Rank relocations by how much they offended your sensibilities

[Lights Out]

28 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

but the drawn-out cruelty of the Winnipeg relocation

 

The Jets' relocation was drawn out for like three years. The Chargers' was drawn out for 20. Literally right after getting the Qualcomm Stadium renovations they demanded in '97, the Spanos family started inching towards their LA move.

[SFGiants58]

Just now, Lights Out said:

 

The Jets' relocation was drawn out for like three years. The Chargers' was drawn out for 20. Literally right after getting the Qualcomm Stadium renovations they demanded in '97, the Spanos family started inching towards their LA move.

 

Hell, even the Padres getting Petco (and allowing for more potential renovations) didn't slow down their moves for LA.

[neo_prankster]

Where would the Grizzlies moving from Vancouver to Memphis rank among relocations throughout recent history?

 

I feel like Vancouver was never given a fair chance to warm up to the NBA.

[infrared41]

The Washington Senators moving to Minnesota and Texas.

 

 

[DustDevil61]

One thing about the Chargers bolting (heh) for LA that made it so bad was when they moved.

 

Had they figured out a way to move 10 or so years before they did, the Chargers could’ve still had southern California all to themselves while establishing themselves as the Los Angeles team, beating anyone else to the punch. 

 

IIRC in 2007 the then-St. Louis Rams were still owned by Georgia Frontiere—who was still alive—and hadn’t even begun contemplating a Los Angeles return. The Chargers could’ve established an LA fan base while possibly saving some face with San Diego well before anyone else thought of moving.

 

Granted, this scenario would’ve required the Spanoses (or whoever else owned the Chargers in the event of a sell) to actually pay for their own stadium, but it’s a better Chargers/San Diego separation scenario than what we got in 2017.

 

Perhaps once Stan Kronke gained control of the Rams and still left St. Louis, he could’ve gone to San Diego; a Los Angeles Chargers/San Diego Rams regional rivalry sounds pretty fun had it happened that way.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, neo_prankster said:

Where would the Grizzlies moving from Vancouver to Memphis rank among relocations throughout recent history?

 

D-tier. The NBA and NHL running concurrently in a small market with a crappy exchange rate was doomed to fail even with Canucks co-ownership (which at the time was kind of in transition, as I recall), and American basketball players were being even bigger babies about playing in Canada than Canadian hockey players are, if you can even conceive of that. In general, I think NBA moves hurt the least because they don't have the deep roots of baseball and hockey or the magnitude of the NFL. The Sonics are the exception to the rule because NBA teams that die tend to die young but that was a team that had 40 years and a title.

 

Not sure what's F-tier except St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles.

[SFGiants58]

15 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

Not sure what's F-tier except St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles.

Boston Braves to Milwaukee. In the words of Joseph F. Dinneen Jr. of The Boston Globe:
 

Quote

Few fans became emotional over the loss of the franchise, and it was generally accepted that fandom would be satisfied to follow the Red Sox, as had been in recent years anyway, to the chagrin of Braves' owner Lou Perini.*

*Joseph F. Dinneen, “Only Faithful Really Mourn Shift of Club,” The Boston Globe, March 19, 1953.

 

Going from being a distant second fiddle in Boston to top draws in Milwaukee was a massive upgrade. The St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore also fits this tier.

[neo_prankster]

24 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

Boston Braves to Milwaukee. In the words of Joseph F. Dinneen Jr. of The Boston Globe:
 

*Joseph F. Dinneen, “Only Faithful Really Mourn Shift of Club,” The Boston Globe, March 19, 1953.

 

Going from being a distant second fiddle in Boston to top draws in Milwaukee was a massive upgrade. The St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore also fits this tier.

 

Again, why did it take baseball so long to wake up and realize some cities (Philly, STL, Boston) weren't really able to support two teams each?

[neo_prankster]

@SFGiants58

 

How many more years do you think the Giants need to play before they will officially have been a San Francisco team longer than a New York team?

[neo_prankster]

If today's Baltimore Orioles came to be as the result of the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore, how come the Orioles don't count the Browns or the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers as part of their history?

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, neo_prankster said:

If today's Baltimore Orioles came to be as the result of the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore, how come the Orioles don't count the Browns or the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers as part of their history?

 

Are you familiar with the history of the St. Louis Browns?

[infrared41]

1 hour ago, neo_prankster said:

@SFGiants58

 

How many more years do you think the Giants need to play before they will officially have been a San Francisco team longer than a New York team?

 

Seven.

[ZapRowsdower8]

4 hours ago, neo_prankster said:

Where would the Grizzlies moving from Vancouver to Memphis rank among relocations throughout recent history?

 

I feel like Vancouver was never given a fair chance to warm up to the NBA.

