1968 Major League Baseball expansion draft

The 1968 Major League Baseball expansion draft was conducted to stock up the rosters of four expansion teams in Major League Baseball which would begin play in the 1969 season.

Bill Stoneman, who pitched two no-hitters for the Montreal Expos [ [http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/history/rare_feats/index.jsp?feature=no_hitter List of no-hitters] , mlb.com] and later ran the club as the GM, [ [http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/execdb/showperson.php?fname=Bill&idx=StoneBi01&lname=Stoneman Baseball America: Executive Database ] ] was also taken by the team in this draft.

National League

The expansion draft for the Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres was held on October 14, by|1968. With their first pick in the expansion draft (second pick overall), the Expos selected Manny Mota. With regards to the 23rd pick overall, Bobby Wine was offered to the Expos as compensation after Larry Jackson decided to retire rather than report to Montreal/

Montreal Expos

On December 2, by|1967, Gerry Snyder presented a bid for a Montreal franchise to Major League Baseball's team owners at their winter meetings in Mexico City. One potential wild card in Montreal's favour was that the chair of the National League's expansion committee was influential Los Angeles Dodgers president Walter O'Malley, under whom the Royals had become affiliated with the Dodgers. On May 27, by|1968, O'Malley announced that franchises were being awarded to Montreal and San Diego, beginning play the following year (1969). [cite web
title = Key dates in Expos history
url = http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/expos/timeline.html
language = English
accessdate = 2008-02-24
publisher = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
date = 2004-09-29
format = HTML]

Business executive Charles Bronfman of the Seagram's distilling empire owned the new team. [ [http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nl/mtlexpos/expos.html Montreal Expos (1969-2004) ] ] With a long history of use in Montreal, the "Royals" was one of the candidate nicknames for the new franchise, but the American League's new Kansas City team adopted this name, so the new owners conducted a contest to name the team.Fact|date=June 2008 Many names were suggested by Montrealers (including the "Voyageurs" and in a coincidental twist, the "Nationals" — now used by the team in its new home in Washington, D.C.) but there was a clear winner. At the time, the city was still basking in the glow of the recently completed Expo 67, the most popular World's Fair to date, and so the name "Expos" was used. [ [http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/more/850/ Wordorigins.org ] ] The Expos name also had the advantage of being the same in either English or French, the city's two dominant languages.

eattle Pilots

Seattle initially had much going for it when it joined the American League in 1969. Seattle had long been a hotbed for minor league baseball and was home to the Seattle Rainiers, one of the pillars of the Pacific Coast League (PCL). The Cleveland Indians had almost moved to Seattle in by|1965. Many of the same things that attracted the Indians made Seattle a plum choice for an expansion team. Seattle was the third-biggest metropolitan area on the West Coast (behind Los Angeles and the Bay Area).

References