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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.
List of contents
Table of ContentsPreface 1. Big League Dreams
2. A Clever Businessman
3. Quest for the A's
4. Last-Minute Maneuvering
5. Going to K.C.
6. How to Buy a Ballclub for Peanuts
7. Arnold Johnson's Ultimate Plan
8. The 90-Day Wonder
9. 1955: Big League Baseball Comes to K.C.
10. 1956: Listless and Bad
11. 1957: Big Trades Bring New Faces
12. 1958: Cerv's Amazing Season
13. 1959: Great Expectations
14. 1960: A Very Difficult Year
15. Who Will Buy the Team?
16. Charles O. Finley-The "O" Stands for Owner
17. Trying to Outdo Veeck
18. 1961: Gordon, Lane and Charlie O.
19. Courting Dallas
20. 1962: Let Bygones Be Bygones
21. 1963: Everything's Green and Gold
22. Happiness Is Being Somewhere Else
23. 1964: Rocky, Jim and a Pennant Porch
24. 1965: Charlie O.-The Man or the Mule?
25. 1966: The Dark Ages
26. 1967: "A Menace to Baseball"
27. "Luckiest City Since Hiroshima"
28. A Bad Marriage
29. Just a Yankees Farm Team
30. No More Trades with the Yankees
31. Crop Failure
32. Growing a Championship Team
Notes Bibliography Index
About the author
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.
