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Kansas City vs. Oakland : The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era /
A driving ambition linked Oakland and Kansas City in the 1960s. Each city sought the national attention and civic glory that came with being home to professional sports teams. Their successful campaigns to lure pro franchises ignited mutual rivalries in football and baseball that thrilled hometown f...
| Autor principal: | |
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| Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
| Idioma: | Inglés |
| Publicado: |
[Urbana] :
University of Illinois Press,
[2019]
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| Colección: | Book collections on Project MUSE.
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| Temas: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
| Sumario: | A driving ambition linked Oakland and Kansas City in the 1960s. Each city sought the national attention and civic glory that came with being home to professional sports teams. Their successful campaigns to lure pro franchises ignited mutual rivalries in football and baseball that thrilled hometown fans. But even Super Bowl victories and World Series triumphs proved to be no defense against urban problems in the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s. Matthew C. Ehrlich tells the fascinating history of these iconic sports towns. From early American Football League battles to Oakland's deft poaching of baseball's Kansas City Athletics, the cities emerged as fierce opponents from Day One. Ehrlich weaves a saga of athletic stars and folk heroes like Len Dawson, Al Davis, George Brett, and Reggie Jackson, and breaks down who won and who lost when big-time sports came to town. |
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| Notas: | "This book tells the story of the rivalry between two US cities that sought to shed minor league images by attracting big league sports teams. KC and Oakland landed competing teams in the upstart American Football League in 1960, and the cities' sports rivalry intensified in 1967 when Oakland lured away KC's major league baseball team and KC received an expansion franchise as consolation. Over the decade that followed, football's Chiefs and Raiders and baseball's A's and Royals fought fierce battles. At the same time, their home cities experienced bitter divisions over race and labor relations during one of the most tumultuous periods in US history. Local newspapers joined business and political leaders in their respective cities in actively recruiting sports franchises and advocating construction of expensive new sports facilities. At the same time, they and other media reported on the many challenges to the prevailing social order during the '60s and '70s. In sports, those challenges included the revolt of the black athlete and an emerging labor consciousness among pro athletes even as sports grew into a national TV spectacle. Beyond sports, cities faced riots, strikes, declining public schools, and white flight to the suburbs. By 1977 the two cities had changed significantly from what they had been a decade previously. This book tells the story of those changes through extensive archival research and critical readings of media texts, showing how media highlight the tension between big league sports franchises serving on the one hand as instruments of political and economic elites and on the other hand as boosters of civic pride and identity"--Provided by publisher |
| Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (252 pages). |
| ISBN: | 9780252051500 |