The History of the St. Louis Browns

hi I'm Bill DeWitt jr. chairman and CEO of the st. Louis Cardinals my family and I are very pleased to help underwrite this great exhibit for the st. Louis Browns my father started in baseball in 1916 with the st. Louis Cardinals it was a protege of Branch Rickey he moved over to the Browns in 1930 and had a distinguished career there for many years in 1944 he was a general manager of the Browns when they won their only pennant so that was quite a thrill for our family I have fond memories of the Browns and Sportsman's Park probably the two most memorable moments were back in 1947 when Babe Ruth came to town really not too long before he died and between games of a doubleheader I got to go out on the field and meet him and in a photo that was used pretty extensively he was showing me out of bat so that was quite a thrill and then secondly when Bill Veck after he came to st. Louis after he purchased the team from my father who still worked for the Browns he signed daddy Goodell as a pinch-hitter to bat one Sunday and since there was no other uniform that would fit him that he Goodell being about four feet tall they had to use my uniform so I got to meet addy Goodell I got to watch him pinch-hit in my uniform and it's uniform I still have and have loaned to the Hall of Fame the Browns are obviously an important part of my family's history an important part of baseball history here in st. Louis as well as in Major League Baseball I hope you enjoy walking down Browns memory lane as much as I did and now here's Bob Costas hi everyone I'm Bob Costas as we all know st. Louis is the best baseball town in America and you are right now in the heart of Cardinal Nation but as at least some of you know st. Louis's major league history is not confined to the Cardinals because for decades and decades until the mid point of the 20th century there was another team in st. Louis mostly a losing team but a team that at one time had a first baseman who hit 400 at one time was the major league home of one of the greatest and most legend Negro League stars at one time had a pitcher who would go on to pitch a World Series perfect game at one time they were owned by this guy Bill Veck who among other things sent a up to pinch-hit they were the st. Louis Browns the forerunners of the current Baltimore Orioles and they're part of st. Louis's baseball story to here's part of the story of the st. Louis Browns although the name st. Louis Browns will forever be associated with futility that certainly wasn't the plan the brownies began play with the optimism befitting a new century and a new League the American League founded in 1901 the AL began without teams in New York or st. Louis but within a couple of years the Baltimore franchise had moved to New York and the Milwaukee Brewers had come to st. Louis although Brewers would have certainly been a fitting nickname for a team in st. Louis and browns president Ralph orth wine was a cousin of the Busch family by marriage the team wound up being called the Browns a reference to the team that had dominated the American Association in the 1880s a team the new Browns wanted to kind of conjure up at least in spirit thinking perhaps that even the diamond the old Browns played on might have had some magic they reopened dilapidated Sportsman's Park on Grand Avenue in the beginning the Brown spent freely luring star players from the Cardinals who played just six blocks away convincing them to jump leagues they introduced the first PA announcer the first electronic scoreboard and even a rudimentary retractable roof which was made of canvas tent in 1909 they rebuilt Sportsman's Park using the then innovative material called steel the heavy spending paid off and st. Louis actually was considered an American League town at the beginning of the 20th century in 1920 the Cardinals convinced the Browns to let them share Sportsman's Park meanwhile Browns GM Branch Rickey had jumped to the Cardinals the cards owners invested the money they saved on stadium upkeep into the idea Rickey had originally hatched with the Browns the idea of a minor league farm system in the late teens and into the 20s Brown squads featuring hall-of-fame first baseman George Sisler a two-time 400 hitter were feared around the American League but they could never quite get to the top of the heap in a talent Rich League that had names like Ruth Cobb and speaker meanwhile in the other Sportsman's Park Clubhouse branch Ricky's farm system was starting to pay dividends and the Cardinals were cleaning up on national league competition in 1926 it was the Cardinals and not the Browns who brought st. Louis its first pennant since the 1880s through the Depression and beyond Browns fortunes remained dim but that all changed at least for a short while as the World War 2 draft was beginning to wreak havoc on major league rosters and the Browns sensed an opportunity in 1944 the Browns won their first nine games of the season owner Donald barn skipper Luke Sewell and a GM named Bill DeWitt had assembled a deft wartime mix of grizzled veterans for FS and weekend only pitchers who punched a clock at a munitions plant in late September the Browns found themselves in second place with the Yankees coming to town for a season-ending series the Browns had won seven of their last eight but now could they beat the Yankees who had one more pennants than they could count and somehow secure the top rung of the ladder for the first time in Browns