The Long, Restless Journey of the Athletics (part 1)

As we go to press in late February 2026, the most well-traveled franchise in American League history is in a strange spot. The team is playing Triple-A ball in Sacramento, waiting on a $2 billion stadium being carved out of a Las Vegas casino lot, and now fighting with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over the right to use its own name. The feds say “Athletics” is too generic a term to trademark. Never mind that the name has been in continuous use in Major League Baseball since 1901. Never mind 125 years of history. The trademark office says no, at least for now.

It’s a fitting absurdity for a franchise that’s never been able to sit still.

Let’s take that journey stop by stop.

Philadelphia, 1901–1954: The Mack Era

Owner: Ben Shibe (1901–1922); Connie Mack (1922–1954)

Managers: Connie Mack (1901–1950); Jimmy Dykes (1951–53); Eddie Joost (1954)

Home Parks: Columbia Park (1901–1908); Shibe Park / Connie Mack Stadium (1909–1954)

 It all started with a sporting goods manufacturer and a man in a suit. Ben Shibe, who had money, and Connie Mack, who had baseball sense. Together they launched the Philadelphia Athletics as one of eight charter members of the new American League in 1901.

Mack was something you don’t see anymore. He managed in a business suit, sat in the dugout waving a scorecard, and ran the team his way for 50 years. He won nine American League pennants and five World Series titles. The dynasty years came in two waves: 1910–1914 (titles in 1910, 1911, and 1913) and 1929–1931 (back-to-back titles in 1929 and 1930). Both times, he watched it fall apart. Both times, he sold off his best players when the money ran out.

That was the pattern. Build it up. Break it down. Rebuild. Sell the stars again.

The names on those early rosters read like a Hall of Fame ballot. Rube Waddell (LHP, PHI), Eddie Plank (LHP, PHI), Chief Bender (RHP, PHI), Nap Lajoie (2B, PHI), Eddie Collins (2B, PHI), Frank “Home Run” Baker (3B, PHI), Mickey Cochrane (C, PHI), Lefty Grove (LHP, PHI), Jimmie Foxx (1B, PHI), and Al Simmons (OF, PHI). Six A’s players won the AL Most Valuable Player award while in Philadelphia. Foxx won the Triple Crown in 1933. Lajoie had done it in 1901.

The two players who define the second dynasty are worth a closer look.

Jimmie Foxx (1B, PHI) was simply one of the most feared hitters in the game. In 1932 he put up a 10.4 WAR season, hitting .364/.469/.749 with 58 home runs and 169 RBI, posting an OPS+ of 207. The following year he hit .356/.449/.703 with 48 home runs and 163 RBI (OPS+ 201), winning the Triple Crown. His 11 seasons in Philadelphia produced a .339/.440/.640 slash line, 302 home runs, 1,075 RBI, and a career WAR of 61.2 as an Athletic alone. His overall career WAR of 92.1 with 534 home runs puts him in the conversation with the greatest right-handed hitters the game has ever seen.

Source: Baseball Reference. WAR = Wins Above Replacement. OPS+ = Adjusted OPS (100 = league average).

 Lefty Grove (LHP, PHI) was the best pitcher of his era. From 1929 to 1933 he was practically untouchable. His 1930 and 1931 seasons each produced a 10.4 WAR. In 1931 he went 31-4 with a 2.06 ERA and an ERA+ of 217, winning the AL MVP. His 1930 was just as good: 28-5, 2.54 ERA, ERA+ of 185. Grove’s nine seasons in Philadelphia gave the franchise a 195-79 record, a 2.88 ERA, and 1,523 strikeouts. His career WAR of 113.2 ranks among the all-time leaders for pitchers.

Source: Baseball Reference. ERA+ = Adjusted ERA (100 = league average). WHIP = Walks + Hits per Inning Pitched.

 The park was real too. Columbia Park, a wooden 9,500-seat ballpark in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Brewerytown, served the A’s from 1901 to 1908. When attendance regularly blew past capacity, Shibe built something much grander. Shibe Park opened April 12, 1909 as baseball’s first steel-and-concrete stadium, seating 23,000. It was considered a marvel. The French Renaissance facade, the ornate tower at the main entrance, the double-decked grandstands. It was the best ballpark in America when it opened.

