|
Well, the first major-league team located west of the Mississippi was St. Louis, which hosted a club in the NL's inaugural year (1876). But if you're not counting St. Louis as being west of the Mississippi, then the first was Kansas City in the Union Association in 1884. In fact, KC was the furthest west that major-league baseball would venture until 1958, when the Dodgers and Giants moved to the west coast.
Having a team in KC was only feasible if the league also fielded a team in St. Louis. Otherwise, travel to and from such a remote outpost would have been impractical. So it's no coincidence that, every year that KC had a ML team (1884, 1886, 1888-89, 1914-15), St. Louis did also.
The only other city west of the Mississippi that could have conceivably fielded a ML team in the 19th century was Minneapolis. There, again, the mileage would have been significant, and Minneapolis didn't have a nearby city like St. Louis that it could "share" (the closest was Milwaukee, which wasn't really big enough). Minneapolis was a long-time member of the minor-league American Association, but St. Paul also fielded a club, so road trips to Minnesota made more sense for AA teams.
New Orleans was, in the 19th century, bigger than either Minneapolis or KC, but it was so far away from the northern teams that no one seriously considered it as a possibility.
|