The Kansas City AAAs

Philadelphia's American League franchise entered its 50th season -- and its first of the post-Connie Mack era -- in the spring of 1951. New manager Jimmy Dykes led the A's to an 18-win improvement over the '50 squad. The team improved again in 1952, finishing in fourth place with a 79-75 record.

The Athletics would not finish above .500 or higher than sixth place in the AL until they got to Oakland 16 years later. Today we'll revisit the cross-country journey of this beleaguered franchise in Part II -- The Kansas City AAAs.

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Throughout the 1950s, several franchises moved out of cities with a more popular team in town: the Browns conceded St. Louis to the Cardinals, the Braves conceded Boston to the Red Sox. Philadelphia had one franchise with five World Series victories and eight league crowns, and one franchise with a single pennant and no championships. One team had ended a franchise-worst streak of 13 sub-.500 seasons with three straight winning campaigns, while the other sputtered through a 30-year stretch in which they posted a winning record once.
 

The Athletics and Phillies, playing home games at what would soon be called Connie Mack Stadium, finished the 1949 season with identical 81-73 records and near-identical attendance figures. The NL's Phillies had been the lesser franchise on the field yet crucially maintained strong support and turned the corner at the right time.
 

The Phillies rode a talented group of young stars all the way to the World Series in 1950. Four Phils finished in the top seven in NL MVP voting that year. Relief ace Jim Konstanty won the award after earning 16 wins and a league-high 22 saves (which wasn't an official stat until 1969.)

In 1952, both Philly franchises had a starting pitcher lead their league in WAR (another stat not considered at the time). Hall of Famer Robin Roberts went 28-7 with a 2.59 ERA for his 4th-place Phillies. Over in the AL, Bobby Shantz notched a 24-7 record with a 2.48 ERA for his 4th-place A's. Roberts finished a close second to the Cubs' Hank Sauer for NL honors; Shantz became the Athletics' fifth and final AL MVP in Philadelphia.

Shantz was also the smallest player ever to win MVP honors. At just 5 '6" and 140 lb, he was about 25 pounds lighter than current Astros superstar Jose Altuve. Johnny Evers earned NL MVP honors in 1914 despite weighing a ghastly 125 lb - though he was three inches taller than Shantz.

1952 proved to be a "dead cat bounce" season for Shantz and the Athletics, as both the team and its diminutive ace regressed in 1953. All-Star Gus Zernial smacked a career-high 42 home runs, finishing one behind AL MVP Al Rosen for the league lead. However Zernial had little protection in the lineup and the pitching staff was mediocre, despite boasting the previous year's MVP and Rookie of the Year. 

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Connie Mack was in his nineties and the franchise was severely in debt. Attendance at the stadium that bore Mack's name was sparse.

While many locals called for the Mack family to sell the team, the city organized a “Save the A’s” campaign in the summer of 1954 when it became obvious the Athletics were at risk of being sold and moved, putting the onus on the fans to support the club and keep it in Philly.

Sound familiar? The Athletics were soon sold to Arnold Johnson, who promptly relocated the club to Kansas City.

Prior to purchasing the club for $3.5 million, Johnson had close ties to the New York Yankees as the owner of both Yankee Stadium and Blues/Municipal Stadium in Kansas City - home of the Yanks' top minor league team. Yankees brass strongly supported Johnson's bid to buy the A's and reportedly undermined a last-ditch effort to keep the team in Philadelphia. Johnson sold both ballparks to avoid an *ahem* ... conflict of interest.

Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau was hired as manager for the '55 season and skippered the squad to modest improvement. Zernial rebounded from an injury-plagued 1954 season to lead the team with 30 home runs and Vic Power earned the first of his six All-Star selections with a stellar sophomore season, setting what would be career highs in batting average(.319), home runs(19), and slugging %(.505)

Pitching was still a problem, as the A's ranked dead last in team ERA for the second year in a row. Young hurlers Art Ditmar, Arnie Portocarrero, and Art Ceccarelli (triple "A"s) were clearly overmatched. [On a less relevant but more personal note, Ceccarelli is one of a handful of pro athletes from my hometown and the only major league baseball player who attended my high school.]

