Sep 27: Browns fade to black

SEPTEMBER 27,  1953 | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – Befitting their history, the St. Louis Browns lost the final game they ever played on this date in 1953. Their loss to the Chicago White Sox in 11 innings was the 100th of the season. They left St. Louis that winter for Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

Until the team moved to Baltimore, where they remain, the franchise had a somewhat vagabond history. It was established in 1901 in Milwaukee as the Brewers – one of the charter franchises of the American League. The Brewers, not to be confused with the current Milwaukee Brewers, stayed a year. The team moved to St. Louis for the 1902 season and became the Browns, a name relinquished a few years earlier by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Confused? Suffice it to say, the Browns are now the Orioles and in Baltimore. The Brewers, who were the Seattle Pilots for one year, have been in Milwaukee since 1970, and the Cardinals remain where they’ve always been – St. Louis (unless you’re talking about the football Cardinals, but that’s a story for TODAYinFOOTBALL). And, oh, the Baltimore Orioles of 1901 – not to be confused with the current Orioles – moved to New York in 1903 and became the Highlanders (today’s Yankees).

Contributing sources:
September 27, 1953 box score/play-by-play
MLB team histories
Major League Baseball

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Bill Grimes

I'm from Chicago. I worked in broadcast journalism for much of the 1970's and 80's. In 1990 I became a litigation consultant, retiring in 2017. Around 2005 I recall flipping through the sports section of the newspaper coming across "On this day in baseball history Willie Mays hit his 600th home run." I enjoyed the one-liners, but I wanted more. I wanted a story. I took my news reporting skills and started researching and telling baseball stories, one for every day of the year. TodayinBaseball.com is the result.