I was just in Vancouver this weekend. I've been a few times and I am always reassured in my belief that it is the nicest city in North America. Caveat, I haven't been everywhere, maybe Memphis is better than I imagine. 

 

The NBA in Vancouver seems like such a no brainer, it doesn't make sense that it didn't work out, until you read how poorly managed that team was. If the Canadian dollar was stronger, and if Vegas and Seattle weren't already shoe ins for the next round of expansion, then I could see it being given another shot. 

[GDAWG]

I always found the relocation of the Chargers to Los Angeles to be wrong and completely off putting.  

[BBTV]

8 hours ago, DustDevil61 said:

Had they figured out a way to move 10 or so years before they did,

 

If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.

 

7 hours ago, neo_prankster said:

why did it take baseball so long to wake up and realize some cities (Philly, STL, Boston) weren't really able to support two teams each?

 

For a good period, Phila was absolutely capable of being a 2-team city, and the A's leaving was more a result of their own complete mismanagement and organizational disfunction, which had a chain reaction.  At this point, it'll never be a 2-team city, but there have been windows where (if not for legal challenges) another baseball team could have set up shop in another section and definitely drawn due to accessibility and extreme apathy (at times in the late 50s, 60s, even other shorter windows) towards the Phillies.  While the city-proper's population has decreased, the area is still around 7M, so easily enough for two teams, provided one of them is more "localized", if that makes sense (think Cubs vs White Sox).  Those days are long past.

 

I don't know enough about the Eagles pre-80s, but I can't help but think that while the team was bouncing around and eventually in Franklin Field,  had a team started up in (ironically) Frankford, or even South Philly or South Jersey, there could have been two for a while, though I think one would eventually have departed.  

 

 

I think logically, one could look at statistics whether population, or ticket demand (even when crappy), and surmise that another team could survive (certainly enough corporate support to go around), but none of that matters anymore, since they're Eagles fans and would rather not be able to go than go see another team just because it says Philadelphia somewhere in its logo.

 

 

 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

9 hours ago, neo_prankster said:

If today's Baltimore Orioles came to be as the result of the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore, how come the Orioles don't count the Browns or the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers as part of their history?

 

They do.

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, infrared41 said:

9 hours ago, neo_prankster said:

How many more years do you think the Giants need to play before they will officially have been a San Francisco team longer than a New York team?

 

Seven.

 

 

It's actually nine seasons before the Giants will have been in San Francisco longer than they were in New York; it's eight seasons before they will have been in both cities for the same length of time.

 

The Giants were in New York for 75 seasons, from 1883 through 1957.  The current season is their 67th in San Francisco.

 

 

1 hour ago, BBTV said:

For a good period, Phila was absolutely capable of being a 2-team city, and the A's leaving was more a result of their own complete mismanagement and organizational disfunction, which had a chain reaction.

 

This is correct.  While Connie Mack built several outstanding teams, he also dismantled those teams in a hurray.  The first group, during the 1910s, with the "$100,000 infield" including Home Run Baker and Eddie Collins, and with pitchers Eddie Plank and Chief Bender, was broken up when the Federal League existed and drove up player salaries. Those two pitchers signed with Federal League teams, and the infielders were traded to American League teams that were willing to pay the salaries that the new market demanded. The group from the late 1920s and early 1930s, featuring Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove, was broken up also due to Mack's unwillingness to pay those players what they were worth.  So Charlie Finley wasn't the first A's owner to put a premature end to a dynastic team.

 

 

Back to the Giants and Dodgers.  Despite my love for the New York Giants, I must mention that the Giants' tenure in New York was unsalvageable.  By contrast, the Dodgers had a viable plan to stay in Brooklyn.

 

Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, who is often charicatured in popular myth as the villain who abandoned Brooklyn, in fact wanted to build a new stadium in downtown Brooklyn, on the current site of the Nets' arena. And that stadium would have been privately funded, as was the stadium eventually built in Los Angeles. What O'Malley needed from the New York City government was the consolidation of parcels for the stadium's footprint. This could have been done by the process of condemnation, the same process which the Los Angeles government used in order to acquire the land in Chavez Ravine for the stadium.

 

However, all city planning matters in New York City at the time were in the hands of Robert Moses, who held the office of commissioner of City parks, as well as an office in the State government. The upshot was that Moses had unilateral control over land use in the City. And Moses, upon receiving O'Malley's proposal, summarily rejected that proposal. So O'Malley turned elsewhere.

 

When the rest of the New York City government finally grasped that Moses had given O'Malley the back of his hand, they were outraged. Alas, by that time it was too late, as O'Malley had already formed a relationship with the Los Angeles municipal authorities, which had provide him with the land on which he could build his own stadium. All that New York officials could offer O'Malley by that point was a municipal stadium in Queens (the site that eventually housed Shea Stadium), an offer which had no chance of being acceptable to him. The truth is that the Dodgers didn't abandon Brooklyn; rather, they were kicked out of Brooklyn by Robert Moses.

