Back in the day, before there were any residual incomes from television to drive fan interest in the game, baseball had to rely upon gate income and concession sales to cover the cost of very low player and administrative salaries and minimal maintenance of the club’s equipment, uniform, and venue expenses. It helped if an MLB club owned its own stadium.
1944: Just a Dream. Just a Dream. Just a Dream.
The St. Louis Browns of the American League (1902-1953) did own their own game arena. It was a place known for most of its life as Sportsman’s Park. They also pocketed good side income by serving as landlord to the St. Louis Cardinals of the National League until they sold the place to their highly more successful same-city rivals in 1953, the last year of the Browns’ existence.
It was easy for the Browns to become dependent upon the sale of good ballplayers rather than the attainment of pennants as the unspoken priority plan for economic survival. The club could not draw the fans they needed to pay for a winning team on the field, so, in effect, if not by stated goal, they showcased and sold many of their best talents to wealthy clubs like the Yankees just to pay their bills and stay afloat. As a result, all hope spun as wasted motion in the mud. The St. Louis Browns were going nowhere “up” in the AL standings, except in 1921, when they got there honestly and fell a mere one game short of winning the pennant, and in 1944, when World War II and military draft conspired to leave the Browns with their only pennant winner against inferior competition.
In these 52 annual attendance figures from Baseball Almanac, pay special notice to how bad things got during the Great Depression years. 1935 was their worst year. The Browns drew only 80,922 fans for the season in 1935, To say the least, their per game average of 1,044 fans was both abysmal and unsustainable by today’s financial needs.
It reminds me of pitcher Ned Garver’s favorite line about poor Brownie game attendance during their last generation of air-gasping survival in the years that followed World War II.
“Our fans never booed us,” said Browns pitcher Ned Garver. “They wouldn’t dare. – We outnumbered them.”
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Tags: Game Attendance, St.. Louis Browns
The Pecan Park Eagle 
December 18, 2013 at 3:13 pm |
I recall seeing some attendance figures for the Browns’ home games against the Yankees during DiMaggio’s streak–only a few thousand showed up.
December 18, 2013 at 3:37 pm |
We revere the history of the game from the past and the many great players, but even with competition of other sports today baseball is a far more successful business than at any time in its history. It is far from dying even if certain segments of the population in certain areas of the country think it is. It the great areas of the nation where it was born (Northeast and Midwest) baseball is still #1–everything else is popular, but seasonal. MLB had revenues of $8-billion in 2013. That is NOT something a dying sport could achieve.
December 18, 2013 at 11:42 pm |
Garver was misquoted in the piece. He said, “Our fans never booed us. They wouldn’t dare. We outnumbered ’em.”
December 19, 2013 at 12:30 am |
Bruce – Thanks for the belated correction. Sometimes I suffer from a dyslexic reversal of quotation-intent when I get in a hurry. I caught my error in the Garver quote on the first rattle out of the box and made the immediate correction, but it was too late to keep it from quick eyes like yours. Thanks, anyway.
It’s a tough condition sometimes. When my son was in middle school, one of his classmates was on her way to winning the competition for their school team with a talk about JFK, until she concluded with “Ask not, what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you.” – Come to think about it, maybe she was simply trying to make a point about things to come that we just didn’t get back then when there was still time to correct a growing cultural attitude. Unfortunately.
Regards, Bill McCurdy
December 20, 2013 at 11:25 pm |
Perhaps I should check the figures from ’47 thru ’53 to see if the
Browns-owned ball park in San Antonio might have enabled the
Missions to out-draw their owners. My Dad used to recall going from his hometown of Bartlesville, Okla. to see Browns’ games in
the 1930’s. His lesson for us was, “It’s not so bad to be fans of a
weak team. It’s never a problem to get tickets when the good clubs
dome to town!” Sounds familiar. Thanks for another column on
the Browns. Merry Christmas.
December 21, 2013 at 1:19 am |
Tom – Look no further than 1935, when the Missions drew 109,66 to 80,922 for the Browns. As for the ’46 thru ’53 period, here’s how it went, listing only the winner and the comparative totals for each of those years:
1946: Browns, 526,435 to 295,103;
1947: Browns, 320,474 to 152,605;
1948: Browns, 335,564 to 263,959;
1949: Browns, 270,936 to 225,500;
1950: Browns, 247,131 to 180,580;
1951: Browns: 293,790 to 180,577;
1952: Browns, 518,796 to 110,001;
1953: Browns, 297,238 to 98,711.
Browns 8 – Missions 0 in the Post WWII Era.
Close for SA in ’49, but no cigar.
There may be some other SA wins from the 1930’s. I only checked the outrageous year of 1935.
Merry Christmas to You and Yours!
August 26, 2018 at 5:57 pm |
[…] Great Depression had nearly ruined several major league teams. From 1932-1939, the St. Louis Browns never had a season where they averaged more than 2,000 fans per game. The Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Braves nearly went out of […]