Popular Defunct Teams

[Bmac]

6 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

I remember seeing quite a few Kansas City A's caps the last time I was at a Sporting KC game, but I'm sure that was just because it was a good looking navy cap with KC on them, rather than any sort of nostalgia.

If it was navy it's most likely a KC Monarchs cap. (But not necessarily.)

[Red Wolf]

24 minutes ago, Bmac said:

If it was navy it's most likely a KC Monarchs cap. (But not necessarily.)

Well, you made me doubt myself so I looked it up and you’re totally right, it was the Monarchs. 

[ElwoodCuse]

The Whalers had cool jerseys and Brass Bonanza. The team sucked, their arena sucked, and Hartford is too small for the NHL to ever go back there. Get over it.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

On 8/5/2018 at 11:41 AM, SFGiants58 said:

What I find kind of surprising is that the Philadelphia A’s don’t seem to be all that popular in vintage merchandise and public memory. Given their successes, there has to be some market for it, right? My guess is that the A’s 1970s dynasty and the Phillies getting their crap together in the late-1940s (as Connie Mack went super senile) hurt the Philly A’s long-term.

 

On 8/5/2018 at 6:57 PM, NicDB said:

Before the Dodgers, the Phily A's were THE example of a team moving in spite of having a large local fanbase, so this is rather surprising to me too.  Maybe because they still had the Phillies, who won a pennant early in the decade?

 

On 8/5/2018 at 9:17 PM, BringBackTheVet said:

Towards the end, the[y] did not have a fanbase.  THere's a few really good stories about the end of the A's in Philly.  

 

The only public monument commemorating the Philadelphia A's is the Connie Mack statue that formerly stood at Shibe Park / Connie Mack Stadium and now stands across the street from the Phillies' current park.  On this statue is a plaque listing the members of A's Wall of Fame. 

 

 

 

(Logo-lovers' note: the "A's" logo on the plaque is an Oakland mark, not a Philadelphia mark.)

 

 

There is also an historical marker at the site of Shibe Park.

 

 

There was once a Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society; but it is now defunct.  Still going strong, however, is a store called Shibe Sports, which specialises in old-time Philly sports, including the A's.  It is located about a block away from the Mitchell & Ness store.  I picked up a nice Philadelphia A's cap there.

 

 

 

 

 

(I suggested to the guy in the store that they should sell Connie Mack-style straw hats.)

 

 

 

 

[MilSox]

Never knew about this. Pretty cool that Al Simmons, a guy from my hometown, was the inductee for the year I was born.

[MilSox]

On 8/7/2018 at 2:49 AM, Gothamite said:

 

That’s a great story, but it’s not entirely true.  The lineage was broken twice - once when the New York Bulldogs folded and a new franchise was issued as the Dallas Texans, the second when the Texans folded a year later. 

 

Buying some one of the equipment from a defunct franchise does not mean the first one continues on. 

 

If Cleveland fans get to play pretend, I will too in hope we may one day see a Dayton Triangles throwback.

[JayMac]

53 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

 

The only public monument commemorating the Philadelphia A's is the Connie Mack statue that formerly stood at Shibe Park / Connie Mack Stadium and now stands across the street from the Phillies' current park.  On this statue is a plaque listing the members of A's Wall of Fame. 

 

 

 

(Logo-lovers' note: the "A's" logo on the plaque is an Oakland mark, not a Philadelphia mark.)

 

 

There is also an historical marker at the site of Shibe Park.

 

 

There was once a Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society; but it is now defunct.  Still going strong, however, is a store called Shibe Sports, which specialises in old-time Philly sports, including the A's.  It is located about a block away from the Mitchell & Ness store.  I picked up a nice Philadelphia A's cap there.

 

 

 

 

 

(I suggested to the guy in the store that they should sell Connie Mack-style straw hats.)

 

 

 

 

My grandfather was a Philadelphia Athletics fan (Jimmie Foxx was his cousin once removed). I remember hearing stories about the teams of the 1930s. They weren't too good but he liked them anyway. He was born in 1924 so he didn't remember the good Athletics teams in that decade. I would like to think that I would have been a Philadelphia Athletics fan and not a Phillies fan.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

19 minutes ago, jmac11281 said:

My grandfather was a Philadelphia Athletics fan (Jimmie Foxx was his cousin once removed). I remember hearing stories about the teams of the 1930s. They weren't too good but he liked them anyway. He was born in 1924 so he didn't remember the good Athletics teams in that decade. I would like to think that I would have been a Philadelphia Athletics fan and not a Phillies fan.

 

Could be!  I often think that I would have grown up a Giant fan if the team had still been here during my lifetime.  I'd love to find a 1920s Giant cap, similar to the one shown here on Babe Ruth, when he suited up for the Giants in a 1923 exhibition against the Baltimore Orioles.

 

 

Anyway, the Oakland A's have done a some very good throwbacks to Philadelphia uniforms, both at home and on the road.

 

  

 

 

 

Considering this alongside the A's many throwbacks to Kansas City uniforms and earlier Oakland uniforms, that team might be the champions of throwback uniforms.

