Toronto interests put forward a bid to buy the Washington Nationals to move them to Toronto in 1918 when there was discussion of the team relocating. The following year it was reported that there were plans for the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees, which were dissatisfied with the President of the AL Ban Johnson, to break away and form their own new major league, which would include Toronto. In 1922 a Toronto group attempted to purchase the Boston Red Sox to relocate them to Toronto. The owner of the Boston Braves, Lou Perini, tried to sell his team to Toronto interests in the early 1950s before relocating them to become the Milwaukee Braves. While owning the Maple Leafs baseball team, Jack Kent Cooke set his sights on bringing MLB to Toronto. He made a bid on the St. Louis Browns in 1953, but the team was sold to a competing group which relocated them to become the Baltimore Orioles the following season. The AL considered Toronto as a potential home for the Philadelphia Athletics before they became the Kansas City Athletics in 1955, after Cooke bid on them, but the city's lack of a major league venue was an obstacle to acquiring a team. Cooke unsuccessfully bid on the Detroit Tigers in 1956, reportedly to move them to Toronto. In 1957 he submitted a bid for a NL expansion team for Toronto. In 1958, Cooke offered to withdraw from Toronto if the Los Angeles Dodgers, who were considering relocating, moved to the city, in exchange for partial ownership of the club. That same year it was reported that Toronto was one of the cities that the owner of the Washington Senators was considering relocating his team to. In 1959 Cooke became one of the founding owners in the Continental League, a proposed third major league of baseball, getting a team for Toronto for a fee of $50,000, but the league disbanded a year later without ever staging a game. Cooke later applied to the AL for a Toronto expansion team in 1960, but found the expansion terms too onerous, and considered purchasing the Cincinnati Reds for Toronto in 1961 after their owner died.