Up and Away

Major League Baseball played for 60 years before it began adding new teams. Part of the reason was politics; another part was financial, as new team owners began raking in money – in some cases. In this column, the first-year experiences of the first four franchises, the Washington Senators, Los Angeles Angels, Houston Colt .45s (later Astros) and the New York Mets. Two subsequent columns will deal with the remaining expansion franchises.

In the nation’s capital on April 10, 1961, the high temperature reached 58 degrees, and more than 26,000 people went to Griffith Stadium to see the brand new Washington Senators play the first game of its existence against the Chicago White Sox. The home team was the first addition to the major leagues since its founding, and a group of veteran players, selected in an expansion draft the previous December, took the field.

When the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved to California, fans, sportswriters, and federal officials led the call for more teams, especially one in New York. Branch Rickey then became involved with efforts to start a third league, the Continental League. While it never got off the ground, it had plans to draft players form the MLB teams.

“The franchise shifts that began with the Boston Braves (moving to Milwaukee) in 1953 had shattered the barriers that kept Major League thinking hidebound,” wrote John P. Rossi in his book, A Whole New Ballgame: Off the Field Changes in Baseball, 1946-1960. “When the Dodgers and Giants took the game to sunny California, where it was an instant success, the financial rewards of further changes seized the imagination of even the most reactionary of the magnates.

“The baseball establishment aced by consensus. Majority rule in the two leagues or the power of the commissioner since (Commissioner) Landis’ death were insignificant. The owners, a blend of successful businessmen, amateur sportsmen plus a few old families whose roots went back to the early days of baseball, understood that the events of the 1950s meant that the sport was on the eve of a grand transformation,” Rossi wrote.

“Expansion only happened because of Branch Rickey’s threat of the Continental League,” said Rossi recently. “There had been talk about adding new cities to baseball, but nothing happened until the possibility of a new League along with threats from the government that major league baseball was abusing its position grew strong. The owners were so conservative that they didn’t see how it could work. They also argued that expansion would water down the talent. None of this made sense. When baseball was set up in 1901 the country’s population was 90 million; in 1960 it was 150 million so there was room for talent expansion. Finally, once Congress got involved the owners had to allow growth.

“To me the first expansion is the only one that counts because it broke the log jam of thought that there wasn’t enough talent for expansion,” said Rossi.

It was likely New York would receive a franchise, and with all the success MLB teams had on the west coast, it was probable that Los Angeles would receive a team. Houston was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, which helped its cause for a team, and Washington was selected, possibly to keep Senators and Congressmen happy and not challenge baseball’s status as not a business and thus exempt from anti-monopoly laws.

In November 1960, a draft was held for the new franchises to stock players from a list of unprotected players from each team. The Angels and Senators picked exclusively from American League teams, while New York and Houston picked personnel from National League franchises. The American League made the decision to start playing in 1961, only four months following the expansion draft. (The “rule” was that no American League team could lose more than seven players, but Detroit and Cleveland each lost eight.)

“Houston and Los Angeles made good selections, picking younger players who developed that first season,” said Rossi. “The Mets went for names that fans would recognize: Hodges, Ashburn – and Washington just made terrible choices.”

With the first pick, the Angels selected New York Yankees pitcher Eli Grba. Next, Washington selected Bobby Shantz, a left-handed pitcher also from the New York Yankees, but they traded him in May to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher John Anderson and outfielder Carl Warwick.

The “new” Senators were to play in Griffith Stadium, whose condition was one reason that prompted the “old” Senators to relocate to Minnesota. The Angels would play in Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, which the Los Angeles team in the Pacific Coast played for many years (and where several baseball movies and tv shows were filmed).

“They acted like a team that was playing its first major league game. And it was.” – Dick Young

As befits tradition, the first pitch for the Senators was a ceremonial one thrown by President John F. Kennedy, only three months into his administration. His predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, had thrown the first pitch for the “previous” incarnation of the Washington Senators on opening day for eight seasons.

After decades of fielding poor teams in bad stadiums, that club left for the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

After Kennedy’s ceremonial pitch, Senators starter Dick Donovan walked the first batter he faced, White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio, but didn’t allow a run that first inning. In the bottom of the first, the Senators had their first hit when shortstop Orville “Coot” Veal singled, went to second on a single by right fielder Marty Keough, and both men scored the first runs in team history when 38-year-old leftfielder Gene Woodling tripled, giving the Senators a 2-0 lead. They scored another run in the bottom of the second, but that was it. The Senators made four errors, and Chicago scored unearned runs as the White Sox won 4-3. Donovan pitched a complete game, and went on to lead the American League with an ERA of only 2.40 that season.

