It was announced this week that the Athletics, at last, agreed with a political group to build a new stadium, which has been sitting in the old stadium for many years.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same situation, with the same mentality, has been going on for over 100 years. The Athletics, a vagabond franchise that originated in Philadelphia before moving to Kansas City, Mo., and then Oakland, Calif., did not seem satisfied with where he was.
From a blue-collar stadium in Philadelphia to a hastily rebuilt mini-park in Kansas City to Brutalist concrete building in Oakland, they will be looking for the best. They scouted Denver, they scouted San Jose and Fremont, they had a few sites lined up in Oakland. But now, in an agreement announced by the governor of Nevada who are still facing several hurdles, want to build a stadium on the Las Vegas Strip that could be ready for the 2027 season.
It’s an event that inspires hope in Vegas, life in Oakland and no doubt some eye-turners everywhere. The A’s, with nine World Series titles and 17 100-loss seasons, appear to be on the verge of moving on more often.
“It’s possible that the relocation vote will happen in early June,” Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters Thursday when asked about the Las Vegas deal. But according to how the system should be, and how much it has already been changed In the past few weeks, he mentioned the location of the previous stadium, not the current plan for the team to build on the site of the Tropicana Las Vegas.
The team’s history of failure is discovered. The Athletics are tied with the Braves (Boston, Milwaukee and Atlanta) and Orioles (Milwaukee, St. Louis and Baltimore) for the most trips. But surprisingly, the A’s have had just four home runs in their 123 games — the fewest of all but a handful of teams.
Unfortunately for the A’s, none of their four parks can be confused with classics like Boston’s Fenway Park or modern wonders like the Rangers’ Globe Life Field.
A look at those four circles clearly shows why the A’s have been on a roll for so long.
Columbia Park
1901-1908 | World Series Titles: 0
Top Player: Eddie Plank, P, 51 wins instead
Built for a new team in a new league where no one knew what to expect, Columbia Park was immediately too small. It had a capacity of 9,500, although many people watched from a nearby rooftop. The team played, but even at its peak it drew less than 14,000 fans.
The stadium’s most famous moment, ironically, came in the 1905 World Series when Connie Mack’s Athletics and John McGraw’s New York Giants conspired to avoid playing a minority team.
Like was reported in the New York Times, Game 3 is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 11, but with a group of about 4,000 people, and to pay for the groups that depend on ticket sales, the managers agreed to estimate that the bright light at the beginning of the day made the field. not played. Sammy Strang, the Giants player, helped sell the trick, and The Times said, “The most famous pantomime was that of Strang, who jumped down from the stand, and, looking up at the sky, stretched out his hands and beckoned to the stars. The moisture to fall.”
The gambit worked. The teams played Game 3 the next day, with 10,991 in attendance nearly triple Wednesday’s gate attendance.
The Athletics played three forgettable years in Columbia and ten years after they left, the stadium was torn down and turned into a building.
Shibe Park
1909-1954 | World Series titles: 5
Top Player: Lefty Grove, P, 68.4 WAR
Hoping to capitalize on his team’s popularity, Charles Shibe, the main owner of the Athletics, built the first steel and concrete baseball stadium, beating Fenway Park by three seasons and Wrigley Field by five. The decision paid off, and The Times reported that the first game in Philadelphia in 1909 was attended by 30,162 fans. The Athletics led the AL in attendance for three consecutive years.
Shibe Park has been home to great teams, with the Athletics winning nine pennants and five World Series titles there, but ownership is often mentioned. state anti-blue laws due to limiting their ability to play home games on Sundays, putting the team at risk for other teams. The team, looking to raise money, also distracted fans by blocking the ceiling sculptures near the 34-foot wall it was named after. Connie Mack’s Spite Fence.
As Shibe Park began to decline, the Athletics never recovered from the sales of the 1930s. They finished in last place or second to last 14 times in 20 seasons from 1935 to 1954, drawing just 304,666 fans in their final season in Philadelphia – fewer than they had in a season. all but one of their seasons at little Columbia Park. .
A fire broke out in the stadium in 1971, destroying much of it. “A fire destroyed Connie Mack’s stadium the other day,” Arthur Daley he wrote in The Times, meaning Shibe under the name he used in his later years. “If nothing else, it brought back good memories.”
The square’s famous corner building, which housed Mack’s original office, was demolished in 1976. The church built a sanctuary on the site.
Municipal Stadium
1955-1967 | World Series Titles: 0
Top Player: Ed Charles, third base, 14.4 WAR
George E. Muehlebach deserves credit for predicting that the stadium he built in 1923 for his minor league team, the Kansas City Blues, would one day be the home of a major league team. In fact, it was the whole time: the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues were the tenants of the stadium. But with his eyes set on the National or American League teams, Muehlebach built the stadium with big footprints so he could expand. Unfortunately, when Arnold Johnson bought the Athletics and moved the team to Kansas City in 1955, it was found that the bleachers, along with almost the rest of the stadium, needed to be rebuilt.
The increased costs caused the stadium to be smaller than expected, and the park was not ready for the season.
AA finished sixth in their first season in Missouri and never advanced again, ending their 13-year run with an 829-1,224 record and never making a postseason appearance. Attendance at Municipal Stadium was in the bottom three of the AL in all but one of the team’s games.
It wasn’t all bad. Charlie O. Finley bought the team in 1960 and, in between various performances, he led the amazing talent, Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter started their careers in Kansas City.
The stadium was demolished in 1976. On the old site there is a garden with signs, surrounded by a building.
Oakland Coliseum
1968-Present | World Series titles: 4
Top Player: Rickey Henderson, left, 72.7 WAR
Built as a multi-purpose stadium in the 1960s, the Oakland Coliseum was troubled from the start. Its circular design gave the Coliseum one of the worst places in baseball. It was dug into a mountain, placing its playground 21 meters below sea level. Cats cats, leaking toilets and I can who lives in one of the television stations does not come until later.
The AA’s had a lot of power in the park, winning three straight World Series titles in the 1970s and going to the Series three straight years from 1988 to 1990 (one win), but attendance varied, falling to 306,763 (3,787). per game) in 1979 and peaked at 2.9 million (35,805 per game) in 1990.
The unconventional changes to the stadium following the NFL’s Oakland Raiders guidelines made the boring stadium boring and ugly. The maintenance of the park became impossible, and the team’s various owners complained about the lack of facilities.
Aggressive trading of promising players over the past few years, combined with the team’s desire to be in Las Vegas, led to it a big change for the fan. The team averaged and only 9,849 fans per game last season, and the situation is even worse this year, at 8,695. It doesn’t help that the team, at 10-42 through Thursday, was on pace for the worst record in modern baseball.
With the Raiders already leaving for Las Vegas, the Golden State Warriors moving to San Francisco and the A’s lease expiring in the 2024 season, the Coliseum complex will soon be empty of permanent residents. It would be possible that it would be given the same status as the three AA parks, of which no one has left a plaque to commemorate them.