The Main Event
- September 19, 1954 – The Athletics played their final game in Philadelphia, losing 4-2 to the New York Yankees at Connie Mack Stadium before a sparse crowd of 1,715; Gil McDougald‘s eighth-inning three-run homer decided it. The A’s finished 51-103 and relocated to Kansas City for 1955.
On September 19, 1954, the Philadelphia Athletics played their final home game in Philadelphia, a 4-2 loss to the New York Yankees at Connie Mack Stadium. Only 1,715 fans came out, a crowd so thin it stood as the smallest in the majors that day. Gil McDougald settled things with an eighth inning three run homer, and the Athletics, a charter member of the American League since 1901, slipped out of their home city without a ceremony or a farewell speech. Weeks later the club was sold and relocated to Kansas City for 1955. Philadelphia went without an American League team for the first time in more than half a century.
A dynasty built by Connie Mack
The Athletics were, for stretches of their Philadelphia years, one of the great teams in the sport. Connie Mack managed the club from its founding through 1950, and his first great roster, built around the famed “$100,000 infield” of Stuffy McInnis, Eddie Collins, Frank Baker and Jack Barry, won six American League pennants between 1902 and 1914 and captured World Series titles in 1910, 1911 and 1913. Those Athletics teams topped 100 wins twice and were widely regarded as the best baseball had to offer.
That first dynasty ended abruptly. After the Athletics were swept in the 1914 World Series by the “Miracle” Boston Braves, Mack dismantled the roster rather than pay salaries he feared would spiral under pressure from the rival Federal League. The result was a competitive freefall. Philadelphia finished last every year from 1915 through 1921, bottoming out at 36-117 in 1916, still one of the worst seasons in major league history.
Mack rebuilt again in the late 1920s around Al Simmons, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove, and this second Athletics dynasty won pennants in 1929, 1930 and 1931 with World Series titles in the first two of those years. Then the Depression hit attendance and Mack’s finances hard. In December 1933, a stretch of trades baseball writers later called “Black Tuesday,” he sold Grove, Cochrane and other stars to Boston and Detroit for roughly a quarter million dollars to cover bank debt. The Athletics spent most of the next two decades in the second division, with only one winning record between 1934 and 1946.
By the early 1950s the Athletics were an old team in every sense. Connie Mack, well into his eighties and showing clear signs of decline, still refused to give up control as both manager and president until 1950. Behind the scenes, his sons feuded over the team’s ownership. Roy and Earle Mack, favored by their father from his first marriage, fought a prolonged battle for control against their half brother Connie Mack Jr. and his allies, and in 1950 Roy and Earle borrowed $1.75 million to buy out the other shareholders. The debt payments that followed, roughly $200,000 a year, left almost nothing for player development at a time when the Phillies’ 1950 “Whiz Kids” were capturing the city’s attention and its ticket buyers. Athletics attendance fell from close to a million fans in the late 1940s to just over 300,000 in 1954, well short of what the club needed to break even.
Why the Athletics left Philadelphia
The end came through a messy sale rather than a single clean decision. A Philadelphia ownership group led by local businessman John Crisconi offered four million dollars to buy the Athletics and keep them in the city, and Roy Mack signed an agreement with that group in October 1954. Days later, Chicago businessman Arnold Johnson offered Roy a better personal deal, cash for his shares plus jobs for himself and his son, and Roy reversed course. When American League owners met to vote on the local sale, Roy voted against the very deal he had signed, killing it in a tie vote. The league approved Johnson’s purchase and the move to Kansas City on November 8, 1954. Connie Mack, by then out of day to day control, wrote an open letter to Philadelphia fans blaming league pressure and accusing his own son of betrayal. The Athletics did not even own their ballpark anymore by that point. Financial strain had forced Roy and Earle to sell Connie Mack Stadium to the Phillies the year before, turning the team that once ruled the building into a tenant in its own former home.
