The Athletics

Previously known as Philadelphia Athletics (1901-1954), Kansas City Athletics (1955-1967) and Oakland Athletics (1968-2024) Franchise Record: (1901-2023) 9,260-9,766-87 (.487) Post Season Record: (1905-2020) 85-82 (.509) World Series Titles: 9 (1910, 1911, 1913, 1929, 1930, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1989) American League Pennants: 15 (1902, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1988, 1989, 1990) Postseasons: 29 (1905, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1914, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1981, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020) Franchise Players: Home Run Baker, Sal Bando, Charles Bender, Max Bishop, Bert Campaneris, Eric Chavez, Mickey Cochrane, Eddie Collins, Harry Davis, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove, Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Bob Johnson, Mark McGwire, Dan Murphy, Eddie Plank, Eddie Rommel, Al Simmons, Rube Waddell Retired Numbers: 9 - Reggie Jackson; 24 - Rickey Henderson; 27 - Catfish Hunter; 34 Rollie Fingers and Dave Stewart; 42 - Jackie Robinson (retired throughout Major League Baseball); 43 - Dennis Eckersley Ballparks: Sutter Health Park, Sacramento, CA

Team History

The Athletics are the current incarnation of one of the original franchises in the American League that started in 1900 as the Philadelphia Athletics before the AL had attained major league status. After winning numerous titles in its first four decades, the franchise fell on hard times during the Great depression and never really recovered. They lost the battle with the Philadelphia Phillies for supremacy in the City of Brotherly Love and in 1954 relocated to Kansas City, MO. They never had a winning season during their stint as the Kansas City Athletics and their final few years were dominated by stories of where mercurial owner Charles O. Finley would move the team next, after antagonizing just about everyone in Missouri and Kansas in less than a decade. Their next destination was Oakland, CA, where they settled down as the Oakland Athletics in 1968 and stayed until 2024, when the impossibility of finding a new ballpark in the Bay Area led them to announce a move to Las Vegas, NV. However, since there was no ballpark ready to host them in Sin City at the time, they made a temporary move to Sacramento, CA in 2025, where they were simply known by the team name, with no city name associated - the only one of the 30 major league franchises in such a situation.

The Athletics explored various relocation options before settling on Sacramento, including using minor league ballparks in Salt Lake City, UT or in Las Vegas while new digs were being prepared for them. Staying in Oakland was not an option as their lease on the Oakland Coliseum expired with the 2024 season, and owner John Fisher had burned so many bridges in the Bay Area that extending it even for a couple of years was an impossibility. He therefore settled on using the ballpark of the AAA Sacramento River Cats, Sutter Health Park, which was given a temporary makeover to be of acceptable major league standard. The move was planned to be for three seasons, with the move to Vegas expected to take place in time for the start of the 2028 season. The refusal to call themselves the Sacramento Athletics was a sign that the move to California's state capital was only a marriage of convenience. During spring training in 2025, the Athletics made a number of moves to indicate that the move to Nevada was going to happen: they added a patch to their uniforms with the words "Las Vegas" (in fact a paid advertisement by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority), announced that they would play a couple of exhibition games in the city's AAA ballpark, and stated that plans for their new custom-built ballpark would be revealed shortly, with ground-breaking to take place around June.

Awards

• American League MVP:
  • Eddie Collins - 1914
  • Mickey Cochrane - 1928
  • Lefty Grove - 1931
  • Jimmie Foxx - 1932 & 1933
  • Bobby Shantz - 1952
  • Vida Blue - 1971
  • Reggie Jackson - 1973
  • Jose Canseco - 1988
  • Rickey Henderson - 1990
  • Dennis Eckersley - 1992
  • Jason Giambi - 2000
  • Miguel Tejada - 2002

• American League Cy Young Award:
  • Vida Blue - 1971
  • Catfish Hunter - 1974
  • Bob Welch - 1990
  • Dennis Eckersley - 1992
  • Barry Zito - 2002

