What is the "coolest" franchise in sports?

The Cardinals' radio coverage history also has to do with Branch Rickey's invention of the farm system in the 20s/30s. Rickey expanded Cardinal farm systems far across the south and west.

 

For real? Did you hibernate between Andy van slyke and mccutchen?

 

Agreed. Loved the days of Lester Hayes, Ted Hendricks and Co. Didn't like the Raiders at all, but they brought the entertainment.

 

And Ray Guy. He just seemed like a badass punter.

 

Just a Guy.

 

Raiders fun fact: They played in the first conference championship game of each decade from 1970-2000. Lost in the 1970, '90 and 2000 seasons, and won in 1980.
And then their now-perpetual shitshow ended the streak in 2010.

 

The Cards also had to share the city with the Browns, although "share" can be used rather loosely. The Browns of the 30s couldn't even draw 2,000 fans a game, and were last in the league in attendance each year from 1925-43.

 

The Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954. Should've probably moved 30 years before that, but teams didn't move at all for some reason until the 1950s. It took the Barves relocating from Boston to Milwaukee in '53 to break the ice.

 

The Hartford Whalers.

 

There were occasional rumors of franchise moves in the first few decades of the century but something always seemed to go wrong at the last minute.
The Senators supposedly were close to moving to Toronto in 1915 but a recession and then WWI put the brakes on that.
There was talk of the phillies moving to Baltimore in the 20s when Jack Dunn's IL franchise was one of the strongest minor league teams ever, but then Wall Street went bust.
The Browns threatened to move almost annually from the mid 20s until they finally did bolt in 1953.
At various times, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Los Angeles were on the boards as possible Browns homes. Supposedly the deal was done for them to move to LA in December 1941 and Pearl Harbor scotched it.

That move, in the days before routine everyday air travel, would have been insane unless another team could have been convinced to move a-la the Dodgers-Giants.

I read a story once that described a schedule proposal which would have the Browns host the Eastern teams for 2-week long 11-game series against each opponent in order, so each team would only have one trip to the west coast per year.

 

I believe the Browns owned Sportsman's Park, and the Cards were the renters, so that might explain one of the reasons why the Browns stuck around so long. I also read somewhere that the Cards had threatened to move to Columbus, Ohio in the 30s because the Browns were trying to raise the rent.

 

I think some of it may have had to do with minor league territorial rights, which were a comparatively bigger deal in the pre-TV era. Major league teams couldn't just move in whereever they felt like.

I have read a few references in the 30s-40s about the Cardinals making noises about moving to Houston-- I guess in the early days of farm system formation the Cards controlled most of the Texas League and had the attitude they could move right in any time they felt like.

Of course a team moving by itself to Houston would have faced many of the same travel objections a lone team in California would have, although not to the same extent.

In the rail era, you would have to allow two -- maybe three -- full travel days any time a team was going to or from the West Coast.

Specifically the Cards had an ownership crisis about 1950 when their previous owner (Breadon?) got in legal problems with gambling and it looked for a while the franchise was shaky. Bill Veeck bought the Browns and started a guerrilla war campaign to drive the Cardinals out of town, mainly by jacking them around as the tenants at Sportmans Park.

This continued for a year or so and supposedly Veeck heard rumors Breadon was thinking of moving the Cards to Houston, upon which the team was sold to Gussie Busch, at which point Veeck decided it was time to punt and look for anew home himself, "I wasn't going to run Anheuser-Busch out of town," he wrote.