https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...seball-history
quote: Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years ago not only ensured the United States’ entry into the second world war. It inadvertently but categorically changed baseball history.
One day after the attack, Major League Baseball’s owners were expected to approve the move of the American League’s St Louis Browns to Los Angeles for 1942 – 16 years before Walter O’Malley’s former Brooklyn Dodgers played their first season on the West Coast. The Browns felt so confident that they even scheduled a press conference in Los Angeles to announce the move on the afternoon of Monday 8 December 1941.
Even with Breadon’s and Wrigley’s support, Barnes had to solve the problem of transcontinental travel at a time when railways predominated and air travel was primitive.
Team presidents “were concerned over the safety of their players should the shift of the Browns to Los Angeles require their clubs to make trips out there by air,” Barnes told the Sporting News in 1949.
After consulting with Trans World Airlines (TWA) and the Santa Fe railroad, which operated a route between Los Angeles and Chicago, the Browns devised a schedule allowing for two transcontinental trips by rail and one by air, with enough off days to make travel viable. The Browns would partially compensate other clubs’ travel