• American League Rookie of the Year Award:
  • Harry Byrd - 1952
  • Jose Canseco - 1986
  • Mark McGwire - 1987
  • Walt Weiss - 1988
  • Ben Grieve - 1998
  • Bobby Crosby - 2004
  • Huston Street - 2005
  • Andrew Bailey - 2009

• American League Manager of the Year Award:
  • Billy Martin - 1981 (Major League)
  • Tony LaRussa - 1988 & 1992
  • Bob Melvin - 2012 & 2018

Famous Feats

• Perfect game:
  • Catfish Hunter: May 8, 1968
  • Dallas Braden: May 9, 2010

• No-hitter:
  • Weldon Henley: July 22, 1905
  • Chief Bender: May 12, 1910
  • Joe Bush: August 26, 1916
  • Dick Fowler: September 9, 1945
  • Bill McCahan: September 3, 1947
  • Catfish Hunter: May 8, 1968
  • Vida Blue: September 21, 1970
  • Vida Blue, Glenn Abbott, Paul Lindblad and Rollie Fingers: September 28, 1975
  • Mike Warren: September 29, 1983
  • Dave Stewart: June 29, 1990
  • Dallas Braden: May 9, 2010
  • Sean Manaea: April 21, 2018
  • Mike Fiers: May 7, 2019

• Unassisted Triple Play:
  • Randy Velarde: May 29, 2000

• Four home runs in one game:
  • none

• Two home runs in one inning:
  • Mark McGwire: September 22, 1996
  • Brent Rooker: May 4, 2024

• Hitting for the Cycle:
  • Harry Davis: July 10, 1901 (first in American League history)
  • Nap Lajoie: July 30, 1901
  • Danny Murphy: August 25, 1910
  • Frank Baker: July 3, 1911
  • Mickey Cochrane: July 22, 1932
  • Mickey Cochrane: August 2, 1933
  • Pinky Higgins: August 6, 1933
  • Jimmie Foxx: August 14, 1933
  • Doc Cramer: June 10, 1934
  • Sam Chapman: May 5, 1939
  • Elmer Valo: August 2, 1950
  • Tony Phillips: May 16, 1986
  • Mike Blowers: May 18, 1998
  • Eric Chavez: June 21, 2000
  • Miguel Tejada: September 29, 2001
  • Eric Byrnes: June 29, 2003
  • Mark Ellis: June 4, 2007

Further Reading

• Mark Feinsand: "Owners' vote approves A's relocation to Las Vegas for 2028", mlb.com, November 16, 2023. [1]
• Nancy Finley: Finley Ball: How two outsiders turned the Oakland A's into a dynasty and changed the game forever, Regnery History, Washington, DC, 2016. ISBN 978-1-62157-477-4
• Martín Gallegos: "A’s purchase land in Las Vegas for new ballpark", mlb.com, April 20, 2023. [2]
• Martín Gallegos: "'This is real': A's unveil Las Vegas jersey patch for 2025 season", mlb.com, March 7, 2025. [3]
• Chip Greene, ed.: Mustaches and Mayhem, Charlie O's Three-Time Champions: The Oakland Athletics 1972-74, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2015. ISBN 978-1-943816-07-1
• David M. Jordan: The A's: A Baseball History, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7864-7781-4
• Liz Roscher: "Oakland A's agree to purchase land for $1.5B Las Vegas ballpark", Yahoo! Sports, April 20, 2023. [4]* Dale Tafoya: Billy Ball: Billy Martin and the Resurrection of the Oakland A's, Lyons Press, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2020. ISBN 978-1493043620

Sources:

• Peter Filichia: Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebrations of All 273 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, March 1993
• John Thorn: Total Baseball, Total Sports Publishing, 1989, 1995.
• http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/51706640-79/overstock-coliseum-oakland-naming.html.csp