The MLB’s Family Tree

It’s Mother’s Day in the United States, and that’s actually fitting for what goes on below, but I didn’t plan it this way. In fact, I didn’t really plan this at all. I was sitting around the other day and for some reason got thinking about which MLB franchises were most similar to each other, and by the time that thought had reached its conclusion I was making a family tree. Here it is.

Editor’s Note: The following is not historically accurate. I’m not sure what it really even is. But it isn’t historically accurate, even if there are some pieces that seem to try to stay true to the patterns of major league baseball expansion.

It all began with the Cincinnati Reds. Baseball’s matriarch, even if you don’t always think of her as such (did you send her a card?). Way back when, she and the New York Yankees—the proud, loud patriarch of the game—fell in love, and produced four children.

The first of those children was a daughter, the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs went off beyond their mother’s ancestral home, meeting a man there who we know as the Chicago White Sox. Together, they produced two children who never married: the Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers.

The second child was a bit of a vagabond. He never settled down, moving all over the country—from Philadelphia to Kansas City, from Kansas City to Oakland. He’s even tried to move recently, down from Oakland to San Jose. He’s the Oakland A’s, and he’s produced no offspring.

The third child loved New York, and met a woman there with whom he had three children. Eventually, the pair moved to California, where they became the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The first two kids (of the Giants and Dodgers) were conceived in New York, and while the younger one—the New York Mets—stayed, the elder—the San Diego Padres—made a life for himself on the West Coast, marrying the Seattle Mariners, who birthed their only child, the Colorado Rockies.

The youngest child of the Giants and Dodgers has had an identity crisis over the years, but currently calls himself the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The Reds’ and Yankees’ fourth child landed in St. Louis, and it’s from of his line of the family that most of the pair’s descendants come. That child is the St. Louis Cardinals, and together with the Pittsburgh Pirates he had two kids.

The first was born in St. Louis but moved to the East Coast, where she’s now known as the Baltimore Orioles. Infuriating her grandfather, she married the Boston Red Sox.

The second (now the Atlanta Braves) was born out in Boston, where she and the Philadelphia Phillies had two daughters—both of whom they named the Washington Senators. One of those moved to the Midwest, changed her name to the Minnesota Twins, and lives a single lifestyle. The other moved to Texas, changing her name to the Texas Rangers and marrying the Houston Astros. The Rangers and Astros have two daughters of their own: the Milwaukee Brewers and the Kansas City Royals.

Things didn’t last between the Braves and the Phillies, who separated while still young. The Braves found a nice Canadian man, the Toronto Blue Jays, and while their child was raised in Montreal, she (ironically, given the emigration of her half-sisters) moved to Washington, becoming the Washington Nationals.

The Nationals met a bit of a wild woman in the Miami Marlins, who already had a child—the Arizona Diamondbacks—whose father’s identity is unknown (though whispers say it was the Dallas Cowboys). Together, the Nationals and Marlins have a child, biologically the Nationals’, with a sperm donor who probably came from the NBA.

And that child is the Tampa Bay Rays.