“A splendid pitching effort by Dick Donovan went down the drain,” wrote New York Daily News baseball writer Dick Young, on hand for the historic game. “It will happen again and again to him and (Washington) hurlers. They acted like a team that was playing its first major league game. And it was.”

Young began his game account by noting President Kennedy made no secret about who he was rooting for that day. With Senators manager Mickey Vernon and Chicago Manager Al Lopez standing by him, the president asked the White Sox manager “to treat him kindly.”

Like most expansion teams that followed the initial four, the Senators played in an “old” stadium that was in bad condition. Griffith Stadium, built in 1911, was made of concrete and steel and opened in 1911; it was later renamed for team owner Calvin Griffith. A year later, the team moved to the brand new D.C. Stadium, later renamed Robert F. Kennedy Stadium or RFK Stadium. It was owned by the federal government until 1986.

The 1960 Washington Senators hadn’t done that badly: they were 73-81, Finished 5th in the American League, but were last in attendance, drawing only 743,404. Baseball fans didn’t seem all that excited to have a major league team in their city only one year after its long-time team left town; the 1961 expansion Senators finished 61-100, tied with the Kansas City A’s for ninth place in the American League. No surprise there, but the club drew only 597,287, last in the league.

“Mickey Vernon was a great manager,” said Marty Kutyna, a pitcher on the Senators. “We called him ‘Honest Abe.’ One weekend we had a four-game series in Boston. We were up 12-5 with two outs in the ninth and lost it, 13-12. We lost the next game by a run. Then we lost the next 12 in a row.”

Kutyna was at both 1961 and 1962 opening days for the Senators in 1961 when President Kennedy threw the first pitch. In a letter to a writer, Kutyna explained, “In 1961 Jungle Jim Rivera was with the White Sox caught the opening day ball from President Kennedy. I caught the opening day in 62.”

President Kennedy autographed a ball for Kutyna.

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The Los Angeles Angels fared a little better than Washington, both on the field and at the gate. Managed by Bill Rigney, they won 10 more games than the new Washington franchise, and drew a few thousand more fans, 603,510 (9th of 10), but finished eighth, ahead of the Senators and Kansas City Athletics, and only a half game behind seventh-place Minnesota.

Led by co-owner Gene Autry, a former singing cowboy movie star who amassed a fortune in California real estate, along with owning radio stations and one of the most lucrative TV stations in Los Angeles, the Angels began their existence on April 11 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.

Milt Pappas started for the Orioles. In the top of the first, third baseman Eddie Yost popped out to shortstop. Next, second baseman Ken Aspromonte was called out on strikes. Left fielder Albie Pearson singled for the franchise’s first hit and then first baseman Ted Kluszewski hit the first home run in the team’s history. (He also homered in the second inning.) The next batter, right fielder Bob Cerv, also homered, and the Angles were up 3-0.

Grba, the team’s first pick in the expansion draft, allowed a leadoff single to centerfielder Jackie Brandt. Right fielder Russ Snyder forced Brandt at second, and future Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson grounded into a double play.

The Angels won 7-2, as Grba pitched a complete game.

An Associated Press account the following day noted that the Angels were ahead of New York.

“Well we’re ahead of the Yankees and there are only 161 games to go,” said Pearson.

Los Angeles played its first home game on April 27 against the Minnesota Twins. Grba started but lost, 4-2, in front of 11,991 fans at Wrigley Field. A Los Angeles Times account stated, “It was the first American League game ever played on the West Coast and came only four months after Gene Autry, Bob Reynolds and Leonard Firestone received their franchise.”

Grba was a workhorse for Los Angeles. He made 30 starts, 10 relief appearances, had eight complete games and two saves. He finished 11-13 with an ERA of 4.25. The club also had five hitters who slugged 20 or more home runs.

George Thomas

On June 26, 1961, the Angels purchased outfielder George Thomas from Detroit. That Tiger team went on to win 101 games, finishing second to the Yankees. Was Thomas bothered by leaving an established, winning franchise to play for a first-year team?

“I welcomed it,” said Thomas. “It was a chance to play, a chance of doing, you know, some damage, and that was done.”

Thomas had only six at bats with the Tigers that season. With the Angels, he had 282 at-bats, hitting 13 home runs with 59 RBIs.

And, he said, the clubhouse was upbeat.

“We had a great attitude. We got a bunch of young guys, (Jim) Fregosi. Bobby Rogers, and a bunch of guys that (had) been around the league. (You) get an opportunity to play and that’s what it was. It was really, really good times.,” said Thomas.

Essentially a minor league park, Wrigley Field, noted Thomas, “was a small, really small stadium and so some home runs went out of there that shouldn’t have gone out, but that’s kind of how you looked at it. We all had a shot at it, so it was OK.”

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Houston and New York made their franchise debuts on April 11, 1962. Playing at Colt Stadium, Houston hosted the Chicago Cubs.

Hal Woodeshick started for Houston and allowed a single to Ernie Banks in the top of the first. Starting for Chicago was Glen Hobbie.

In the bottom of the inning, Houston’s first-ever batter Bob Aspromonte grounded out, but he’s said “I’m very proud of that.” Aspromonte first tasted the majors with a call up to the Brooklyn Dodgers when he was 18.

Next up for Houston was centerfielder Al Spangler, who singled for the team’s first hit. After Roman (Gomez) Mejias struck out, Spangler stole second, and the next two hitters, first baseman Norm Larker and leftfielder Jim Pendleton, walked, loading the bases. Catcher Hal Smith singled, driving in Spangler and Larker for the club’s first two runs. Those were the only runs scored in the game, as Houston won, 2-0, in front of a good crowd of 25,000. Woodeshick went eight innings, becoming the franchise’s first winning pitcher, and Turk Farrell pitched a scoreless ninth for the team’s first save.

Despite the brutal summer heat of Texas, Houston played all of its home games during the day. That’s because, said Aspromonte, the team owners didn’t want to spend the money to install major league quality lights.

According to Baseballparks.com, “When talking about Colt Stadium, Colt .45’s player Rusty Staub described it as any other player at the time would, “I don’t care what ballpark they ever talk about as being the hottest place on the face of the Earth, Colt Stadium was it.” Both players and fans spent three seasons in the heat at Colt Stadium before moving to the Astrodome in 1965. When MLB awarded Houston a National League franchise in 1960, the team needed a home until a planned dome stadium could be built. They decided to construct a temporary stadium… a 33,000 seat park that was named Colt Stadium.

“Colt Stadium was an awful place for baseball. The temperature was always (high), and mosquitoes were terrible. During a doubleheader one Sunday, over 100 fans were sent to the first aid room at Colt Stadium. While the Houston club played at Colt Stadium, their new stadium, the Astrodome, was constructed beyond the first base grandstand. On September 27, 1964 the Colt .45s played their last game at Colt Stadium against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1965, the Colt .45s were renamed the Astros and moved across the parking lot into the Astrodome.”

Aspromonte said, “It (the Astrodome) had an impact on so many people and what it did for the city of Houston was just incredible.”

The article from BALLPARKS.com concluded, “Colt Stadium remained standing for five years after the Colt .45s left as it served mainly as a storage yard. Team owner Roy Hofheinz had the entire stadium painted grey so it would not stand out in aerial photos of the Astrodome. In the late 1960s Colt Stadium was sold to a minor league Mexican team for $100,000. The stadium was disassembled and moved to Torreon, Mexico. The stadium was moved once again to Tampico, Mexico where it stills sits today and is part of a public playground.”

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The home for the New York Mets was the Polo Grounds, built in 1890 and home for the New York Giants until 1957. From 1962-64, the Mets played there while Shea Stadium was being built. As a 1962 baseball magazine noted, “The Mets will have to play in the Polo Grounds, hardly the last word in 20th Century stadia.”

The Mets went on to immortality by coming from the dregs of the National League to become the “Miracle Mets” of 1969 in which they won the pennant and upset the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles (who won 109 games that season) to win the World Series.

Judy Anderson, nee McCarthy, says, “On Thursday I was engaged to a Cardinal and on Saturday I married a Met.

That’s because her fiancé/husband Craig, was drafted by New York.

She had spent most of her life in a small town in Illinois. She met her future spouse when she saw him pitch in St. Louis. Forty-three days later, they were married.

One part of an expansion team is that while the players have to adjust to new surroundings, so do the wives. From that small town, Judy went to live in a hotel in the biggest city in the country. Other players’ wives were helpful as she adjusted to her new life in the Big Apple, she said.

The New York Mets played their first game on Wednesday, April 11 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Facing Cardinals starter Larry Jackson, the Mets went down 1-2-3 in the top of the first. In the bottom half, the Cards scored two runs, aided by a Stan Musial single – his first of three hits that day – and a balk by Mets starter Roger Craig. With two outs in the top of the second, Don Zimmer singled to center for the club’s first hit.

After Craig struck out to start the third, centerfielder Richie Ashburn singled, followed by a walk to shortstop Felix Mantilla. Second baseman Charlie Neal singled, scoring Ashburn for the franchise’s first run. Mantilla later scored on a sacrifice fly by leftfielder Frank Thomas, tying the score at 2-2. The Cardinals scored three in the bottom of the third, on their way to an 11-4 victory in front of 16,000 fans. First baseman and former Brooklyn Dodger Gil Hodges homered in the fourth inning for the Mets’ first round tripper, and Neal followed with another homer in the fifth inning.

“For the first time, Broadway will shower cheers and ticker tape upon a loser tomorrow. Up the Concrete Canyon, which has acclaimed Charles Lindberg and Colonel John Glenn, will ride the New York Mets, record 0-1. And what an 0. An 11-4 birthday clobbering by the Cardinals who tonight showed (General Manager) George Weiss what he has known all along – that the new club needs pitching,” wrote Dick Young in the New York Daily News.

The Mets made their home debut on Friday, April 27 at Polo Grounds, facing the Pittsburgh Pirates in front  of 12,447 fans. The Bucs won 4-3, led by starting pitcher Tom Sturdivant, who went seven innings allowing two runs, and Elroy Face, who closed out the game for his first save of the season. Mets starter Sherman Jones surrendered two runs in five innings and took the loss, as the Mets bullpen gave up the Cardinals final runs.

The Mets went on to a then record of only 40-wins against 120 losses, which lasted for 62 years until the Chicago White Sox managed only 39 wins last year. The Mets’ futility became the stuff of legend, as manager Casey Stengel reportedly said, “Can’t anyone here play this game?”

“I didn’t like losing, but the players hung in there till the end of the season and it wasn’t one of those crybaby, moaning, bitching type atmospheres in a clubhouse,” said Craig Anderson, a pitcher with the club. “I would respectfully say to you that nobody, nobody loafed or didn’t try.

“Bringing a new team together can always create  some type of trying to figure out how you’re gonna deal with it, but Stengel was very good about it,” Anderson continued.  “He didn’t tear down walls, you know how some of these managers go in and slam chairs and locker doors and scream and holler. He didn’t do that.”

“Somebody said that Stengel kept the focus on losing on him and not the players. He tried to shield the players from the losing and some of the players appreciated that,” said Anderson, who added that the hometown fans were supportive of them despite its record.

The Colt .45s fared much better, winning 64 games and finishing ahead of the Mets and the Cubs for eighth place.

Houston drew 924,456 fans while the Mets drew 922,530 viewers.

It took much longer for the other expansion teams to win a championship: the Angels won in 2002, the Astros in 2017 and the After only 12 seasons in the nation’s capital, the Senators moved to Arlington, TX, part of the Dallas/Fort Worth area. They won their first championship in 2023.

NOTE: Dr. Harry Edwards, emeritus professor at Berkeley University, who has been quoted and profiled in several of my columns, has been inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame, Class of 2025.

Here’s a good description of Edwards and his work from 49ers.com: “Edwards has left a lasting mark not only on the 49ers organization but on the broader landscape of sports and social justice. A renowned sociologist and human rights activist, Edwards has served as a longtime staff consultant for the 49ers and the Golden State Warriors.

“Edwards’ career has been dedicated to the intersection of sports, race, and social change. He was a two-sport athlete in basketball and track at San José State University, a leading architect of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society, and Social Change at San José State University.”

A native of East St. Louis, MO, Edwards sent an email asking “Don’t neglect to give East ST LOUIS “The City of Champions” – its props: in football alone two high school National Championships, 11 State Championships. Jackie Joiner-Kersey, too many football players to name, scholars, ambassadors, Miles Davis, Josephine Baker, world rebound dance choreographer Kathleen Dunham ….”

Congratulations, Professor Edwards.