How Pearl Harbor stopped the birth of the LA Browns and changed baseball history

It took a long time for the West Coast to host a Major League Baseball team. And the wait was increased by the events of the second world war

Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years ago not only ensured the United States' entry into the second world war. It inadvertently but categorically changed baseball history.

One day after the attack, Major League Baseball's owners were expected to approve the move of the American League's St Louis Browns to Los Angeles for 1942 - 16 years before Walter O'Malley's former Brooklyn Dodgers played their first season on the West Coast. The Browns felt so confident that they even scheduled a press conference in Los Angeles to announce the move on the afternoon of Monday 8 December 1941.