Table of Contents
Stadium Guide by Baseball Tripper
History
Despite being in the west division of the American League, the Oakland Athletics were actually one of the founding teams of the MLB. Although as you may imagine they were not founded in California back in 1901, but rather in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania known as the Philadelphia Athletics. They are the most successful team out of the now AL West Division, and a lot of their success comes from the early years of the organization. For example they won three World Series Championships within a span of four years, but this was back in 1910, 1911, and 1913. They were successful again in the late 1920s winning back-to-back World Series Championships in 1929 and 1930. Even before moving to Oakland, they moved to Kansas City for a total of 13 years and were the Kansas City Athletics. They finally settled in Oakland California in 1968 where the team has been there ever since. They are also possibly the only team to ever win three consecutive World Series titles when they did so in 1972 to 1974. Even though they have so many World Series titles, they still managed to have an overall win-loss record below 500.
As you may be able to imagine the Athletics could not have been such a successful team without the help of many star players. This includes Hall of Famers like Jimmy Fox, Lefty Grove and manager Connie Mack. In the 70s they had even more Hall of Famers such as Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers, Vida Blue, and Catfish Hunter. They went on to win another World Series with Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley. They were also host to Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco when they were setting records left and right for home runs. Even though the Athletics are not a popular team today by any means, they have a long history of success in the league.