The 1953 Major League Baseball season was contested from April 13 to October 12, 1953. It marked the first relocation of an MLB franchise in fifty years, as the Boston Braves moved their NL franchise to Milwaukee, where they would play their home games at the new County Stadium. This was also the first regular season of the televised Major League Baseball Game of the Week, originally broadcast on ABC.
The New York Yankees won their fifth consecutive World Series championship, an MLB record.
ABC executive Edgar J. Scherick approached MLB with a Saturday Game of the Week. With fewer outlets than CBS or NBC, ABC needed paid programming (or "anything for bills" as Scherick put it). At first, ABC hesitated at the idea of a nationally televised regular season baseball program, but gave Scherick the green light to sign up teams. Prior to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, antitrust laws only allowed the networks to make deals with individual teams instead of pooling rights directly from a central league authority. Unfortunately, only three (the Philadelphia Athletics, Cleveland Indians,[17] and Chicago White Sox[18][19] were interested.[20] To make matters worse, Major League Baseball barred the Game of the Week from airing within fifty miles of any big-league city.[21]
