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Sport in Alternate History. Part 7: Relocations.

There's a great baseball relocation story. See, Tampa Bay built the stadium that would become known as Tropicana Field before getting a team for it. Soon almost every MLB team unhappy in its current spot threatened/considered moving there. None actually did. Eventually the stadium was filled by an expansion team, the Rays.

Now for the interesting part. See, Tropicana Field has a terrible reputation (anachronistic ugly basic dome, bad location, etc...) and the Rays are infamous for poor attendance even when good. So having a new team in there was probably the least bad/best thing. An existing team moving there would have found a poisoned chalice and likely would have moved again.
 
Gone, but not forgotten:

Hartford_Whalers_1992.svg
 
For American Football, you have the Cleveland Browns moving to Baltimore and becoming the Ravens, following in the footsteps of the St. Louis Browns baseball team moving to Baltimore and becoming the Orioles, making it two teams that moved there and named themselves after birds...

...but the weird part is that for legal reasons, the Ravens and Browns are completely separate teams. The Ravens were technically an expansion team that just happened to sign most of the Browns players, while the old and new Browns are still legally the same team that just "went on hiatus" while a different stadium was built. It's one of those "British MPs can't technically resign, but they can become Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds and thus get automatically kicked out on conflict of interest grounds" things.
 
Pete U said:
St Louis does seem to suffer from relocation a lot.
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Even for the mooted 1976-77 ABA season the (wonderfully named) Spirits of St. Louis would have relocated to Utah. At least that organisation had the common sense to rename the team to something more appropriate to the new home: Utah Rockies. As you point out in the article when the NBA did eventually move into Utah they kept the (appropriately New Orleans) Jazz name for arguably the least jazzy state in the Union.

The owners of Spirits of St. Louis may have had the last laugh, it has to be said, since when the ABA merged with the NBA both they and the Kentucky Colonels (another apropos name) were to be bought out. Incensed, the Spirits owners instead negotiated a seventh of the television rights fees from the remaining four ABA franchises in perpetuity.

Those four surviving ABA franchises were the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, and San Antonio Spurs, all of which still exist (albeit the Nets having relocated to New Jersey after the Knicks threw a fit, later relocating back to NYC as the Brooklyn Nets). The deal turned out to be so lucrative for the former Spirits of St. Louis owners that the NBA kept trying to buy them out of the deal but the terms were never good enough. They were finally bought out in 2014, for a lump sum of $500M, for a team that had not existed, even on paper, since 1976.
 
Rather perfect timing for rugby union here. Wasps (once commonly - if unnecessarily - referred to as London Wasps) are on the move again. Having tried Loftus Road, Adams Park (Wycombe) and Coventry since leaving their home in 1996, they're now taking a new home.

Either Worcester, or Kent.

Yes.

Wasps plan to move to Kent and want new stadium in county - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/67193921
 
Geordie said:
Rather perfect timing for rugby union here. Wasps (once commonly - if unnecessarily - referred to as London Wasps) are on the move again. Having tried Loftus Road, Adams Park (Wycombe) and Coventry since leaving their home in 1996, they're now taking a new home.

Either Worcester, or Kent.

Yes.

Wasps plan to move to Kent and want new stadium in county - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/67193921
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Professionalism in Union (earlier, later, or competent) offers all sorts of fun options
 
Shout out to Gateshead's football teams, who were twice formed when a football team left South Shields for pastures new and a potentially bigger crowd. Not sure it really worked out either time. I mean, it would be hard to argue the first one did - the second lot wouldn't have moved if the previous Gateshead had still existed...
 
Geordie said:
Shout out to Gateshead's football teams, who were twice formed when a football team left South Shields for pastures new and a potentially bigger crowd. Not sure it really worked out either time. I mean, it would be hard to argue the first one did - the second lot wouldn't have moved if the previous Gateshead had still existed...
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I'm toying with writing a list of teams it is possible to kill through minor changes (like someone else not leaving a ground)
 
Pete U said:
I'm toying with writing a list of teams it is possible to kill through minor changes (like someone else not leaving a ground)
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(Know this is baseball and not an international sport, but still...)

Don't have the Cleveland Spiders owners buy St. Louis. Thus the NL Spiders keep chugging along while the previously bargain-basement Browns[1] probably join the three other folding clubs in 1899. When the American League forms in 1901, it probably puts an expansion team in St. Louis. So Cleveland has one NL team instead of an AL team (the Indians/Guardians) and St. Louis has one AL team of unknown name instead of having one in each league and then only one NL.

[1]Yes, it's confusing. The NL Browns are a predecessor to the current Cardinals. The AL Browns, the current Orioles, are legally unrelated.

Also, with the Texas Rangers having just won their first championship, both former Washington Senators teams (Twins/Rangers) are now World Series winners.
 
Coiler said:
(Know this is baseball and not an international sport, but still...)

Don't have the Cleveland Spiders owners buy St. Louis. Thus the NL Spiders keep chugging along while the previously bargain-basement Browns[1] probably join the three other folding clubs in 1899. When the American League forms in 1901, it probably puts an expansion team in St. Louis. So Cleveland has one NL team instead of an AL team (the Indians/Guardians) and St. Louis has one AL team of unknown name instead of having one in each league and then only one NL.

[1]Yes, it's confusing. The NL Browns are a predecessor to the current Cardinals. The AL Browns, the current Orioles, are legally unrelated.

Also, with the Texas Rangers having just won their first championship, both former Washington Senators teams (Twins/Rangers) are now World Series winners.
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I think you could easily come up with a >50% different line up for all the Big 4 North American leagues without having to try too hard
 
It always amuses me how mercenary US sport is, which is how you end with teams called the Boston Milwaukee Atlanta Braves, and the Brooklyn Atlantics Los Angeles Dodgers, and a team called the Pirates, so named because they tempted players away from other teams with $$$$$.

And this in the relatively pedestrian pastime of baseball, a version of rounders, a sport mainly played by the under-elevens in the UK.

And yet, there is so little at stake! No matter how badly your team plays, your team will be playing the same teams next season, the season thereafter, and so on ad infinitum
 
Arthur_Phuxache said:
And yet, there is so little at stake! No matter how badly your team plays, your team will be playing the same teams next season, the season thereafter, and so on ad infinitum
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This actually isn't the case in college football, which not coincidentally is far away the closest American sport to European soccer structurally. Not because of formal promotion relegation, but simply because there are so many teams and so few games.
 
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