Major League Baseball
In 1958, one year after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left for Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, New York mayor Robert Wagner asked him to chair a committee to return the National League to New York. Shea first tried to bring an existing franchise to New York, but the Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Pittsburgh Pirates all refused his overtures. When requests for expansion were declined, Shea, along with Branch Rickey, announced the formation of the Continental League in 1959. The Continental League would have been a third major league and would have begun play in 1961.
The threat of a third major league forced Major League Baseball to discuss expansion. Two teams would be added to the American League in 1961 (the Los Angeles Angels and the replacement Washington Senators), and two more to the National League in 1962 (the New York Mets and the Houston Colt .45s). With New York virtually assured of one of the new teams, Shea abandoned the idea of the Continental League. The New York Mets played their first game on April 11, 1962. In 1964, the Mets played their first game in their new stadium in Queens, named Shea Stadium after the man most responsible for the existence of the franchise.
Read more about this topic: William Shea
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