Who did people root for prior to expansion?
 

Think about it, for many many decades, huge swaths of the country were nowhere near any major league team (unless you think the PCL was a quasi major league). I'm not talking about states in relative proximity to St. Louis or Chicago, but what if you were in the Deep South, or Texas, or the Mountain West, or the West Coast, did people there tend to root for any particular team or was it just a hodgepodge? Were California fans more in tune with the PCL? I guess I've read somewhere that fans in the South tended to root for the Cardinals, but I don't know if that's an overgeneralization.

My grandpa grew up in the San Francisco suburbs in the late 20's and 30's. He was a San Francisco Seals fan, and the way he told it they were basically thought of as the major leagues by the locals and enjoyed a similar popularity in their immediate area with a dedicated and large fan base. Joe Dimaggio and Ferris Fain could do no wrong (except for when they left San Francisco, of course).

But we know how the way men talk about things they are nostalgic for are not always accurate, so who knows.

While I have no way of knowing for sure, I suspect it may be closely tied to who they were able to listen to on the radio. Thus corroborating the idea that many in the south were Cardinals fans.

Fans
 

My dad grew up in West Virginia and moved to Detroit after the Air Force in Korea. We would go to West Virginia every year. My great grandfather was a Reds fan. I used to watch the games with him. While I am a diehard Tiger fan, I have a soft spot for the Reds after watching Jim O'Toole. Frank Robinson, Vada Pinson and Joey Jay etc. Also, when I was in the Army in 1980 and stationed near Baltimore I worked with a lot of Oriole fans. However, a lot of the older guys followed the Tigers because of Al Kaline who was from there. They told me that they would go to there cars and listen to Tiger games on the radio. WJR had a wide range in the 50's and on clear nights they could get the games.

The Houston market was owned by the Cardinals before the Colt .45s/Astros were formed. The city had the Buffaloes/Buffs since the 1890s and for decades they were a Cardinals farm club. Only in their last two seasons did they switch to a Cubs affiliate.

When I moved here in the mid-60s any game against the Cardinals drew quite a crowd of St. Louis fans. That gradually changed due to Cardinal fans getting older and the Astros forming an identity and having some exciting teams. The Cards don't play here much since the Astros changed leagues so it's hard to gauge the amount of support they still have here. But I suspect there are fewer Cards fans in Minute Maid Park when they visit than there are Yankees and Red Sox fans then those clubs are in town.

Peter--I think for people in states with no teams a factor contributing to who they rooted for was which games they could listen to on the radio. I think the station that broadcast the Cardinal games had a strong signal which to some extent accounted for their expanded fan base. I remember as a kid growing up in the Bronx listening to Cincinnati Royals NBA games at night on my portable radio. They became my second favorite team after the Knicks.

For many years, Washington was the southernmost franchise, and I believe benefitted from and cultivated fans in all the states in the south.

From 1961 through 1968, especially, the Twins routinely drew fans from all the surrounding states. The scoreboard had messages in lights, welcoming the various outstate groups. And as mentioned, radio helped. The games were carried on WCCO, AM 830, which was a clear channel station that could be picked up all over the region.

Being more successful than the Chicago teams and Kansas City during those years helped as well.

Pre 1972 before the Rangers appeared on the scene, I know there were a lot of Cardinal fans all over the country. I don’t have an exact reason, maybe someone can elaborate as it was before my time.

All I can say, Cardinal fans travel well. Went to a game in Texas and it seemed louder for the RedBirds than my Rangers

My family originally being from St Louis, were cardinal fans. So anyone in our family born before 72, were Cardinal fans, and anyone after that, Ranger fans. It made for the 2011 World Series a fun one…!

Re: Cardinals and the South/etc.

KMOX in STL had a massive 50,000-watt transmitter and on clear nights could dominate airwaves for 1000+ miles (100-200 during the day). It was powerful enough and southern enough to reach an audience other markets couldn't.

Memphis was and (for all it's issues and problems) still is a Cardinals town. The Redbirds are the Cardinals AAA team. KMOX came in like a local station. My dad and grandpa listened to Cardinals games regularly, and WMC channel 5 on TV was part of the regional Cardinals TV network...Jack Buck, Harry Carey, Jay Randolph and Mike Shannon.

I grew up in Florida before expansion and could easily pick up KMOX at night.

I listened to many Cardinals games as a result, but never considered myself a Cardinals fan.

I guess I was a 5 tool kid as I was always a fan of Willie Mays and the New York Giants, particularly in 1954

Now I've come full circle though from "Say Hey" to "Sho Hei".

Aren't Peter's threads worthwhile and provocative?

