Getting ready to move

After 54 seasons in Philadelphia, the Athletics’ stay in the city all but ends 70 years ago today as Major League Baseball’s owners reject a bid from a local group to purchase the foundering franchise from the family of longtime manager and owner Connie Mack.

The A’s – by then under control of Mack’s sons, Earle and Roy – will be sold within a week to Chicago realtor Arnold Johnson.

Johnson, quietly but firmly supported by the New York Yankees, pays Mack and his family $3.5 million for a team he moves to Kansas City in time for the 1955 season.

A dozen years after moving to Kansas City, the A’s prepare to relocate in 1968 to Oakland, where they play through this season and now are moving to Las Vegas after a pending three-year stay in Sacramento.

As for the value of the franchise, according to the good folks from Forbes Magazine, the team that Johnson buys from the Mack family for $3.5 million in 1954 — and now owned by John Fisher — today is worth $1.2 billion.