 

By the way, I found a great Phillies cap in the 1925-1933 design for about $15 at a Forman Mills in Northeast Philly.  I don't have a picture of myself in it; but it is this design:

 

 

Maybe you can pick one up.

 

[Kaz]

On 8/5/2018 at 3:47 PM, ChicagoOakland said:

Sadly, my hometown California Golden Seals don't have that much retro appeal. I still own a few pieces of Seals gear though, I can't help but be attracted to the A's-style kelly green and gold.

I absolutely love their logo, and have a Golden Seals hat in teal.

 

I used to have another one that was yellow with a kelly green bill that I found for like $5 at a Marshalls.  I ended up getting rid of it when I pared down my hat collection a year or so ago though.

 

22 hours ago, McCarthy said:

 

I always forget the Braves were in Boston that late. Also they were the Boston Bees for 4 years in the 30's and switched back to the Braves. That's a weird little sports identity crisis blip we should talk about more often. If I was a Braves fan I'd 100% have some Boston Bees gear in the closet. 

I'd buy their '38 cap if they actually sold them

[mcj882000]

12 hours ago, ElwoodCuse said:

The Whalers had cool jerseys and Brass Bonanza. The team sucked, their arena sucked, and Hartford is too small for the NHL to ever go back there. Get over it.

I mean, of course Hartford's not getting an NHL team any time soon, the city's biggest arena is still the one that chased the Whalers out in the first place, except now on top of everything else it's 20 years older. But for me at least it's hard to fully "get over it" when the Whalers arguably still have as big a fanbase, if not a bigger one, than the Hurricanes do.

[The_Admiral]

Hartford's size is largely irrelevant. The Whalers would have done just fine with a salary cap and New England-wide RSN money. And WTIC would have had more than 2,000 listeners for games.

[Cosmic]

Hartford is a bigger TV market than precious Las Vegas, so I don't see why they couldn't make it work. With at least an equivalent arena, does anyone think they'd be worse off than they are in Raleigh?

[The_Admiral]

They'd be considerably better off. More TV money, lower travel expenses, probably would have capitalized on the Bruins' downturn. And at the risk of getting too speculative, there's a pretty good shot that Karmanos eventually sells the team to some Connecticut-based hedgies and screws back off to Farmington Hills for good. Whether that ends up being better than Karmanos or the predatory auto loan man, we can't say for sure, but it's hard to imagine much worse.

[Cosmic]

Seems like as good of a place as any to note that Alexander Semin and his $2.33M buyout payment will be the fifth highest paid forward on the Hurricanes this year.

[IceCap]

18 hours ago, ElwoodCuse said:

The Whalers had cool jerseys and Brass Bonanza. The team sucked, their arena sucked, and Hartford is too small for the NHL to ever go back there. Get over it.

 

53 minutes ago, Cosmic said:

Hartford is a bigger TV market than precious Las Vegas, so I don't see why they couldn't make it work. With at least an equivalent arena, does anyone think they'd be worse off than they are in Raleigh?

lol

Carrying water for the NHL is dangerous work.

[KDubK414]

13 hours ago, NicDB said:

Never knew about this. Pretty cool that Al Simmons, a guy from my hometown, was the inductee for the year I was born.

Same here NicDB! Born in January. The baseball field behind Pulaski High School is named for him too. 

[leopard88]

On 8/8/2018 at 12:08 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

 

What I find interesting is that two of these guys (Jimmie Foxx and Frank Baker) are from tiny towns on the Eastern Shore of Maryland*, which wasn't exactly densely populated in the early 20th Century.  You can also add Lefty Grove, who was from a small town in Western Maryland.

 

* -- My kids say they're tired of me reminding them every time we drive through Trappe, Maryland on the way to the beach.

[IceCap]

On 8/8/2018 at 1:43 AM, ElwoodCuse said:

The Whalers had cool jerseys and Brass Bonanza. The team sucked, their arena sucked, and Hartford is too small for the NHL to ever go back there. Get over it.

Just like the NHL was never going back to Winnipeg, right?  

[ElwoodCuse]

9 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

Just like the NHL was never going back to Winnipeg, right?  

 

No, because Winnipeg built a new arena and sold a buttload of season tickets. Hartford cannot build a stadium for a AA baseball team without it being a disaster, and the dump the Whalers left is still there.

[Brian in Boston]

15 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

Just like the NHL was never going back to Winnipeg, right?  

 

Wake me when a Hartford NHL bid is being fronted by a local owner worth a half-billion dollars who can convince a media and real estate mogul worth $25 billion to partner with him in the venture. 

Mark Chipman's efforts on behalf of his hometown of Winnipeg are legendary. None had a bigger impact on returning a National Hockey League franchise to the city than convincing David Thomson - one of the world's wealthiest people - to join him in the effort. Chipman's passion and Thomson's financial wherewithal are the reasons that the True North Centre (now Bell MTS Place) was built and that the NHL returned to Winnipeg. Period.

When Hartford has a potential NHL ownership group that is worth a combined $25.5 billion AND is willing to pony-up just under 70% of a new arena's construction costs, then we can start talking about the realistic prospects of the Whalers returning to the National Hockey League.