What Actually Happened

 I've decided to run a Out of the Park Baseball simulation based on the alternate reality in which the St. Louis Browns relocate to Los Angeles, becoming the Los Angeles Browns. To understand what could have happened, you must know what actually happened during late 1941.

I decided to copy and paste, a SABR article that was shared to me from a member on the OOTP Forums. Also mentioned is the Sporting News article in 1957, mentioning the details of the plan.

Over the years Barnes persistently wooed potential investors to the Browns. One, Harry Arthur, was the head of Fanchot and Marco Amusement Company, a Southern California entertainment company. Arthur, who divided his time between Los Angeles and St. Louis, and was fully aware of the Browns’ financial woes, approached Barnes and, as Barnes recalled, urged that “something be done to revive interest in the Browns, such as transferring the club’s franchise to Los Angeles.” Barnes initially demurred, thinking Arthur was just bragging on his California connections. Over time, however, as the Browns situation did not improve, Barnes decided to take Arthur’s idea more seriously.

This, on its face, was a daunting challenge. No franchise had moved since the Orioles went from Baltimore to New York for the 1903 season. And no team then played west of St. Louis. Creation of a cross-country schedule presented challenges. Rail and bus were the chosen mode of transportation. Cross-country air travel was in its infancy, and not until the 1950s would it become a functional form of transportation for sports teams.

As Barnes subsequently shared in one of several interviews given years later in TSN, he asked Arthur to explore investment opportunities in Southern California. Arthur almost immediately advised that A.P. Giannini, co-founder of the Bank of America, was willing to give considerable financial backing to a Los Angeles-based major-league team. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce guaranteed a minimum season attendance of 500,000 for the first five years, offering to underwrite the difference if the guarantee was not met.

Barnes was sold on exploring the opportunity. He flew to Los Angeles at Arthur’s suggestion to meet with potential investors. The endeavor proved a complicated process. Not only did Barnes have to gain approval of American League owners, but because he was moving into Pacific Coast League territory, Barnes had to deal with Los Angeles’s then resident team, the Angels, owned by Phil Wrigley, also owner of the Chicago Cubs.

Wrigley offered to sell the team and Los Angeles’s Wrigley Field to Barnes for approximately $1 million, based on a down payment of $250,000 with annual installments of $30,000 over the next 25 years. Assurances were gained that a street bordering Wrigley Field would be condemned, allowing enlargement of the ballpark, double-decking it, and enlarging the bleachers to increase attendance capacity from 21,000 to 30,000 seats.

Upon completion of the transaction, Barnes would transfer the Angels to Long Beach, Arthur having gained assurances from civic leaders in the city that this was acceptable. All was contingent on gaining major-league approval for shifting the Browns to California.

In reviewing minor-league considerations as part of the deal, Barnes noted that at that time a major-league team could move into a minor-league territory and pay the league $5,000 plus damages to the club. As the Browns would take over the Angels, these costs would be avoided. A further complexity involved the Hollywood Stars. Discussions with the Stars involved arranging the schedule to avoid playing date conflicts. Incursion into their territory was not an issue as the Stars were then operating under a 20-year arrangement with the Angels, who had full territorial rights.

Having set plans in motion to secure rights to play in Los Angeles, Barnes sought concurrence for the move from his fellow club owners. While eager to improve revenue by moving from the perpetual money hole in St. Louis, they were concerned over whether a viable schedule could be created. Particular worries were raised about the safety of air travel.

This was resolved by arranging to have two of the then existing three East-West swings made by rail and one by air. Fears concerning air travel were further minimized by having players take different flights. Plans called for Chicago to be set up as the Eastern hub because of multiple daily flights. This satisfied safety concerns, and judicious use of open dates allowed creation of a workable schedule. Resolution of this and the possibility for more lucrative opportunities gained Barnes preliminary approval to shift the Browns.

Another factor at play involved the Cardinals. Eager to have St. Louis to himself, Cardinals owner Sam Breadon committed to giving Barnes $250,000 for the Browns to depart. In all of the components of this pending transaction Commissioner Landis was kept informed. While sympathetic to the Browns’ financial situation, he did not get directly involved, telling Barnes, “That is a matter you boys (club executives) must settle among yourselves.”

Ongoing negotiations were conducted with the utmost secrecy. Barnes was referred to as MISTER X in all documented meetings. DeWitt and Browns manager Luke Sewell were two of the very limited number of Browns employees who knew of these developments.

The myriad details for the transfer were settled. Barnes had received tacit approval of his fellow club owners and the minor-league teams in the Los Angeles area, secured the monetary incentive from the Cardinals and created a workable schedule. All Barnes needed was formal approval at a meeting of American League team owners set to take place at the Palmer House in Chicago — on December 8, 1941.

Barnes, DeWitt and Sewell arrived in Chicago on December 7 and were attending a Chicago Cardinals football game when they heard over the public-address system that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. With war imminent and an invasion of the West Coast regarded as possible, Barnes realized that all plans were off. The next day, as President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, Barnes asked his fellow AL club owners to drop consideration of the proposed move. With Barnes joining in, the motion to shelve the motion received unanimous approval.

Also here is a snippet from a December 1st, 2021 article by The Guardian on the day after the attack:

One day after the attack, Major League Baseball’s owners were expected to approve the move of the American League’s St Louis Browns to Los Angeles for 1942 – 16 years before Walter O’Malley’s former Brooklyn Dodgers played their first season on the West Coast. The Browns felt so confident that they even scheduled a press conference in Los Angeles to announce the move on the afternoon of Monday 8 December 1941.

But in the aftermath of the attack in Hawaii 24 hours earlier – and with the radio broadcast of US president Franklin D Roosevelt’s declaration of war resonating vividly in the nation’s consciousness – the owners unanimously rejected the move, at the Browns’ insistence.

Had the owners approved the move, it would have changed the landscape of American professional sports, and might have generated more sweeping social, cultural and economic shifts.