History of the Kansas City Royals

<!-- Image with inadequate rationale removed: -->The following is a detailed history of the Kansas City Royals, a Major League Baseball team that began play in 1969 in Kansas City, Missouri. The team is currently in the American League Central Division. The franchise has won six division titles, two league championships, and one World Series title.

Franchise history

Baseball returns to Kansas City

When the Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland after the 1967 season, Kansas City was left without professional baseball for only the second time in the 20th century. An enraged Senator Stuart Symington threatened to introduce legislation removing baseball's antitrust exemption unless Kansas City was granted a team in the next round of expansion. Major League Baseball complied with a hasty round of expansion at the 1967 winter meetings. Kansas City was awarded one of four teams to begin play in 1971. However, Symington was not satisfied with having Kansas City wait three years for baseball to return, and pressured MLB to allow the new teams to start play in 1969. Symington's intervention may have contributed to the collapse of one of the Royals' expansion brethren, the Seattle Pilots, who moved to Milwaukee as the Brewers after only one season.

Pharmaceutical executive Ewing Kauffman won the bidding for the new Kansas City team, which he named the Royals after the American Royal, a livestock show, horse show, and rodeo held annually in...
Read More