by Mark Langill
You can thank Milwaukee Major League Baseball as one of the reasons why the Dodgers reside in Los Angeles.
But don’t throw a bouquet of flowers at the Milwaukee Brewers, the Dodgers’ upcoming opponent in the 2025 National League Championship Series.
A moment of silence, please, to salute the Milwaukee Braves, who called Wisconsin home from 1953 to 1965, a 13-year span between the franchise tenures in Boston and Atlanta.
The competitive Milwaukee team — featuring future Hall of Famers Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn — was only part of the competition the Dodgers faced.
Milwaukee’s County Stadium, which opened in 1953, was the first facility built in the United States using public funds. It was intended to host the Minor League Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association.
The intent to attract a Major League team immediately paid off. It also caught the attention of Dodger team president Walter O’Malley, who was trying to build a new ballpark in Brooklyn. Ebbets Field, built in 1913, had only an estimated 300 parking spaces around the neighborhood ballpark.
A stalemate between O’Malley and Robert Moses, an urban planner and New York City official, ultimately led to the Dodgers moving to the West Coast after the 1957 season.
But before that another team’s move helped illuminate to O’Malley what greener pastures could look like.
When the Braves relocated from Boston to Milwaukee during Spring Training in 1953, it marked the first move of a Major League team in the 20th century to switch from one city to another. The Boston Braves were competing in a two-team Major League city along with the American League Red Sox.
The pattern of two-team cities losing a franchise continued with the AL St. Louis Browns (1902–53), who became the Baltimore Orioles at the start of the 1954 season. The AL Philadelphia Athletics (1901–54) became the Kansas City Athletics in 1955.
Between 1947 and 1956, the Dodgers won six pennants and twice were knocked out on the final day of the season in 1950 and 1951. The Dodgers were also looking to build a new ballpark to replace Ebbets Field, which opened in 1913.
Milwaukee finished one game behind the Dodgers in 1956 and won the World Series in seven games against the New York Yankees in 1957. Milwaukee repeated as NL champs in 1958 but lost its crown to the Yankees in a Fall Classic rematch in 1958.
Milwaukee also enjoyed banner attendance figures, peaking at 2,215,404 in 1957.
In 1959, the Dodgers and Milwaukee finished tied for first place after the regular season. The Dodgers, now playing at their temporary home at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, swept a best-of-three playoff against Milwaukee and beat the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
The Dodgers’ first championship on the West Coast coincided with a gradual slide of Milwaukee’s fortunes.
When the Dodgers drew more than 2.7 million fans in 1962 during their first season at Dodger Stadium, Milwaukee’s attendance was 766,921.
On the field, the Braves never had a losing season while playing in Milwaukee. The last game in Milwaukee Braves history was played at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 3, 1965, the day after the Dodgers clinched the NL pennant.
So how did the Brewers wind up in Milwaukee?
Be prepared if the answer sounds like Abbott and Costllo’s “Who’s on First?” comedic routine.
In 1969, MLB added two expansion teams to each league — the Montreal Expos (NL), San Diego Padres (NL), Kansas City Royals (AL) and Seattle Pilots (AL).
Seattle finished in sixth place in the AL West with a 64–98 record, but the bigger problem was keeping the team financially solvent. During Spring Training in 1970, the Pilots were sold in bankruptcy court to Allan H. “Bud” Selig, a Milwaukee native and auto industry executive.
Selig, who during his childhood watched the Minor League Brewers, moved the Pilots to Milwaukee and renamed them the Brewers.
Selig, 91, still lives in Milwaukee. He was president of the Milwaukee Brewers until serving as Baseball Commissioner from 1998 to 2015.
The Brewers resided in the American League from 1970 until switching to the NL in 1998. The Brewers’ lone World Series appearance was in 1982 when Milwaukee lost in seven games against the St. Louis Cardinals.
The NL Brewers came close to their first World Series appearance in 2018, eventually losing to the Dodgers 5–1 in the deciding Game 7 of the NLCS at Milwaukee.
What ever happened to baseball in Seattle after the one-year tenure of the Pilots?
In 1977, the AL added two expansion teams — the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays. Those franchises meet for the first time in the postseason in the 2025 ALCS.
2025 NLCS: Milwaukee helped spur Dodger LA move was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.