From Philadelphia to Las Vegas: The Complete History of the Most-Moved Franchise in MLB
Connie Mack's dynasty, Kansas City, Oakland's dynasty, and now Las Vegas. No franchise in baseball has moved more often.
The Athletics have now played in three cities over the course of their history, which will become four when the Las Vegas era begins in 2028. No franchise in major league baseball has relocated as many times. The Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants made their famous simultaneous move to Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1958, but those were single relocations. The Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals in 2005. The Athletics moved from Philadelphia in 1954, from Kansas City in 1968, and from Oakland in 2025. They are, by any count, the most-traveled team in the sport's history.
Understanding that history is necessary for understanding what the Las Vegas chapter represents. This is not a franchise experiencing its first disruption. It is a franchise whose entire identity has been defined by disruption.
The Philadelphia Dynasty
The Athletics were a founding member of the American League when it achieved major league status in 1901, and their first home was Philadelphia. The team played at Columbia Park, then at Shibe Park, which opened in 1909 and was renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1953.
Connie Mack managed the Athletics from 1901 to 1950, a tenure of fifty years that has never been approached by any manager in any professional sport. Under Mack, the Athletics built two separate dynasties separated by a decade and a half. The first ran from 1910 to 1914, producing four American League pennants and three World Series titles, with a roster that included Hall of Famers Eddie Collins, Home Run Baker, Chief Bender, and Eddie Plank. The second ran from 1929 to 1931, producing three straight American League pennants and two World Series titles, anchored by Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove.
Both dynasties ended the same way: Mack sold off his best players for financial reasons after the championships. The pattern became a defining characteristic of the franchise's history. The Athletics would build something extraordinary, then dismantle it.
The Kansas City Chapter
By 1954, Mack had retired and his heirs had sold the franchise to Arnold Johnson, who immediately announced the team's relocation to Kansas City, Missouri. The move was announced in October 1954 and approved by the American League before the month was out. Philadelphia, which had supported the Athletics for 54 years, had one week of effective notice before the franchise was gone.
The Kansas City chapter lasted thirteen years, from 1955 to 1967. The team played at Municipal Stadium and was, for most of its Kansas City tenure, bad. There were no championship years, no significant playoff runs. The franchise was also widely perceived as serving as a farm system for the New York Yankees -- Johnson had business ties to the Yankees, and Kansas City traded a remarkable number of useful players to New York in arrangements that were seen as deeply unfavorable to the Athletics.
Charlie Finley purchased the team in 1960 and began making changes immediately. He fired managers, feuded with the city, proposed various marketing stunts, and made clear that he viewed Kansas City as a temporary home. He attempted to relocate the team to Louisville and then to Dallas before settling on Oakland.
The American League approved the move to Oakland in October 1967, and the Kansas City chapter ended. The city was, predictably, furious. The fury was sufficient to secure an expansion team, the Kansas City Royals, who began play in 1969 and have been in Kansas City ever since.
The Oakland Dynasty
The Oakland years began in 1968 and produced the franchise's greatest sustained success. Charlie Finley, whatever his personal flaws and business controversies, assembled a team of extraordinary talent. By 1971, the A's had a roster that included Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Ken Holtzman, Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Gene Tenace, and a young Reggie Jackson.
From 1972 to 1974, the Athletics won three consecutive World Series championships. No National League or American League team has won three straight championships since. The feat required extraordinary talent, effective management, and a degree of internal dysfunction that made the dynasty remarkable in its way: this was a team of players who publicly despised each other and their owner and still won.
Finley began dismantling the team through another version of the familiar pattern. He tried to sell key players mid-season in 1976; Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the sales. The players left as free agents after the 1976 season, when free agency became available for the first time. The dynasty was over.
The franchise changed hands multiple times in subsequent decades. Walter Haas purchased the team in 1980 and ran it as a genuine community asset, building strong Oakland connections. The Bash Brothers era -- Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire -- produced another dynasty in the late 1980s, with World Series titles in 1989 and a three-year run of American League pennants from 1988 to 1990.
Haas died in 1995, and the franchise was sold to Steve Schott and Ken Hofmann, who began the cost-cutting approach that would come to define the franchise's later years. The Moneyball era under Billy Beane, beginning in the late 1990s, produced remarkable competitive results on a limited budget but no championships. The team reached the playoffs four consecutive years from 2000 to 2003.
The Fisher era began in 2005. John Fisher, son of Gap founders Donald and Doris Fisher, became the principal owner. The long decline -- in investment, in competitiveness, in the relationship with Oakland -- extended through his ownership until the final game in September 2024.
What the Pattern Means
Looking across the full history, the Athletics have a consistent pattern of building dynasties through talent acquisition, then dismantling those dynasties for financial or ownership reasons, then attempting to rebuild in changed circumstances. The pattern held in Philadelphia. It held in Oakland. It will presumably be tested again in Las Vegas.
The franchise has also demonstrated a pattern of leaving cities under circumstances that those cities experienced as betrayal. Philadelphia had fifty-four years of history with the team. Kansas City had thirteen years. Oakland had fifty-seven years. In each case, the departure was announced quickly, approved by a league that prioritized franchise mobility over community stability, and experienced by the losing city as a form of loss that was more than financial.
The Las Vegas story is, in one sense, the same story for the fourth time. A city invests public money and civic identity in a franchise that arrives from somewhere else. That investment produces years of games, community events, memories, and relationships. Eventually, the economics of the franchise, the quality of the facility, the willingness of ownership to invest -- something shifts, and the franchise begins looking elsewhere.
Whether Las Vegas will be different requires answering whether the structural factors that led to three relocations have been resolved. The new stadium is purpose-built for baseball. The public funding is committed. The market -- 2.5 million people, 40 million annual visitors -- is large.
But the franchise's owner is John Fisher, who was not willing to spend adequately to support the Oakland chapter. The economics of MLB in mid-market cities remain challenging. The Athletics will carry into Las Vegas the same management approach, the same ownership values, and the same cost structure that produced the end of the Oakland chapter.
History does not repeat exactly, but it has a way of rhyming. The Athletics' history rhymes often and loudly.
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