Marathon Pundit: (Video) Site in Milwaukee where the American League was founded

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."
Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi.

With no Major League Baseball games scheduled today because of the All Star break, I thought I would fill the void with an historical post this afternoon.

The American League was founded in a city you wouldn't suspect--Milwaukee.

The younger of baseball's two major leagues evolved from the Western League. The upgrade was the idea of that leagues's president, Ban Johnson--he became the AL's first president.

The 112 year-old "junior circuit" was born in a hotel room at the Republican House Hotel on Old World Third Street in Wisconsin's largest city on March 5, 1900.

One of the Western League entries were the Milwaukee Brewers.

From the historical marker at the site:

Milwaukee attorney Henry Killilea, his brother Matt, Connie Mack, Byron (Ban) Johnson, and Charles Comiskey gathered in Room 185. In defiance of the existing National League, Comiskey's Chicago White Stockings (later Sox) were incorporated, and the league's eight-team alignment was completed. After the 1900 season, the league reorganzed, placed teams in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. and achieved major league status.

Mack, the great-grandfather of Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL), moved on to manage and later own the Philadelphia Athletics.

As for the Brewers, they didn't handle the transition to a big league operation well, OnMilwaukee recalls--they finished last in 1901. Financial and health problems forced Killilea to sell the team--the Brewers were moved to St. Louis and were renamed the Browns where they only managed to win one pennant before moving to Baltimore in 1954 where they acquired yet another name change--they became the Orioles. The year prior the Boston Braves became the Milwaukee Braves--but this National League team abandoned Wisconsin for Atlanta in 1966. Milwaukee got its second American League team in 1970, when the bankrupt Seattle Pilots moved and they became the second major league Brewers. They relocated again in 1998--not to another city but to the NL. The Republican House was torn down in 1961, ironically, the same year the American League expanded to ten teams. The site is now a parking lot.

Related posts:

April 30, 1922: Baseball's first "perfect" game

Iowa I Opener: Field of Dreams

Technorati tags: