Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Damn Yankees
Page 74
began with a NL pennant and ended with a seventh place finish, minuscule crowds and a call to Wisconsin.
Both Veeck and Perini wanted out, but they wanted to go to the same city; Milwaukee. Veeck ran the minor league Brewers there with success in the 1940s, and knew about the city’s potential to embrace the majors. But Perini held the territorial rights to the region, giving him a critical leg up in his quest to bring over the Braves. A new publicly built ballpark waited in the wings.
The battle was over before it began. Besides the territorial rights, Perini had one other big weapon; the other owners, who always saw Veeck as a rogue who wasn’t one of them, and wanted him out of baseball.
In mid-March, two weeks after successfully lobbying to block
Veeck’s move to Milwaukee, Perini publicly announced his own intentions to move the Braves. Within a week, the owners granted him his wish. Warming up for the season in Florida, Braves players still wearing caps displaying “B” for Boston were stunned by the events and scrambled to find new housing in Milwaukee. Back in Boston, few fans cried over the loss of 77 years of National League baseball.