It’s a peculiar, uncomfortable, and sad story—mostly sad. Surprisingly, it also demonstrates that in the United States, the world’s economic and sporting powerhouse, there is no guaranteed or permanent success. The Athletics are one of baseball’s oldest franchises, founders of the MLB, and one of the most successful with nine World Series rings.
However, the Athletics have moved cities (not to say fled) three times, with a fourth confirmed in 2025 and a fifth scheduled for 2028. “Third-worldism in sports,” we would fervently point out in our Latin American countries.
The Athletics team was founded in Philadelphia in 1901 as the Philadelphia Athletics, one of the founding members of the American League. In 1955, the franchise moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where they were known as the Kansas City Athletics before relocating to Oakland in 1968. In 2025, they will move to Sacramento as a temporary home until their new stadium in Las Vegas is ready in 2028, an infrastructure for which not even a foundation stone has been laid. An American engineer tells me that under normal circumstances, this new stadium won’t be ready in 2028 because the city permits haven’t even been granted yet. We’ll see.
Throughout their history, the Athletics have won a total of nine World Series, fifteen American League pennants, and seventeen Division titles. In other words, the Athletics are among the five most successful franchises in MLB, but it seems their sporting success hasn’t been related to economics, at least not in all their decades. It’s a disastrous example that winning on the diamond doesn’t necessarily mean generating profits.
In 1901, the president of the newly created American League, Ban Johnson, envisioned the Athletics competing with the Philadelphia Phillies, a National League team. The new franchise took its name from the Athletic Baseball Club of Philadelphia, a team that existed between 1860 and 1876, and whose players were popularly known as the Athletics. So, the Athletics themselves have a name adopted from a pre-existing franchise. Could this be the source of their curse?
Under the management of Connie Mack, the team became a powerhouse, winning several World Series titles, including a three-peat between 1910 and 1913. Despite success on the field, financial problems and competition from the Phillies led to the team’s relocation. Couldn’t Philadelphia be home to two franchises like New York and Los Angeles?
In 1954, the Mack family sold the franchise to real estate developer Arnold Johnson, who moved it to Kansas City, Missouri, where they became known as the Kansas City Athletics.
Although the city embraced the team, the lack of success on the field and financial difficulties persisted. Despite the presence of stars like Roger Maris and Clete Boyer, the Athletics struggled to remain competitive, leading to the decision to move again, this time to Oakland in 1968.
A curious fact is that the Athletics were born in the East (Philadelphia), moved to the Center of the country (Kansas City), and ended up in the West (Oakland) in California on the Pacific coast. So we can say they fled the Atlantic, right?
Once in California, the Athletics made their debut in the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, April 17, 1968, with a 4-1 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at the Coliseum, in front of an opening night crowd of 50,164. That day, with a sold-out crowd, all financial problems seemed resolved.
Under owner Charlie Finley and with a team brimming with talent, including legendary players like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers, the Athletics enjoyed a golden era. They won three consecutive World Series from 1972 to 1974, leaving an indelible mark on baseball history.
But in the 1990s, the curse returned to knock on the doors of the Coliseum offices. The team wasn’t generating profits, and so at the end of that decade, the Athletics management, led by Billy Beane, trying to compete on a low budget, reinvented the game with Sabermetrics.
At first, the Athletics were a sensation, setting a milestone, but their advanced statistics model was copied—even improved—by other franchises that had money to spare.
The Sabermetrics invented and/or used by the Athletics was originally a financial tool to avoid wasting dollars and instead reinvest them with extreme care in players undervalued by the market. They were more concerned with surviving than winning. In this sense, Sabermetrics hasn’t changed and is primarily an economic model of austerity (and owners and investors love it, why not?).
That’s why I always tell them: Sabermetrics is more of an economic model than a model of sporting success that wins championships. Sabermetrics doesn’t win World Series rings. So how do you win World Series? That’s a topic for another article, but in short, it would be the combination of many factors: talent, teamwork, a good manager, acquiring key players in the postseason, and an ambitious front office that’s connected to its fans. Easy? Absolutely not.
The Future: Sacramento and Las Vegas
The good news—if there is any—is that the Athletics’ story is far from over. By 2025, it has already been officially announced that the team will move again, this time to Sacramento. The Californian city has shown interest in hosting the team, offering a new opportunity for the franchise.
Now the controversy is about the stadium, which is a Triple-A stadium, also shared with the San Francisco Giants affiliate. Will the two teams play in the same stadium? Will the Sacramento River Cats have to leave their home stadium? The truth is, the Athletics are having pathetic and inopportune years.
Although it seems this lease in Sacramento would only be temporary, there are rumors that California authorities would try to prevent the Athletics from leaving the state, among other obvious reasons, due to the taxes and profits generated by baseball. But as we’ve already mentioned, the Athletics are expected to permanently settle in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2028, a move that has already been authorized by the Commissioner and other MLB owners.
The move to Las Vegas coincides with the construction of a super-new stadium, an ambitious project that promises to usher the team into a new international era, becoming the finest baseball stadium ever built and the epicenter of the city of vice and sin: Las Vegas.
Hopefully, the Athletics’ future will be as glorious as their past, but that they will once and for all put down roots in a secure and permanent location.
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