Not so long ago, New York City had three baseball teams: The Dodgers, the Giants and the Yankees. Competition was fierce and team alliances were set in stone. But then, in the course of one year, only one remained: the others left town.

The end result is well known—in 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers decamped to Los Angeles, becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team now in the World Series. The Giants also skulked away to San Francisco but without much hand wringing from fans or sports columnists or impassioned correspondence to the Mayor.