Oakland and Kansas City are about 1,800 miles apart, and the cultural divide could also be even greater. But baseball fans in each regions have one thing in common: They loved the A's after which lost them.
The A's began in Philadelphia in 1901 and are headed to Sacramento next season, which is able to likely be a pit stop on the strategy to a everlasting home in Las Vegas. But regardless of where the A's go, the connection between Oakland and Kansas City will all the time be unique.
The Royals, the team Kansas City got when the A's moved from Missouri in 1968, will make their final appearance in Oakland with a three-game series that begins Tuesday night.
The A's were already making their annual visit to Kauffman Stadium, the ballpark that local officials were forced to approve within the mid-Sixties to forestall the franchise from moving to Oakland. The attempt failed.
If any fan base understands what the diehard Oakland A's undergo, it's the one in Kansas City.
“The older guys are dying out, but there are still people here who are bitter that the A's left Kansas City and who wish they were still here,” said Jeff Logan, president of the Kansas City Baseball Historical Society.
The A's only played 13 seasons in Kansas City – in comparison with 57 in Oakland – but that's where the core of the Oakland teams that won three straight World Series titles within the Nineteen Seventies began, including Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi and Campy Campaneris. Even Charlie-O the Mule and Harvey the Rabbit made their major league debuts as Kansas City A's.
For former Kansas City A's fans like Logan, what's happening in Oakland is a case of history repeating itself. Only the ownership structure has modified.
“It's almost identical,” Logan said. “And it's all about greed.”
The A's played in Kansas City from 1955 to 1967. The relationship probably would have lasted for much longer had a brand new ownership group not emerged that alienated the fan base because it overtly looked for an additional place to call home.
Oakland might never have owned the A's had then-owner Arnold Johnson not suffered a fatal stroke in March 1960. Eight months later, Charlie O. Finley became majority owner after 4 previous failed attempts to purchase a baseball team (including losing to Johnson for the A's in 1954).
Almost immediately, Finley announced that the team would must relocate.
His complaints include low attendance and fan support, in addition to an outdated stadium.
The A's ended their season in Kansas City near the underside of the league in attendance (much like Oakland currently), but Finley's salaries were low and the team was barely competitive. In fact, the A's never won in 13 seasons in Missouri.
In a twist that fans of the Oakland A's can relate to, when the team was price following, Kansas City fans got here. In their debut season in Kansas City, they drew greater than 1,000,000 fans and finished second within the AL in attendance, behind only the New York Yankees.
Finley was consistently arguing with city officials and the American League and almost immediately planned to relocate the team.
He checked out Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, San Diego, Milwaukee, Denver, Atlanta, New Orleans and Seattle. At one point he even floated the thought of constructing a short lived baseball stadium on a pasture in rural Missouri. Finley agreed to let the A's play on the Kentucky Fairgrounds in Louisville, but that too was blocked by the league.
Finley's persistence — and the specter of lawsuits — finally convinced the league to grant Finley his wish. The A's last season in Kansas City was 1967.
The departure angered fans and native politicians.
Missouri Rep. Stuart Symington called Oakland “the luckiest city since Hiroshima” to have Finley as its owner. (Finley also had a colourful and contentious relationship with Oakland, threatening to maneuver the franchise several times — two deals to sell the team to Denver oil magnate Marvin Davis within the late Nineteen Seventies fell through — before finally selling the team to the Haas family before the 1981 season.)
Unlike Oakland, nevertheless, Kansas City didn’t must wait long for an additional team. After threatening legal motion, the Royals debuted in 1969, two years before the planned arrival of their expansion team.
Time will tell if Oakland will probably be rebooted by the MLB.
“Tell the A's faithful that their glory will come in 5-7 years when everything completely implodes and they want to leave Las Vegas,” Logan said. “Because that's what they're doing.”
Kansas City might also soon be searching for a brand new MLB team.
Royals owners are threatening to maneuver the franchise to Nashville, Tennessee, across the state line to Kansas or elsewhere in the event that they don't get tax support for a proposal to interchange 51-year-old Kauffman Stadium. Local residents recently overwhelmingly opposed a sales tax measure that may have helped fund a downtown baseball stadium.
Logan says if the Royals leave, the A's will all the time have a house within the Midwest.
“We would definitely welcome them back,” Logan said with fun. “We would even give them a free stadium that's already been built.”
image credit : www.mercurynews.com