There was a time

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - There was a time when baseball teams, and other professional sports organizations, traveled with the rest of us - first by train, then by air. A new age was ushered in TODAY in BASEBALL (1957) when the Los Angeles Dodgers brought a 44-passenger twin-engine airplane for $775,000, becoming the first major league baseball team to own their own plane. Teams began flying in 1934, but not for every trip. Expansion to the west coast made air travel a necessity.

Travel has always been a major consideration for professional sports. Early on it restricted major league baseball to a relatively small section of the country. Before the late 1950's Major league baseball was focused entirely in the northeastern quadrant of the country. When the National League was established in 1876 that's where most of the population was. It took too long to travel outside that area in the late 1800s. It took 20 hours to travel from New York to Chicago by rail. Smart scheduling kept teams from having to do that, but even New York to Buffalo was a 7 hour train ride, making travel days necessary.

1882

CONTRIBUTING SOURCE:
Baseball Geography and Transportation, by Alex Reisner, March 22, 2006