Major League Baseball relocation of 1950s-1960s

The Major League Baseball relocations of 1950s–1960s is the move of several Major League Baseball franchises to the Western and Southern United States. This was in stark contrast to the early years of modern baseball, when the American League intentionally put teams in National League cities to compete directly with those teams. Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis were two-team towns, while New York City had three. This effectively had baseball confined to the Northeast and Midwest, with no teams located west of St. Louis or south of Washington, D.C.

The moves, though controversial in some circles, brought new prosperity to the game of baseball. As of 2015 Chicago remains as the only market with two pre-expansion era teams, the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox, though the White Sox have come close to relocating on several occasions.

The expansion of Major League Baseball out west mirrors the story of the expansion of the population in the United States. As the economy in the country grew, Americans headed out west. Baseball soon followed, likely because of the ease of travel by commercial jet. The American economy flourished in the 1960s, and baseball was able to expand and evolve at an unprecedented rate. Economic push and pull factors caused many teams to relocate, and the emergence of cities in the new frontier allowed baseball teams to pop up across the country. The moves of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to California in 1958 broke the ice and opened the West Coast to the market of baseball. Starting in the 1960s, both the National and American Leagues expanded to add teams in new and existing cities, adding 14 teams as of 2015.

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