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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 Midwestern United States, with no teams neither west of St. Louis nor 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 continent. 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.〔Bendix, Peter. ''The History of the American and National League, Part II''. 2008.〕 ==Early history== During the early years of the American League as a major league, the league placed franchises in cities that were either in direct competition with National League teams (New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and St. Louis) or in markets abandoned by the Senior Circuit after the 1899 contraction (Cleveland, Washington, D. C., and briefly Baltimore). Only Detroit, home of the Detroit Tigers, was a true "new" baseball market for the American League, although the National League had previously hosted the Detroit Wolverines between 1881 and 1888. In these early years, only two National League markets did not have an American League counterpart: Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. It is unknown why a second team was not placed in Cincinnati to compete with the Cincinnati Reds, though there was a reasoning behind Pittsburgh not getting an American League team. The Pittsburgh Pirates were one of baseball's dominant teams early in the 20th century, and as part of the National Agreement in 1903, the Junior Circuit agreed not to place a team in Pittsburgh. After the relocation of the original Baltimore Orioles to New York in 1903 where they ultimately became the New York Yankees, no major league team would relocate for 50 years. The set-up was also reflective of the population at the time, as most of the major population areas were in the Northeast and Midwestern United States in the aftermath of Reconstruction and later the Great Migration. Baseball was tied to the history and culture of New York City up until the 1950s. Three of the best teams in the league were located in New York City: the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers.〔Sulivan, Neil. ''The Dodgers Move West''. Oxford University Press, 1987.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Major League Baseball relocation of 1950s–60s」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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