As many noted here KMOX helped make the Cardinals popular .
They broadcast the 1926 World Series between the Yankees and the Cardinals and have been doing play-by-play for the Cardinals pretty much ever since .
According to Wikipedia at times it can be picked up in New Zealand and Scotland

For those of us of a certain age, radio was such a huge part of our lives.

I was a huge Brooklyn fan. Snider was my favorite player. Since I was in Texas, 1700 miles from Brooklyn, I didn't despair when they went West. After all, L.A. was only 1200 miles away.
I didn't see a big league game in person until 1964 when I drove to St Louis just to see Koufax and Drysdale pitch.

Kmox
 

My Dad was a farmer and he would come home, eat supper, then lie in bed and listen to the Cardinals on KMOX. We lived in north Louisiana and had to wait until dark to pick up the signal. Without daylight savings it got dark around 7:30 in the summer. I have fond memories of listening to Jack Buck and Harry Carey with my Dad. My first pack of baseball cards was a 1957 wax pack that had my favorite player Ken Boyer. Still my favorite card.

I've always been thankful I'm from New York. I can't imagine being from somewhere people have to resort to following high school football for their sports fix.

Radio still is as far as baseball is concerned, thanks to the lackluster Bally Sports. I’d rather listen to the radio than pay Bally a dime.

Sidestepping, but staying in similar territory...some of us younger old people (late 40s here) got our taste of regular baseball from the early 1980s cable "Superstations."

WGN (Cubs), TBS (Braves), and WOR (Mets) fed huge parts of the nation regular baseball at a time where you might only see a few games a week on various stations unless you lived in an over-the-air team broadcast area.

I am very sure having WGN play so many day/afternoon games and not having to share the TV with other family members during those games had a huge part of me developing into a Cubs fan. Cubs day games didn't compete with the latest sitcoms, dramas, and mini-series.

Orioles
 

before expansion Brooks Robinson played in our home town for Vancouver
and he had a bad accident fielding and was more or less impaled on the back fence . I was a at a Sabr meeting some years ago , and Doc Younker was there to recount how they saved him, and patched him up as no ambulances back in the day. It's amazing he ever recovered to play for the Orioles. He was quite a player!

I was born post Expansion. But I lived in Billings, Montana. We were square in the middle of Twins, Rockies, Mariners, and the local MiLB affiliate of the Reds. I cheered for all four teams. But they were so far away that I was never going to make it to a game.

So the MiLB team was the big deal! Billings came out in droves. The boosters were drunk by the 5th inning running their 50/50, and they were raucous. I have to imagine this was similar to pre-expansion PCL Seals and Oakland Oaks. I'm very bitter about the MiLB re-arrangement - probably not as sad as fans of teams that left during expansion...but that was plain stupid to take MiLB out of Montana. What ties them to a MLB team now? Nothing.

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Grew up in the 50's with the Omaha Cardinals. At one time in the 30's the Cardinals owned the rights to the entire Nebraska State League, Being able to listen to the Cardinals on the radio every night in the summer made them the team for many Nebraskans.

Since dropping cable and the $260.00 monthly bill I listen to the Redsox or Yankees on the radio just like I did growing up. Not a problem..

my local AM doesn't even carry the playoffs. it's TV or nothing for me.

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My Dad's cousin in Northwest Oklahoma was a Yankees fan in the 50's. I asked him why he wasn't a Cardinals fan and he said it was because of the Saturday Game of the Week. 60+ years later he can still name the starting 8 for the Yankees.

A lifelong New Yorker, I was born in 1955, so I'm just a little too young to remember the Dodgers and the Giants in New York, but my father was a die-hard Giants fan and he worshipped at the alter of Willie Mays. So, when I was six and began paying attention to baseball (and when I began collecting baseball cards), I was a Giants fan too.

Rooting for the Yankees was never an option.

The following year, the Mets came along, and I began to drift in their direction. My father compromised by taking me to Mets games when the Giants were in town. He didn't fully convert until 1972 - when Willie Mays was traded to the Mets.

Long-distance relationships are so complicated.:rolleyes:

Alan Kleinberger

Growing up in the NYC suburbs when baseball was the sport to follow and play, there were 3 NY teams and woe-be to the kid who was a NY Giants fan found wandering in the Dodger's neighborhoods after dark. Sort of like The Hell's Angels and Pagans love affair.
I literally cried that the team I loved was going . How could I still love the Dodgers when they were being displaced and 3k miles away? 'Dem Bums" should know that Flatbush is burning and Ebbets Field is screaming.

I turned 6 in 1960 and found baseball. We lived near Shreveport, LA. The Saturday Game of the Week is also what turned me into a Yankee fan. In 1961, when Post cereal had their baseball card promotion, I sent my dime in to get the 10 card set of the Yankees. Being the Number 1 team at the time probably didn't hurt either. :p