The Great Depression hit Mack’s Philadelphia teams hard. Attendance cratered. Mack sold Foxx, Grove, Cochrane, Simmons, and others to stay afloat. The team sank to the bottom of the league and stayed there. By the late 1940s, Mack was well into his 80s and visibly declining. He would fall asleep during games, call for players who’d been retired for decades, and lose track of the score. Nobody could fire him because he owned the team. When the board finally pushed him out after the 1950 season, he was 87 years old. Jimmy Dykes took over.

Mack’s sons, Roy and Earle, ran things after that. They did not run them well. They took out a costly mortgage on the ballpark and leased away the concessions, giving up the team’s two best income sources at the same time. By 1953, they renamed Shibe Park “Connie Mack Stadium” hoping nostalgia would boost ticket sales. It didn’t. In 1954, the A’s drew just 305,000 fans. The team finished last in the major leagues, 60 games out of first. Their final game at Shibe Park drew 1,715 people.

Chicago businessman Arnold Johnson offered $3.375 million. The Mack family, heavily in debt, had no real choice but to take it. American League owners pushed the sale through. Philadelphia, it was decided, could no longer support two teams. The city that had loved the Athletics for 54 years watched them go.

Kansas City, 1955–1967: The Feeder System Years

Owner: Arnold Johnson (1955–1960); Charlie Finley (1960–1967)

Home Park: Municipal Stadium (1955–1967)

Kansas City got its wish on April 12, 1955. Former President Harry Truman threw out the first pitch. A crowd of 200,000 lined the streets for a parade. Opening day attendance was over 30,000. The city loved having a big-league team, and by season’s end the A’s drew nearly 1.4 million fans, second in the AL only to the Yankees.

It was the high point of the Kansas City years.

Arnold Johnson had complicated business relationships with the New York Yankees before buying the A’s. He’d previously owned Yankee Stadium and their top minor league park in Kansas City. The league forced him to divest those holdings before approving the A’s purchase. It didn’t seem to change his instincts. During his ownership, Kansas City became, in effect, a feeder system for New York. Promising young players like Roger Maris (OF, KC), Ralph Terry (RHP, KC), Clete Boyer (3B, KC), and Bobby Shantz (RHP, KC) were developed in Kansas City and shipped to the Bronx for veterans past their prime and cash. The A’s never finished higher than sixth in the American League during their time in Kansas City. Their overall record across 13 seasons was 829-1,224 (.404). Last or next-to-last in 10 of those 13 years.

Johnson died of a cerebral hemorrhage in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 3, 1960, at age 53. On December 19, 1960, Chicago insurance magnate Charlie Finley purchased a controlling interest in the team from Johnson’s estate.

If Arnold Johnson was dull, Charlie Finley was the opposite. Loud, combative, promotional, and frequently infuriating. He installed a mechanical rabbit named “Harvey” that rose from the ground behind home plate to deliver fresh baseballs to umpires. A compressed-air device called “Little Blowhard” swept home plate clean between pitches. He kept a small petting zoo of goats and sheep beyond the right-field fence, along with the team’s mascot, a live mule named “Charlie O.” He also hosted the Beatles at Municipal Stadium on September 17, 1964, paying them a then-record $150,000 to play on what had been a scheduled day off.

Finley changed the uniform colors to green and gold. He tried to shorten the right-field fence to mimic Yankee Stadium’s famous short porch. The league said no. He rebuilt it to the legal minimum of 325 feet and labeled the section “One-Half Pennant Porch.” Finley was never short on nerve.

What he wasn’t long on was patience for Kansas City. Almost from the moment he bought the team, he was shopping it elsewhere: Dallas, Louisville, Oakland. He burned a copy of his Municipal Stadium lease on a bus as a PR stunt, then later admitted the actual lease was still fully in force. The city eventually approved a bond for a new baseball-only stadium in 1967. Finley didn’t want it. In September 1967 he told Kansas City he wouldn’t be renewing his lease. On October 12, he announced the move to Oakland.

But Finley left behind something important. His minor league operation, built by farm director Hank Peters, was among the best in baseball. Bert Campaneris (SS, KC), Catfish Hunter (RHP, KC), Rollie Fingers (RHP, KC), Blue Moon Odom (RHP, KC), Sal Bando (3B, KC), Joe Rudi (OF, KC), and a teenage Reggie Jackson (OF, KC) were all being developed during those Kansas City years. The dynasty was quietly being built while the franchise lost 100 games. Municipal Stadium was demolished in 1976. Kansas City received an expansion team, the Royals, who began play in 1969.