I don't remember why the Brewers went over to the National League. There are 14 American League teams and 16 National League teams. If they were still in the American League, there would be 15 and 15.

There has to be an even number of teams in each league. Otherwise there would be an interleague game every day or one team would not play for three days straight.

Wasn't the Brewers switch made when Arizona and Tampa Bay joined the league(s)? That created odd-numbers of teams, which leads directly to George_vf's explanation...

[quote]Originally posted by Seph:
Wasn't the Brewers switch made when Arizona and Tampa Bay joined the league(s)? That created odd-numbers of teams, which leads directly to George_vf's explanation...

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Yes, but I'm not sure why they had Milwaukee switch leagues. The previous two times that two expansion teams were added (Toronto/Seattle and Florida/Colorado), they went to the same league and without any existing team switching leagues.

...one team would not play for three days straight. "

Not necessarily. You could stagger the series so that the odd team would only have to not play for one or two days. For example, Team 15 has the day off. Team 14 and Team 13 series ends tommorrow. Team 15 and Team 14 start a series tomorrow, a day that Team 13 is off. Team 11 and Team 12 series end the following day. Team 13 and Team 12 start a series on the day after, which Team 11 has off. And on and on and on

Originally posted by pat125:

[quote] The previous two times that two expansion teams were added (Toronto/Seattle and Florida/Colorado), they went to the same league and without any existing team switching leagues.

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Yes, but Toronto & Seattle were both added as AL teams, Colorado and Florida both as NL teams, keeping the total number of teams in each division even. It was only when ONE team was added to each league (throwing off the even/odd balance) that a team needed to be switched over.

Why they chose Milwaukee, I don’t know. Maybe the Selig's didn’t have a good DH hitter in their line-up.

M'waukee switched leagues at the time of the Arizona/Tampa Bay expansion simply because Bud Selig wanted them there. Remember that M'waukee had been an NL city when they had the Braves for from the early 1950's to the mid 1960's.

The Brewers did not have to switch. Arizona pressured hard to go into the NL West. I think the AL wanted the Tampa franchise as that league had no teams in the entire quadrant of the country south of Baltimore and east of Texas. But Arizona wanted baseball badly enough that Colangelo would've shut up and allowed his team to be put in the AL West, a move that could've had the added benefit of shifting Texas to the Central, so that team wouldn't have been isolated two time zones east of the rest of its division.

So to put Arizona where it wanted, in the NL West, and Tampa where the AL wanted, Bud took one for the team. How altrusitic! Yeah, right.

More likely, Bud wanted to create some excitement around what had been, through the '90's, one of the worst drawing teams in baseball. I think Bud thought all those Cubs games would result eight or nine guaranteed sellouts per year in hard-to-fill County Stadium (Southside Chicago fans weren't making the drive up I-94 to go to Brewers games when they were AL, but Northside, upscale Cubbie fans who couldn't get tickets for Wrigley might make the trip).

And that is why M'waukee is stinking up the NL Central and not the AL Central.

[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Charlie in the Trees ]

CITT's right that they needed an even number of teams, that Milwaukee was traditionally an NL city, and that they could then revive some old Milwaukee-Cubs, Milwaukee-STL, etc. rivalries.

However, again, those Selig-bashers who think that he's pulling all the strings on the MLB owner puppets are wrong -- he acts on their behest. They, too, wanted the move. As usual you're giving him far too much blame for baseball's woes.