I was sitting here getting ready for class in the morning when a notice popped up on my email about an article on Bill James Online. So I had to look at it, and then I had to look at his “Hey, Bill” column where he answers readers questions, and they were having a running conversation about some guy named Bert Convy in which a reader referred to a YouTube clip of Jackie Robinson appearing on What’s My Line, so I had to look at that, and right next to it was a clip of Branch Rickey appearing on What’s My Line, which turned out to be from September 1959, and after Rickey signed in they superimposed a caption identifying him as President of the Continental Baseball League, which I had never heard of and it just so happens I am 59 years old, and after the blind-folded celebrity panel (including Chuck Conners, whom Rickey signed onto the Dodgers) guessed who he was with one question left, Rickey promised the celebrity panel that the arrival of the Continental League was “as inevitable as tomorrow morning,” which I had to check out because I’ve seen the arrival of thousands of tomorrow mornings but zero Continental Leagues.
So I had to do some poking around on the internet.
And I found a bunch of stuff, including this article about the American League’s 1961 expansion draft, which they pulled off in a huge hurry just to upstage the National League’s previously announced 1962 expansion, which is how the NL killed Branch Rickey’s Continental League.
Highlights: the American League announced the expansion draft for two new teams, with only one new team in existence — the expansion Washington Senators.
The Angels sprang into existence a week before the draft. Casey Stengel, fresh from being fired by the Yankees after Mazeroski’s homer, gave the Angels a complete scouting report on the Yankees. The rules weren’t explained in detail to the new teams ahead of time. The existing 8 AL teams could protect 25 from their 40-man rosters, and could only lose 7 players max, and no more than 4 to any one expansion team. The expansion teams had to draft by position — 1o pitchers, then 2 catchers, then first basemen, etc., until they each had 28 players. During the draft everyone lost track of how many players various AL teams were losing to each expansion team, so when they were done the expansion teams had to trade players (including Dean Chance!) and the league president made other post-draft roster adjustments by fiat to fix the mess.
Our league is supposed to simulate MLB. But we’ve never done an expansion draft like that.
Now we have to start all over.
I remember the first year of the Angels, 1961. They played their home games in Wrigley Field! No, not THAT Wrigley Field – it was Wrigley Field in Los Angeles. In the 50’s this ballpark had been the home of the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League (AAA) and I believe that they were a Cubs affiliate – hence the name of the stadium. That team shut down operations when the Dodgers came to LA in 1958, I believe.
Dodger Stadium opened in 1962 and both the Dodgers and the Angels called it home. As a 10-year-old Dodger fan I, of course, hated the Angels, who didn’t even have Vin Scully on the radio. From 1958-1961 Dodger home games were played at the LA Coliseum, which was a football stadium used by the USC Trojans and the LA Rams. Seating capacity was 93,000.
To fit baseball into the Coliseum they located home plate near one corner of the football field and erected a giant screen on top of the left field wall 250 feet away. Then they traded for Wally Moon of the Cardinals because they thought he’d be able to shoot “moon shots” into that screen. The right field fence was about 450 feet from home plate and I’m sure this contributed to Duke Snider’s early retirement. I attended my first Dodger game there in 1960, with my dad.
When the NY Mets became an NL expansion team in 1962 they played their home games at the Polo Grounds in New York, also a football stadium. Learning from the Dodgers’ mistake, they located home plate equidistant from the two long sides of the ballpark, making the left and right field foul lines ridiculously short and the center field fence ridiculously far away. Even Maury Wills hit a homer or two at the Polo Grounds.