Philadelphia’s reaction was closer to resignation than outrage. A “Save the A’s” campaign that ran through the 1954 season failed to move fans who had already drifted away, and the sparse crowd for that September 19 finale reflected a fan base that had emotionally checked out well before the paperwork was finalized. There was no dramatic sendoff, just a losing team playing out a losing season in front of an audience that had stopped expecting anything else.
Kansas City, then Oakland, next Las Vegas
Kansas City did not solve the Athletics’ problems. Owner Arnold Johnson ran the club with close, widely criticized ties to the New York Yankees before his death in 1960, and new owner Charlie Finley promised to keep the team in Kansas City permanently, then began shopping it almost immediately. Attendance sank under Finley, and in October 1967, in the middle of that year’s World Series, he announced a move to Oakland for 1968, despite Kansas City voters having just approved funding for a new stadium.
Oakland brought the Athletics four World Series titles, including three straight from 1972 to 1974, but the relationship soured over decades of stadium neglect at the Oakland Coliseum. A proposed waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal collapsed under a projected 15 year timeline and legal challenges from a neighboring business, and owner John Fisher instead pursued Nevada, where the state approved 380 million dollars in public subsidies toward a new retractable roof stadium on the Las Vegas Strip. The Athletics left Oakland after the 2024 season, are playing home games in Sacramento in the meantime, and are targeting Las Vegas for 2028, the fourth home city for a franchise that has now left three of them.
Philadelphia Baseball Events for September 19
- September 19, 1959 – Richie Ashburn collected his 2,212th hit with the Phillies, passing Ed Delahanty‘s 1901 franchise record.
- September 19, 1960 – The Phillies traded Don Landrum was to St. Louis in exchange for Bob Sadowski.
- September 19, 1964 – The Dodgers beat the Phillies in 16 innings when Willie Davis singled, stole second, advanced on a wild pitch, and then stole home for the winning run.
- September 19, 1983 – Joe Morgan hit two home runs against the Chicago Cubs on his 40th birthday, the second one securing a 7-6 win.
- September 19, 2025 – Nick Castellanos hit his 250th career home run as the Phillies beat the Diamondbacks 8-2.
Philadelphia Baseball Birthdays for September 19
- Henry Lampe (born 1872) – Pitcher who appeared in the majors for the Boston Beaneaters (1894) and the Phillies (1895), closing out his brief big-league career in Philadelphia before continuing in the minors through 1899.
- Stuffy McInnis (born 1890) – First baseman remembered mainly for the Philadelphia Athletics’ famed “$100,000 infield” (1909-1917) and three World Series titles; he closed out his career in 1927 as the Phillies’ player-manager, his only season leading the club.
- Cap Clark (born 1906) – Catcher who played his only major league season for the Phillies in 1938, starting 29 of 52 games and batting .257.
- Hersh Martin (born 1909) – Outfielder who played for the Phillies from 1937-1940 and earned his lone All-Star selection in 1938, later becoming a longtime MLB scout.
- Nick Etten (born 1913) – First baseman with two stints in Philadelphia (1941-1942 and a 1947 finale) bracketing an All-Star run with the Yankees, where he led the AL in home runs (1944) and RBI (1945).
- Bob McNamara (born 1916) – Infielder whose entire nine-game major league career came with the 1939 Philadelphia Athletics, batting .222 with 3 RBI.
- Chris Short (born 1937) – Left-handed pitcher who spent his whole 1959-1972 career with the Phillies, ranking fourth in franchise wins (132) and third in strikeouts (1,585), with two All-Star selections.
- Joe Morgan (born 1943) – Hall of Fame second baseman who joined the Phillies for 1983 as part of the veteran “Wheeze Kids” and helped lead the club to the World Series.
- Seth Johnson (born 1998) – Right-handed pitcher acquired by the Phillies from Baltimore in July 2024 who debuted with the club that September and has pitched in relief for them since.
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