Where Loyalty Lies
There is one common element in the relocation of a franchise, the abandonment of their fans. When it comes to the question of loyalty between a team and its supporters, it is a one-way street that can cost sports enthusiasts dearly.
Ask a Buffalo sports fan what their worse memory is and most likely the answer is Scott Norwood’s missed field goal in Super Bowl XXV. For a Red Sox supporter, it would be a dribbler going between Bill Buckners legs in the 1986 World Series (or the mere mention of the name Bucky Dent). In hockey crazed Canada, it possibly is the sight of Wayne Gretzky, the sport’s all-time point leader sitting on the bench, during a shoot-out loss at the Nagano Olympics. Boston Celtics enthusiasts can recite Rasheed Wallace after rebounding scoring on his own net.
Fans in Baltimore, Brooklyn, St. Louis, and Kansas City among many other cities may offer a totally different response. It is the loss of their beloved sports team. This experience is hard for someone to comprehend unless you are directly exposed to it. A loss of a fans favorite team is seen by some diehard followers as if a family member had passed away. This sentiment is captured in William Craig’s book “A history of the Boston Braves-A Time Gone By”, in reciting a Braves fans feeling regarding that club.
“My father lived and died with the Boston Braves. He lived a little in 1948, and he died a lot when they moved to Milwaukee”
Phil Ranallo, a columnist for the Buffalo Courier, regarding the relocation of the basketball Buffalo Braves wrote:
“Personally I found myself in deep mourning, the death of the Braves has depressed me. It’s as if I have lost a close friend. No kidding I’m tempted to affix a black band to my right coat sleeve.”
Baltimore Colts number one fan was Hurst C. “Loudy” Loudenslager. He attended the Colts first ever game in Baltimore and he was there for the last one. Spanning almost four decades, Loudy only missed one Colts home game and that was because of a heart attack. When news broke in the evening that the Colts were moving out of Baltimore, Loudy quickly drove to witness the Mayflower trucks loading all of the team assets out of their building.
“These damn vans pulling in here and you knew what they were here for. What a dirty trick to do to somebody. Oh, geez, it’s so unfair, so unfair. To see them leave was heart-rending, like a death in the family.” 3 (When the Colts belonged to Baltimore, page 295)
At Loudy’s funeral, pallbearers included Johnny Unitas and Art Donovan. Former Colt Joe Ehrmann now a preacher presided over the service. It wasn’t just fans that were affected by the relocation of a team. Many players and coaches had opened businesses and remained part of the community long after their playing days. They sensed a great loss as well, when their team left town.
Baltimore Colts owner Robert Irsay’s decision to pull out of the city under the cover of darkness and move his assets to Indianapolis is a forever damaging image of a proprietor’s lack of loyalty to his patrons. Little if any public sympathy is afforded to a sports entrepreneur once they decide to uproot their holdings.
The owners who tried to stay
Not all owners can be cast as the devil incarnate. Baseball’s Connie Mack invested his entire life to the Athletics and their existence in Philadelphia. In his 50-year involvement with the team it operated on a limited budget that made it difficult to compete against the wealthy New York Yankees. Mack could have signed Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron when they were minor league players, but found the asking price too rich. Mack led the Athletics to three World Series Championships in 1910,1911 and 1913, unable to meet higher salary demands from his players, he stripped down his roster. The A’s became cellar dwellers for the next decade, before Mack gradually rebuilt the club. Philadelphia from 1929 to 1931 appeared in three consecutive World Series, winning the first two. Again, unable to compensate his best players led to a mass exodus. Patrons of the Mackmen for the next nineteen years waited for Connie to turn his magic for a third time, but it failed to come to fruition. It is not coincidence that the Athletics didn’t depart Philadelphia until after the death of Connie Mack.
Another example of a stellar owner is Fred Zollner who expanded his father’s small business, the assembly of quality pistons, and developed it into an industrial giant. The plant was located in Fort Wayne Indiana and remained there despite requests from automotive magnates Ford and General Motors to relocate to Michigan. A sports enthusiast, Zollner established amateur baseball and basketball teams for his employees. Both clubs were highly successful and claimed numerous championships. Zollner was persuaded to join the National Basketball League (NBL) as a professional entity. Ever the competitor, Zollner recruited top talent with the Pistons regarded as one of the NBL’s premiere teams. They eventual merger of the NBL with the Basketball Association of America (BAA) led to the present-day NBA in 1949. Zollner, remained adamant in keeping the Pistons in Fort Wayne, despite its small market. It was only in 1957 with the realization the club could not financially survive in Indiana, that Zollner reluctantly moved the Pistons to Detroit.
There are other examples of proprietors like Connie Mack and Fred Zollner, but they fail to make great headlines in the media compared to renegades like Al Davis or Walter O’Malley. An owner of a sports franchise gives little concern of how he is perceived by the media in the end. It is in the battle with civic officials, that stakeholders try to use television, radio, newspapers and today the internet, to plead their case to gain public favor.
Loyalty played by politics
In order to gain a more favorable lease, facility upgrades or even a new stadium, is comparable to playing a game of chess. Moves are met with countermoves between proprietors and politicians. Citizens are used like pawns to start the overall strategy, which is to gain support for their cause. If an owner’s demands are not met, the threat of relocation becomes a reality, to which taxpayers pressure their civic officials to find a compromise to keep their beloved team in their city. Once this goal is achieved the pawns having served their purpose are easily sacrificed. Seven decades after the departure of the Dodgers from Brooklyn, many New Yorkers still lament the loss. Even the expansion New York Mets failed to completely fulfill the void that had been left.
The ugly side of loyalty
In several cases there has been a concern of a riot taking place at the last home game of a team leaving town. It is not an uncommon sight to see fans remove seats from the stadium as a keepsake of their beloved franchise. The Washington Senators last game in 1971 before their move to Arlington Texas was forfeited in the ninth inning with the home team ahead 3-2. With the game in progress fans streamed onto the diamond and removed all of the bases as a souvenir. Portions of the infield turf were ripped up to be taken home. Umpires concerned with player safety and a possible riot, ended the game.
The ugly side toward the feeling of owner betrayal is best exemplified by Cleveland Browns faithful’s feelings towards Art Modell. Numerous death threats were issued and taken so seriously that Modell after the formal announcement of the club’s relocation to Baltimore, never returned to Cleveland. Years later a crazed Browns fanatic was arrested for having urinated on Modell’s grave.
The ultimate testers: citizens of Oakland
When supporter loyalty comes into question no fanbase has been tested more than the citizens of Oakland. Twice their beloved Raiders have left town for greener pastures, no hope of their return. In 1966 the city was awarded an expansion franchise in the National Hockey League along with Los Angeles to be part of a newly formed division that was comprised solely of expansion teams. Called the California Golden Seals, under new ownership the team relocated to Cleveland after nine seasons. One of the most dominant NBA teams in the fifteen years, the Golden State Warriors in 2019 moved across the Bay to San Francisco to a new arena. The Warriors had called Oakland home for 48 years. In October 2024, John Fisher owner of the baseball Athletics, put the final nail in the coffin announcing the team’s eventual relocation to Las Vegas slated for 2027 or 2028. In the meantime, the A’s will call a minor league ballpark in Sacramento as their temporary home.
What started with the relocation of the Cleveland Rams in 1946 is not finished, the Oakland Athletics are not the last chapter in this saga. Various owners in each professional sport are in the midst of negotiations to try and sweeten their existing position. If they are not satisfied, they will be Leaving Town.