be in accord with the official records.  So much for "independent sources"!

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 8:26 AM, Gothamite said:

And let me be clear - I love history.

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

Don’t get me wrong - I LOVE history.


I will also declare my love of history.  I don't even follow current baseball (except for the uniforms); I am a fan purely of the sport's history.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

Heck, I’m one of the few Sharks fans who will list the team’s establishment date as “1967, re-established 1991” since I believe in the un-merger, not a traditional expansion. I want statues of John McGraw, Carl Hubbell, and Mel Ott outside of Willie Mays Park

 

Now you're speaking my language.  And the idea that the Sharks should be considered a continuous franchise with the California Golden Seals is a very good point. The NHL acknowledged the un-merger when it had the North Stars participate in the expansion draft; so the continuity between the team that was merged with the North Stars and the team that was separated from the North Stars is consistent with that.

 

 

On 6/27/2019 at 10:10 AM, SFGiants58 said:

The reason I keep saying that “it’s just sports” is that I’ve seen the many ways that people have weaponized history. Academia and governments have often used it to reinforce racial hierarchies, obscure atrocities, and lionize/demonize influential figures. Even those outside the academy or official positions twist history or archival sources to their advantage, using it to promote conspiracy theories or radical religious beliefs. Compared to all of that, the lineage of a sports team is shockingly trivial.

 

I wholly accept the assertion that the misrepresentation of the franchise histories is trivial as compared to obscuring or justifiying atrocities.  But I would call it a trivial expression of the same phenomenon. 

 

Also, even if I were to grant that the Browns deal was harmless in practice (which I do not grant — the Browns led directly to the Earthquakes, which, in turn, caused the NBA to consider the Hornets scam to be a viable plan, which, in turn, will lead to a similar arrangement when an NBA team moves to Seattle, which, in turn, could very well bring that mess into baseball history when a team moves to Montreal), even then I would be bothered by the principle.  I mean, if I can get worked up over defending the DH or denouncing the no-pitch intentional walk, things which have no connection to anything else in the world, then it is not surprising that my passions would be stirred over a principle that is philosophically linked to the more serious misrepresentations of history to which you allude.

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13 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

At the time this was definitely not seen as the creation of a new club.  The American League could have folded the Baltimore club after the tumultuous 1902 season, as the National League had done with four of its clubs (including Baltimore) a few years before.  But it did not do that; rather, it took over the club's ownership, and then sold the club to new owners.  The continuity is a matter of fact. 


Much the same as MLB did with the Expos, except the whole business was concluded in a single off-season rather than spanning three years.

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14 hours ago, Cosmic said:

And what exactly did the Browns get for that whopper of a trade? A three-year vacation?

 

Yes. Nobody said it was an ideal situation for them. With the situation they were in, however, it was the best outcome they could've hoped for. Better than waiting for a crappy relocated franchise with no connection to their previous franchise (Winnipeg) or never getting another one ever again (Harftord), though.

 

Players, coaches, staffers, even owners do not a franchise make. They change franchises all the time. If, hypothetically, a plane crash, heaven forbid, wiped out an entire team and the franchise took a few years off to recuperate, complete with an expansion draft, that would still be the same franchise, would it not? Same thing with the Browns franchise except replace plane crash with ahole owner. 

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