The Kansas City Athletics

The Athletics spent thirteen seasons in Kansas City before moving to Oakland—a colorful history despite one of the worst records in baseball history. Even so, many of the players who were part of the world championship teams in Oakland in the 1970s began their careers in Kansas City.
This work presents the relatively short history of the Kansas City franchise from 1954, when Arnold Johnson purchased the Philadelphia Athletics and moved the team to Kansas City because of the financial benefits the city provided, to 1967, when Charles Finley moved the team to Oakland (after unsuccessful attempts to move it to Dallas, Atlanta, Louisville, Milwaukee and Seattle). In the 1950s, the team was called “a Yankee farm team” because of the numerous trades with the Yankees that favored the latter. The author re-evaluates these trades and concludes that they were not as one-sided as previously thought and really did benefit the team. The author also carefully considers Charles Finley’s intentions to keep the team in Kansas City and his reasons for having to move them to Oakland.

John E. Peterson is senior pastor at Bensonvale Covenant Church in Omaha. His articles have appeared in the Covenant Companion, Passenger Train Journal, and the North Western Lines.

John E. Peterson
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 352
Bibliographic Info: photos, tables, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2003
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1610-3
eISBN: 978-0-7864-8143-9
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1

1. Big League Dreams      3

2. A Clever Businessman      8

3. Quest for the A’s      12

4. Last-Minute Maneuvering      19

5. Going to K.C.      23

6. How to Buy a Ballclub for Peanuts      29

7. Arnold Johnson’s Ultimate Plan      35

8. The 90–Day Wonder      42

9. 1955: Big League Baseball Comes to K.C.      48

10. 1956: Listless and Bad      63

11. 1957: Big Trades Bring New Faces      71

12. 1958: Cerv’s Amazing Season      81

13. 1959: Great Expectations      90

14. 1960: A Very Difficult Year      100

15. Who Will Buy the Team?      109

16. Charles O. Finley—The “O” Stands for Owner      118

17. Trying to Outdo Veeck      123

18. 1961: Gordon, Lane and Charlie O.      133

19. Courting Dallas      148

20. 1962: Let Bygones Be Bygones      156

21. 1963: Everything’s Green and Gold      168

22. Happiness Is Being Somewhere Else      176

23. 1964: Rocky, Jim and a Pennant Porch      193

24. 1965: Charlie O.—The Man or the Mule?      208

25. 1966: The Dark Ages      224

26. 1967: “A Menace to Baseball”      235

27. “Luckiest City Since Hiroshima”      250

28. A Bad Marriage      263

29. Just a Yankees Farm Team      277

30. No More Trades with the Yankees      289

31. Crop Failure      298

32. Growing a Championship Team      305

Notes      317

Bibliography      333

Index      337