Wheelock Whitney and baseball's Continental shift

The fading black-and-white group shot of the men who had set out to start the Continental League -- baseball's would-be third major league -- hangs on a corner of a large wall filled with similar historical pictures at Wheelock Whitney's Maple Plain home. The photo prompts a rush of happy memories for Whitney, but at the same time causes him to pause and, after a moment of silence, describe it as "horrifying to me."

Horrifying, because of all the prospective Continental League administrators and franchise owners pictured in the 1959 photo -- 17 men in all -- he is the only one still alive. At the age of 82, Whitney is the last of the Continentals.

The Continental League -- formally announced 50 years ago this month -- is a largely forgotten piece of baseball's history, save perhaps for scrapbooks filled with yellowed newspaper clippings like the one Whitney has kept for all these years. The league never played a game, nor did its eight teams formalize rosters or even hire staffs. But the Continental played a significant role in pushing baseball to expand for the 1961 season, a decision that had direct local ramifications.

"Clearly, [the Continental League] led to expansion and to the Twins moving here," said Minneapolis attorney Clark Griffith, the son of former Twins owner Calvin Griffith. "It was, at that particular time in history, the catalyst that forced expansion."

And many of the men in Whitney's group shot made names for themselves in the years that would follow. Bob Howsam became architect of the great Cincinnati Reds teams of the 1970s. Jack Kent Cooke became one of the nation's most prominent sports owners. And Roy Hofheinz became the driving force behind Houston's Astrodome -- the so-called Eighth Wonder of the World at its construction.

The local scene

The quest to bring Major League Baseball to the Twin Cities dates to 1952, when several Minneapolis civic leaders began to meet informally to discuss ways to attract a big-league club. A year later, the Twin Cities baseball committee was formed, with Minneapolis Chamber of Council President Gerald Moore as president.

When the Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee and its new County Stadium in 1953, it became evident that the Twin Cities' existing minor league stadiums -- Nicollet Park in Minneapolis and Lexington Park in St. Paul -- were not going to lure a major league team. So, typical of the lack of cooperation between the Twin Cities at the time, Minneapolis leaders got behind a project to build Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington ... while St. Paul constructed Midway Stadium near the Fairgrounds.

The new ballparks -- both readily expandable -- drew courtships in the late 1950s from the New York Giants, Cleveland Indians and, almost annually starting in 1957, from Calvin Griffith and the Washington Senators. But the courtships always ended in rebuke.

There was rebuke as well on the East Coast, where the city of New York was left without a National League team in 1958 when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants moved to California. New York Mayor Robert Wagner appointed attorney William Shea to lead an effort to get another NL team to New York, but Shea was no more successful in luring an existing team than Minneapolis leaders were.

Shea ultimately enlisted the aid of legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey, who had gained notoriety for breaking baseball's race barrier as GM of the Dodgers. Rickey and Shea became the central figures of the Continental League, which attracted men such as Whitney, a Minneapolis stockbroker who by then had become part of the Minneapolis effort to bring big-league baseball to Minnesota.

"One day, in the late 1950s, I picked up the morning newspaper and there was an article that said Branch Rickey was beginning to form what would be a third major league called the Continental League," Whitney said. Whitney, only 33 then, sought counsel from Donald Dayton of Dayton's Corp. and Joyce Swan, a vice president of the Star and Tribune. Both business leaders advised Whitney to meet with Rickey. After doing so, Whitney left convinced the Continental League was legit.

"[Rickey] said to me, 'Wheelock, out there in the Twin Cities, you're on the wrong track for getting a major league team,' " Whitney recalled. " 'They're using you. You have a ballpark, so whenever a major league team wants to get something out of its own hometown, they have a press conference and say they're eyeing the Twin Cities.' "

Whitney and the Twin Cities signed on. On July 27, 1959, the Continental League was formally announced, listing five "founder" franchises: New York, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Houston, Denver and Toronto. Rickey claimed he had applications from at least eight additional cities, and early in 1960 selected Atlanta, Dallas and Buffalo to join the original five as charter members in a league set to begin play in 1961.

Clark Griffith calls Rickey an "iconoclastic figure" and said he was the one man with clout to get the Continental League up and running. Baseball executives must have felt the same way, because at a meeting in Chicago on Aug. 2, 1960, the major league owners pledged that they would expand from 16 to 24 teams if the Continental League would disband.

Rickey, according to Whitney, stood up, thanked the owners for their offer and said his group would confer privately over lunch and return with an answer.

"We had a big conference room in the hotel, and I'll tell you, when we got in that room, that was the first time I ever saw grown men hugging each other," Whitney said. "I mean, now it's commonplace -- either a fist bump or a hug -- but those days it was just a handshake. But in that room, guys were screaming, 'Hallelujah, we won.' "

Whitney said that Rickey had advised his potential owners that expansion was a possibility. But Rickey also said that the Continentals prospective owners "had to have faith that we can do it as a third major league," Whitney said. "He kept preaching that we had to pay attention to what we could do, not what the major leagues might do."

Forcing baseball's hand

The owners of the 16 major league franchises were not leaning toward expansion until the Continental came on the scene. The growth of TV offered a new, potentially lucrative cash flow for baseball in the late 1950s, and owners were not eager to spread the wealth. But the Continental League forced their hand.

There was at the time intense political pressure to keep a team in Washington, D.C., which had prevented Griffith from moving his club to Minnesota in each of the three previous years. But the AL's decision to expand for the 1961 season and put one of the new teams in Washington -- and the other in Los Angeles -- freed Griffith to move his club to Minnesota.

Despite his involvement with the Continental League, Whitney had kept active in the effort to lure Griffith to Minnesota, believing an established franchise would be preferable. Whitney, who would later be a part owner in the NHL's North Stars and the NFL's Vikings, became a close confidant of Calvin Griffith and an original member of the Twins board of directors.

Rickey wrote Whitney a personal letter on the flight from Chicago to New York the night of Aug. 2, 1960. The letter begins: "It is probable in my judgment that Minneapolis will be one of the first four cities to be included in the present expansion program. There is glamour, almost romance in the prospective adventure ..."

Whitney still cherishes the letter today, as he does his time with the man he still calls "Mr. Rickey."

"I'll go to my grave believing that if it hadn't been for the Continental League, it would have taken a number of years before we got Major League Baseball to expand," Whitney said as he paged through his Continental scrapbook. "Yes, I think baseball would have eventually expanded, but not when it did. And we got a baseball team [in Minnesota] much sooner that we would have because of the Continental League."