Kansas City Athletics - Spring Training Shots

While I was putting the Lew Krausse card back in my 1967 binder after a recent post, I noticed a large number of Athletics' players photographed in spring training. The Athletics trained in Bradenton, FL from 1963-68, before moving to Arizona in 1969.  (The Pirates moved in to Bradenton in 1969, where they remain to this day.)

As I did with the Dodgers about a year ago, here are the Athletics, in their last year as Kansas City Athletics. Most of the players in the 1967 set are featured WITH caps, and in their green and white uniform. (I think only infielders Ed Charles and Ossie Chavarria are in the green and gold (away?) uniforms.

Here are the two standard "pitching poses". Most of the A's pitchers were very young. Catfish Hunter completed 2 years in the majors, Jim Nash and Chuck Dobson 1 each, with Lew Krausse the veteran of these four pitchers with 4 years.

Here are four more players, warming up before manager Al Dark puts them through some "fundamentals training". That white building behind Campy appears in several of the photos. I wonder if that's the clubhouse, or maybe just the maintenance shed for the lawn tractors and such.

Here we see Al Dark, in the white cap that the coaching staff wore (maybe so the fans in Kansas City knew where to direct their vitriol during a game?). Paul Linblad's cap looks like it just came out of the box THAT day.

Lots of youth here. Every one of these 11 players had 4 years or less in the bigs, except Mike Hershberger with 6 years.

I really like the 1967 Athletics' cards.  In the 1968 set, they're a complete airbrushed mess, what with their move to Oakland.