The Oakland Athletics are a professional baseball team established in 1901 and based in Oakland, California since 1968. They are a member of the Western Division of Major League Baseball's American League and from 1968 to the present, they have played in McAfee Coliseum. The Athletics are nicknamed "the A's" and are also known as "the White Elephants" or simply "the Elephants". The team’s mascot is a white elephant, Stomper. They quickly established themselves as one of the dominant teams in the new league, winning the A.L. pennant six times and winning the World Series in 1910, 1911 and 1913. The Athletics finished second in 1927 and 1928, and wining pennants in 1929, 1930 and 1931, and the World Series in 1929 and 1930. In each of the these years, they won over 100 games.

On October 12, 1954, the owners sold the Athletics to Arnold Johnson, Chicago businessman, who moved the team to Kansas City for the 1955 season. They finished the 1968 season with an 82–80 record—their first winning season since 1952. A.L. owners gave Finley permission to move the Athletics to Oakland for the 1968 season on October 18, 1967 and the Athletics became one of baseball’s most successful teams at the gate, drawing 2,900,217 in 1990. Many media sources announced the Athletics would be leaving Oakland in 2010 for a new stadium in the city of Fremont, Finally.