The Royals will be celebrating their 50th anniversary this season, a half-century of thrills for Kansas City baseball fans. It wasn’t always a given that Kansas City would still have Major League Baseball at this point. Kansas City didn’t become a Major League city until 1955 when the Athletics moved here from Philadelphia. That era was rocked with unstable ownership, poor management, and terrible baseball, and the team left in 1967 for greener pastures in Oakland.
But as part of the agreement to let the A’s leave, the American League promised Kansas City another franchise. In December of 1967, they officially awarded two expansion teams for Kansas City and Seattle (to become the Pilots, who spent just one year in the Pacific Northwest before moving to Milwaukee and becoming the Brewers).