On the move … again and again
Connie Mack, front row center, at the team’s sale 70 years ago today
Just 43 days after throwing the final pitch of what turns out to be their final season, Marion Fricano and the rest of the Athletics look westward 70 years ago today as the American League owners formally vote 6-2 to allow the team to leave Philadelphia after 54 seasons.
The Athletics’ destination: Kansas City, where the team spends the next 13 seasons before moving – again – to Oakland in 1968.
Arnold Johnson
The vote in 1954 comes 11 days after the American League rejects a bid from a local group to buy the franchise and keep the A’s in Philadelphia.
That move allows Chicago real estate mogul Arnold Johnson to buy the franchise from Connie Mack and his family for $3.5 million — $41 million in today’s money — with the intention of moving the team to Kansas City.
Historians note the Philadelphia A's win their last game 8-6 at Yankee Stadium, where New York clearly does not care about the outcome as center fielder Mickey Mantle starts at shortstop, catcher Yogi Berra at third base and power-hitting first baseman Moose Skowron at second.
None of the three makes another start at those positions during their long, distinguished – and, for Mantle and Berra, Hall of Fame – careers.
As for the Athletics, none of the players from that 1954 team ever reaches the Hall of Fame.
But we digress.
The vote to allow the A’s to move to Kansas City is not a smooth one as Johnson needs three-quarters of the American League teams – in this case, six of eight – to greenlight the relocation.
Voting yes for the move are the New York Yankees, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox and, of course, Arnold Johnson with the Athletics.
The Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators and, initially, Detroit Tigers want the A’s to stay in Philadelphia.
Eventually, Tigers owner Spike Briggs switches his vote, giving the A’s the sixth and final vote they need to load up the trucks and move to Kansas City.
Charlie Finley
Johnson owns the team until he unexpectedly passes away in March 1960 at the age of 54, leaving Charlie Finley to purchase the team.
Coincidentally, just six years earlier, Finley – the Chicago-based insurance magnate – is among those trying to buy the Athletics from the Mack family.
“My intentions are to keep the Athletics permanently in Kansas City, and build a winning ballclub,” Finley says in December 1960 after purchasing 52 percent of the team from Johnson’s estate for $1.975 million.
“I have no intention of moving the franchise.”
Well, that pledge lasts only until 1968, when Finley uproots the team and moves to Oakland.
In between, Finley is quite busy as he spends the better part of his brief stay in Kansas City reportedly looking to move the team first to Dallas and Louisville, and then in 1964 to Oakland.
He is rejected each time by a 9-1 vote with Finley casting the only vote in favor of the move.
Finley finally gets his way after the 1967 season.
“This is a horse-shit town,” Finley says after just two seasons in Kansas City. “No one will ever do any good here.”
John Fisher
Kansas City receives an expansion team in 1969 with the Royals, who in 2024 are valued at $1.23 billion – slightly better, according to Forbes Magazine, than the Oakland A’s at $1.2 billion.
The irony now, of course, is that the A’s – purchased for $180 million in 2005 by billionaire John Fisher, the heir to the Gap fortune – is planning to move the team to Las Vegas after spending the next three seasons playing in West Sacramento while the good folks in Nevada build him a new ballpark on the Vegas Strip.
“I have not considered selling the team,” Fisher tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2023. “It’s shocking really how the time flies, but since 2005 our goal has been to find a new home and build a new home for our team.”
Oh, that sounds hauntingly familiar.