Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium and Its Menagerie

This former Negro League ballpark became a short-term home for the migrant Athletics—and their pets.

by Rich Watson

After coming from Philadelphia, the Athletics lived in Kansas City only twelve years. This period isn’t discussed often—these A’s never made the playoffs—but it laid the groundwork for the A’s dynasty of the early seventies in Oakland. It was also the cause of further major league expansion in the late sixties.

The A’s played in Municipal Stadium, a place with an extensive history. One of the game’s most colorful and controversial owners began his tenure here. Among the impressions he left included turning the ballpark into a kind of zoo.

Connie Mack Stadium and Its Remarkable Architecture

Baseball in Philadelphia used to be played in a virtual palace.

by Rich Watson 

During the early twentieth century, the Philadelphia Athletics were the dominant team in the brand new American League. This meant they were popular—to the point where fans had to be turned away from tiny Columbia Park.

Team president Ben Shibe eyed a square block of land on Lehigh Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets. It was part of an underdeveloped neighborhood, with trolley cars and railroad stations, but also containing bluffs and gullies where live animals roamed. A smallpox hospital was there too, but the city was about to shut it down.

Shibe quietly bought up the land beginning in 1907, with the intent to build a new, bigger ballpark on the site. Two years later, what he and the A’s got was nothing less than a cathedral to baseball.