St. Louis Browns

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The St. Louis Browns were a truly inept and all but forgotten American League franchise, born in 1902 out of the original Milwaukee Brewers. They were lost to history in 1954 when they moved to Baltimore and renamed themselves after the old Orioles.

The Browns' one pennant came in a war year (1944) and their best team ever narrowly lost the 1922 pennant to the Yankees.

It is thought that their perpetual weakness stemmed from sharing St. Louis with the Cardinals. The Cards' management built up advantages in talent acquisition (the farm system) and regional popularity (radio and TV networks) which left the Browns starved of resources and unable to compete. The Browns total paid attendance for the 1935 season was 80,922, which should give you an idea of their resources during that period.

The Browns are perhaps best known to the general public for Bill Veeck's Eddie Gaedel stunt in 1951, which besides being goofy symbolized Veeck's desire to compete with the Cardinals by any means necessary. Veeck was forced to sell out to Baltimore interests after the giant brewer Anheuser-Busch bought the Cardinals: he saw the battle was lost.

Sabermetricians remember the Browns for Harlond Clift (http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/cliftha01.shtml), the 1930s prototype for the modern power-hitting third baseman. According to the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, Clift was one of the best third basemen baseball had seen to that point, but his status as a lowly Brown ensured he was forgotten in his own time.