 

If New York City had had a functioning government at the time (which is another way of saying: if Moses had not been an unaccountable megalomaniac), then that government would surely have acted as responsibly as the government of Los Angeles did; it would have reached an arrangement to acquire the necessary land in order to allow the privately-funded Dodger Stadium to be built at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Fourth Avenue rather than in Chavez Ravine. A Dodger Stadium at that location would have been accessible to the entire City by subway, while also being easily reached on the LIRR by the former Brooklynites who had moved out to Long Island. If we imagine Koufax and Drysdale and the 1960s Dodger teams there, we can reasonably speculate that the team would have had the same two-million-plus in yearly attendance that it drew in Los Angeles.

 

The area would surely have experienced an economic boom, with restaurants and bars creating a thriving walkable baseball district. (That Marriott hotel on Jay Street would have been built a good fifty years earlier than it was actually built.) An Atlantic Avenue stadium not only would have been an economic positive for the City, it would also have had the profoundly beneficial sociological effect of arresting the then-current perception of New York City, and of Eastern cities in general, as being in decline.

 

I grew up as a Yankee fan; and now, in my post-Yankee-fan days, I have deepened my lilfelong fascination with the New York Giants. So I have always strongly disliked the Dodgers. Yet I am forced to acknowledge that the Dodgers could easily have continued in New York City, as the Giants could not have done. The Giants' fan base had completely dissipated as a result of the several decades of dominance by the Yankees that commenced with the arrival of Babe Ruth. The Giants were leaving no matter what happened with the Dodgers. They would have gone to Minneapolis (the site of their top farm club); but, after O'Malley understood that he could get nowhere with Moses, he persuaded Giants' owner Horace Stoneham to move the Giants to San Francisco instead, so as to continue the teams' rivalry.

For that reason, it pains me to say that the move of the Giants ranks a lot lower on the outrage scale than that of the Dodgers.

 

Anyway, the moves that offend me the most are the ones that were handled by the leagues with dishonesty, starting with the execrable "Cleveland deal" that spits in the eye of history by denying the reality that the Browns moved to Baltimore. In this category also sit the moves of the CFL's Baltimore Stallions to Montreal and of MLS's San Jose Earthquakes to Houston, both of which are denied by the fictions propogated by those leagues. (I suppose that I need to add the fiasco that the NBA created with the histories of the Hornets, Bobcats, and Pelicans, even though the Hornets' move was initially handled properly.) Major League Baseball recognises two separate Washington Sentators franchises, two separate Milwaukee Brewers franchises, and four separate Baltimore Orioles franchises (American Associtation; National League; 1901-1902 American League; current American League); the NHL recognises two separate Winnipeg Jets franchises; even the NFL recognises two separate Baltimore Colts franchises (the first one being the AAFC team that folded after the 1950 season). This recognition of franchise lineages is the only correct way of handling moves. 

 

[infrared41]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

It's actually nine seasons before the Giants will have been in San Francisco longer than they were in New York; it's eight seasons before they will have been in both cities for the same length of time.

 

The Giants were in New York for 75 seasons, from 1883 through 1957.  The current season is their 67th in San Francisco.

 

I got my years mixed up. I had the Giants moving after the '56 season.

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

If New York City had had a functioning government at the time (which is another way of saying: if Moses had not been an unaccountable megalomaniac), then that government would surely have acted as responsibly as the government of Los Angeles did

 

Walter O'Malley: me want spot!

City government: I dunno, there's a bunch of Mexicans living there

O'Malley: ME WANT!

City government: ok

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

5 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

f New York City had had a functioning government at the time (which is another way of saying: if Moses had not been an unaccountable megalomaniac), then that government would surely have acted as responsibly as the government of Los Angeles did

 

Walter O'Malley: me want spot!

City government: I dunno, there's a bunch of Mexicans living there

O'Malley: ME WANT!

City government: ok

 

The only inaccuracy in that depiction is the part that goes "City government: I dunno, there's a bunch of Mexicans living there".  That wasn't even the slightest concern for the Los Angeles city government.

 

I mentioned earlier that the Chavez Ravine land was obtained by means of the condemnation process.  So it sure is true that people were displaced from their homes.  Likewise, some businesses and probably some homes would have been displaced to make room for a stadium at Atlantic Avenue.

 

This is of course traumatic for the people affected. It can be termed responsible specifically in terms of being a lmited public expenditure, as opposed to an outright giveaway of an enormous quantity of public funds to a private business, such as is done in so many other cases.

 

[SFGiants58]

19 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

 

Walter O'Malley: me want spot!

City government: I dunno, there's a bunch of Mexicans living there

O'Malley: ME WANT!

City government: ok

 

At least Candlestick had nothing there. Only for Stoneham to realize why people weren't there.