history only 6,000 showed up for a Friday doubleheader which the Browns swept on Saturday attendance almost tripled as 17,000 saw the Browns shut the Yankees out on Sunday attendance would double from that to a standing-room-only crowd of 36,000 the excitement was described in the papers as near delirium the Yankees jumped ahead to nothing but the Browns tied it up in the fourth and then took a two-run lead in the fifth to homers by left fielder Chet labs and another by all-star shortstop Vern Stevens did the trick the crowd howled with every Yankee out from then on as the Browns went on to clinch their first and only pennant as the fans ran out of the field and mobbed their victorious brownies the iron he set in the Browns would have to share the world series with their tenants the Cardinals it would be a streetcar st. Louis World Series but who would the city root for which team would have the home-field advantage with both playing in their home park in ic st. Louis fall whether the series began Stan Musial noticed that more fans seemed to be rooting for the underdog brownies than his Cardinals after jumping out to a two game 2-1 series lead the Browns bats froze completely and they lost the world championship to their rivals four games to two in 1945 with the Browns trying to repeat another oddity up from the minors came an outfielder who had hit 333 in the minor leagues his name was Pete gray he had lost an arm at age six when he slipped under a train the Browns fell behind early in the season his gray struggled to hit major league pitching they did get to within three and a half back by Labor Day but they could finish no better than third after the war the Browns resumed their role as also-rans still the lean Browns farm system of the post-war period did manage to churn out some talent that proved attractive to other clubs producing future stars with names like Ned Garver Bob Turley Don Larsen Rhine durin Tito Francona and day long Tommy Lasorda spent his first major league spring training with the Browns of these brownie farm products - won Rookie of the Year titles hometown homerun hero Roy severs and Clint Courtney and then into the fray stepped Bill Veck a casually dressed blunt talker who was extremely energetic despite being a five pack a day smoker who eventually would undergo 36 operations on a leg that would have to be amputated he had fathered nine children six of them after age 47 and my friends if that is not an indication of vitality I ask you what is upon buying the Browns in 1951 Beck announced in high noon fashion that st. Louis was just not big enough for two baseball teams and that he would run the Cardinals out of town the Cardinals were of course at the time more popular more successful and better funded than the Browns but vac and his new wife and ex Ice Capades promoter were determined he moved his family into an apartment beneath Sportsman's Park he worked 20-hour days and would speak at a community group every night the Browns didn't have a game in an attempt to resell the browns to st. Louis and in his downtime what there was of it he dream up whacky promotions to make the ballpark more fun as he put it like grandstand managers night where the fans used placards to make strategic decisions in place of the manager his ultimate gimmick came in 1951 when on the pretext of celebrating the 50th anniversary of the American League he had a 3-foot seven-inch man named Eddie Goodell pop out of a giant birthday cake and then proceeded to take a spot on the lineup as a pinch-hitter wearing elf-like shoes and 1/8 as his uniform number Goodell walked on four straight pitches was pulled for a pinch runner and rode off into history affable right-hander Ned Garver became a crowd favorite that year pulling off the feat of winning 20 games for a Browns team that lost a hundred VEX showmanship worked for a while Brown's attendance for 1952 increased dramatically to its highest level since 1908 even play on the field improved as they upped their record from 51 by 12 games and pulled out of last place and then in early 1952 Veck almost got the kind of break he was looking for Cardinals owner Fred sy was indicted for tax evasion it became apparent that sy would have to sell a team but for a while no credible st. louis-based buyer appeared rumors swirled that the desperate sigh would sell the team to Houston interests it looked like Veck might actually pull it off and run the Cardinals out of town but when side took less money to keep the team in st. Louis Veck knew he couldn't compete with the new owner anheuser-busch he eventually sold the team to Baltimore interests at the end of the 53 season the Baltimore owners didn't keep any of VEX promotions they retired the whimsical elf Louie from the jerseys they released satchel page sold his bullpen rocking chair and changed the name from browns to Orioles the Braves the Giants the Dodgers in the A's also moved during the 1950's and yet kept their historic names in the new cities but the name Browns will forever be owned by st. Louis ins and associated with losing yes but also with the baseball of a simpler era

Channel: OfficialSTLBrowns

Views: 36,751

Rating: 4.9130435 out of 5

Keywords: MLB, St. Louis Browns, Baseball History, Browns, St. Louis, American League Pennant, Eddie Gaedel, Bob Costas, William DeWitt, Cardinals, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore, Pete Gray, George Sisler

Id: DK9Ju0XHVf8

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2013