Judging from Jerome Holtzman’s Nov. 7 “On Baseball” column (Sports), I have to conclude that he either relies on personal recollections for reference or uses a baseball encyclopedia that only covers postwar data (you can pick your own war).
In this column, he goes on and on about Milwaukee being a “National League city” with “NL roots,” saying it was first blessed with major-league baseball in 1953 with the coming of the Braves.
Not so. Milwaukee fielded a Brewers team in the American League’s charter year of 1901. Granted, like the Pilots, they stayed only one year before moving to St Louis to become the Browns in 1902 and thence to Baltimore, where they remain the Orioles to this day.
It was Milwaukee’s status as an AL charter city, however, that helped snag the Pilots away from cities with claims to better media markets or facilities.
To me, the Brewers’ switch to the NL means seeing them in the comfort of Wrigley instead of the sterility of new Comiskey and a chance to avenge the World Series of 1982 against the Cardinals.