 

Spare a thought for poor Alex Kellner, who won 20 games and earned All-Star honors as a rookie with the 1949 Athletics, finished second to Browns slugger Roy Sievers in ROY voting, and followed that up with a 20 loss season in 1950.

Kellner was not valuable enough to be acquired by a top-tier club for a pennant run, nor was he lousy enough for the perpetually penny-pinching A's to cut loose in favor of younger, cheaper pitchers. He was just cromulent enough to stick around for nearly a decade until mercifully being released in 1958. Naturally, his final two seasons - with the Reds in '58 and the Cardinals in 1959 - yielded his best single-season ERA and WHIP totals, as he was used primarily in relief.

The 1958 Athletics finished 19 games back of the Yankees for the AL crown with a not so bad 73-81 record. It was the first time the team had won 70+ games in Kansas City. Yankee castoff Bob Cerv had a career year in '58, finishing 4th in AL MVP voting with 38 home runs, 104 RBI, and a .305 average. The pitching staff - anchored by former Yankee Ralph Terry and former Yankee Bob Grim - still ranked in the bottom tier, but with a much-improved team ERA of 4.15 compared to the atrocious 5.35 ERA three years earlier.

Kansas City's lineup was paper thin aside from Cerv and Power. Infielder Hector Lopez trailed only Cerv with 73 RBI and ranked third among A's in home runs and slugging %. Finishing ahead of him was a promising young right fielder. You might have heard of him...

Roger Maris made his first All-Star Game in his first (and only) full season with the Athletics - who had lost the services of Lopez and Ralph Terry when the Yankees came calling. Maris and starting infielders Kent Hadley and Joe DeMaestri would soon follow them to the Bronx.

Let's play devil's advocate for a moment. The Yankees got little out of Hadley and DeMaestri. Roger Maris hit 16 home runs and batted .273 in '59. No one could have predicted that he'd win the AL MVP award in each of the next two seasons while outslugging Mickey frickin' Mantle with a combined 100 home runs from '60-61.

In return, Kansas City received pitcher Don Larsen, who had a down year in '59 but was still an effective starter, Norm Siebern, a left handed hitting corner outfielder who batted .271 with 11 home runs for the Yanks and - like Maris - was entering his prime, Marv Throneberry, who was a marginal upgrade over Hadley at first base, and Hank Bauer... who was 37 and no longer an everyday starter. 

 

The A's weren't even the first team to trade the future home run king; they'd acquired him from Cleveland in a deal that featured Vic Power.

Counterpoint: it was the Yankees. Again. During Arnold Johnson's six seasons as A's owner the team swapped players with the Yanks an astounding 14 times. Kansas City did come out on top in a couple deals but on balance these trades decimated the Athletics and prolonged the Yankee dynasty.

Johnson passed away before the 1960 season began, but the two teams kept trading. That season the A's lost 96 games and finished in last place with a roster comprised mainly of Yankee scraps and future Hall of Fame managers.

Johnson's estate sold the franchise to Charlie O. Finley, who had not yet secured controlling interest in June 1961, when the A's shipped their All-Star pitcher Bud Daley to -- you guessed it -- the Yankees.
 

After their 16th trade in seven seasons, Finley vowed that the Athletics would no longer be New York's farm team. He did not promise that the Athletics would no longer be a farm team. 

Two expansion franchises joined the AL in 1961, and the 154-game schedule swelled to the 162-game season still in place today. K.C. finished tied with the new Washington Senators for last in the A.L. with 100 losses - nine games behind the other expansion squad, the Los Angeles Angels of Los Angeles.

Siebern and 29 year-old rookie pitcher Jim Archer were the only players on the 1961 A's above replacement level. Both expansion squads had at least one pitcher who would have been the A's ace. Both expansion squads had five players with double-digit home runs; the Angels had three players with a higher OPS than Kansas City's best player.

