Kansas City Athletics

The Athletics played 13 seasons in Kansas City and never had a winning one: the best was 1958, at 73-81, and the record overall is 829-1,224. For much of that time the club traded its better players to New York — Roger Maris among them, two years before he hit 61 home runs as a Yankee — closely enough that the arrangement was written about at the time as a farm system by other means.

Nineteen fifty-six brought 52 wins and 102 losses. Charlie Finley bought the club in 1960, tried to move it almost immediately, and spent seven years feuding with the city before taking it to Oakland in 1968. Home for all thirteen seasons was Municipal Stadium.

Eight Hall of Famers played here, most of them passing through: Satchel Paige, Enos Slaughter, Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson, who was a rookie in the final Kansas City season. Whitey Herzog, Dick Williams and Tony La Russa all played here and are in the Hall for managing.