A Tale of Two Cities
St. Louis used to have a team in each league - they faced each other in the 1944 World Series. Image credits: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Once upon a time, way back in the twentieth century, there were two major leagues with eight teams in each league.
Four cities had a team in each league: Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and St. Louis. New York had three teams: the Giants, Yankees and Brooklyn (a borough of New York) Dodgers.
The Giants and Dodgers were in the National and the Yankees in the American.
Baseball fans with teams in both leagues had the pleasure of watching games all season as one of their teams was always playing at home. And if their favorite home team was having a second-division season, they had another home team to root for.
Usually.
In Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis, the home teams and their fans were compatible. They might have their favorite teams or players, but they were happy if at least one of their teams was winning.
Only once did the two teams in one of these cities meet in a World Series; in 1944 the Cardinals defeated the Browns in six games.
In Philadelphia and St. Louis, the home teams even shared the same ballpark. In 1915 and 1916, the Red Sox borrowed the larger Braves field for their home World Series games.
Not so in Chicago, which was so vast geographically, the north side and south side were like two different, hostile worlds. Fans of neither team wished the other well. Fortunately for civic tranquillity, the Cubs and White Sox hadn't clashed in a World Series since 1906.
New York was the only city with two teams in the same league, and that made for the fiercest rivalry baseball has ever seen. The Dodgers and Giants played each other 22 times a season, and more fights took place among the fans at those games than in all the other ballparks combined.
The climax of that rivalry came in 1951 when they clashed in a playoff for the National League pennant, when the Giants' Bobby Thomson's ninth-inning game-winning home run sent Brooklyn fans into a collective crater.
Tales of Two Losers
While the presence of two teams in a city gave baseball fans two chances to have a winner to cheer for, it also presented the possibility of having two losers to suffer through, sometimes for a decade or longer. This was the fate of long-ago baseball fans in two cities.
Boston
For the first twenty years of the twentieth century, Boston baseball fans had plenty to cheer about. Their new American League team won the first modern World Series in 1903. and four more between 1912 and 1918. Their National League Braves swept the AL champion Philadelphia Athletics in 1914. From 1916 through 1920, they cheered the pitching and hitting exploits of a young Babe Ruth.
Then things happened. In December 1916 the Red Sox had been sold to Harry Frazee, a New York theater owner and show producer, financed by IOUs. What with World War I, a sixth-place finish in 1919, Broadway flops, and IOUs coming due, by 1920 Frazee was in financial trouble. He sold his most valuable player, Babe Ruth, to the Yankees for $125,000 and a mortgage on Fenway Park.
Beginning in 1922, the Red Sox finished last nine times, seventh twice and sixth once through 1933, when Tom Yawkey inherited a fortune and used it to buy the team and begin its rejuvenation.
Meanwhile, Boston baseball fans still had the Braves to root for. But that wasn't much better. In the same 1922-1933 span, the Braves finished seventh or eighth seven times, twice losing more than 100 games. In 1933 they finally reached the first division with a fourth-place finish. But with a fan-friendly innovative owner in Judge Emil Fuchs (who deserves a future blog of his own), they had replaced the Red Sox as New England's team.
Philadelphia
No two-team city had as many great teams to celebrate and as many cellar dwellers to suffer through as Philadelphia. The NL Phillies had been contenders until Connie Mack launched the new American League's Athletics in 1901 and enticed several Phillies to jump.
The Athletics won six of the first 14 AL pennants, and when they cratered to last place in 1915, the Phillies made it to the World Series for the first – and last – time until 1950. Both teams finished last for three years until the A's began to climb in the 1920s as Mack put together one of baseball's greatest teams, challenging the 1927-28 Yankees for the pennant and finally toppling them in 1929, '30 and '31.
Unfortunately, Mack's timing was terrible. His payroll had soared while the stock market crashed and the Depression demolished the city's employment and the A's attendance. Mack was broke and had to sell off his high-priced stars to stay in business.
The Phillies' owner had died and left the team to his daughter and her husband, Gerry Nugent, who had been the club's able general manager. But they had no operating capital, and had to sell any players of promise they developed to meet payrolls and pay spring training expenses.
While the A's had been prospering, the Phillies had finished as high as fourth only once, in 1932, then finished seventh or eighth with the A's every year but one from 1935 to 1946. Three times they lost more than 100 games.
The Phillies, under new ownership with plenty of money, finally won a pennant in 1950.
The Athletics under Connie Mack made one more run for a pennant in 1948 before fading and finishing fourth. Mr. Mack retired after the 1950 season, but his sons were unsuccessful in running the team or raising new investors and the team was moved to Kansas City in 1954.
The Phillies, under wealthy new ownership, finally won a pennant in 1950, their first in 35 years. Mr. Mack retired after another last-place finish. When his sons were unable to raise new capital, they sold the team to Kansas City interests in 1955, and the Phillies had Philadelphia for themselves again.