Hank Bauer was named player-manager during the '61 season and retired as a player at season's end. In his first (and only) full season as Kansas City's skipper, the team improved to 72-90, finishing 9th in the AL. Finley fired Bauer after the 1962 season; he would lead the Baltimore Orioles to three straight 94+ win seasons and a World Series title within four years.

Kansas City and Baltimore swapped first basemen after the 1963 season, with Siebern rejoining Bauer for the '64 and '65 campaigns. The financially struggling A's received $25,000 cash and Jim Gentile, who was named to every AL All-Star team from 1960-62. Unlike Siebern, Gentile wouldn't be the lone bright spot in a lackluster lineup. Finley also acquired slugging outfielder Rocky Colavito from the Tigers.

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After finishing tied for last in the AL with 95 home runs in 1963, the A's nearly doubled that total in 1964 with their two new stars leading the way. The team actually got worse as a shortened rotation taxed the previously passable pitching staff. Another 100-loss season and last place finish ensued. But this was actually fortuitous for Finley and the Athletics, as major league baseball would introduce the Amateur Draft in 1965. 

The first pick in the first-ever MLB draft belonged to the Kansas City Athletics, who selected Arizona State outfielder Rick Monday.

Baseball fans in Kansas City had hoped that having an owner who wasn't colluding with another club would turn the team's fortunes around, yet Charlie Finley fared no better than a saboteur. In fact Finley feuded with city officials and had attempted to move the team out of town as early as 1961. In 1964 he signed an agreement to move the A's to Louisville, Kentucky - but was overruled by the other team owners.

Attendance at Municipal Stadium had surpassed 1 million in the team's first two seasons. By 1965 it was halved. Colavito had been shipped to Cleveland after just one year in Kelly green. Once again the franchise's fortunes looked bleak - though brighter days were finally on the horizon. Promising young players were making their way through the Athletics organization, including Bert Campaneris and John "Blue Moon" Odom in 1964, Jim "Catfish" Hunter in 1965, and Monday and Sal Bando in 1966.

During the 1965 season, Kansas City's woeful pitching staff got a boost from two future Hall of Famers. The first was Hunter, who pitched 133 innings as a 19 year-old rookie. The second HOFer started K.C.'s second-to-last home game, pitching three scoreless innings against the Red Sox.

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At age 59. What's more unbelievable: a 59 year old pitcher, a 59 year old pitcher with a 19 year old teammate, or a 59 year old pitcher and his 19 year old teammate both ending up in Cooperstown?!?

"Satchel Paige Day" was a gimmick, but a successful one. The day prior, Hunter had shut out the Red Sox in front of 2,304 fans. Two days earlier, the A's beat Washington 8-7 before an intimate gathering of just 690 spectators (John Fisher hasn't sunk his A's that low -- yet.) The team's final home game was attended by 2,874 patrons. Satchel's start attracted 9,289 paying customers - one of the largest crowds of the 1965 season.

In 1966 the Athletics fully embraced a youth movement, as manager Al Dark handed the ball to a starter under the age of 25 in over 70% of the team's games. The best of the bunch appeared to be Jim Nash, who finished second in Rookie of the Year voting after a 12-1 season in which he posted a tidy 2.06 ERA.

The light-hitting lineup was young, too, with only one starter (third baseman Ed Charles) older than 26. Utility man Roger Repoz was the only Athletic to reach double figures in home runs, with 11 in 319 at-bats. The A's wouldn't stay powerless for long, however. 

 

In the league's second-ever Amateur Draft, Kansas City possessed the second overall pick. After the Mets selected catcher Steve Chilcott first overall, the A's selected another outfielder from Arizona State.

We'll check in with this young man...

...and this young man...

...and this young man.. in the next installment of Saturdays With the A's. I hope you'll join me for Team of the '70s coming soon.

Thanks for reading!



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