[ARETE] Ehrlich, Kansas City vs. Oakland

Fri Jan 3 14:50:00 CST 2020

All,
Please find below and attached Richard Black's review of Matthew
Ehrlich's *Kansas
City vs. Oakland*.
Thanks,
Duncan

*Matthew Ehrlich Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry that
Defined an Era*

*Reviewed by Richard Black, Northwest Missouri State University*

Two small-market sports cities. A panoply of legendary and even infamous
names.  Charlie Finley. Al Davis. Lamar Hunt. Len Dawson. Hank Stram. John
Madden. George Blanda. Kenny Stabler. Catfish Hunter. Vida Blue. George
Brett. Fred Biletnikoff. Reggie Jackson.

Matthew Ehrlich’s *Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry that
Defined an Era *is a 2019 addition to the University of Illinois Press’
Sport and Society series. In narrating his expansive cultural history,
Ehrlich cites and then builds upon a snide, yet telling statement from
Kansas City native Calvin Trillin, that “the United States is divided
neatly into two parts…the part that had major-league baseball before the
Second World War [and] all the rest” (14).  The majority of the book
concerns the attempts by these two cities to shed the Cowtown label, in the
case of Kansas City, and the Bay Area inferiority complex of Oakland by way
of professional sport franchises. But the stories on the gridiron and the
diamond only account for part of the study; as indicated in the title, the
book is also invested in the larger contexts of the 1960-1970s era, not
just in terms of sport but also in relating to the larger socio-economic
concerns of race and labor in these two cities and in post-WWII America
more broadly.

The book’s structure alternates between the NFL and MLB franchises in
Oakland and Kansas City to explore both the burgeoning rivalry between the
two cities and also the social, political, and economic woes that the
sports entities were meant, and largely failed, to rectify. A
contextualizing opening chapter entitled “Striving for the Big Leagues,”
acknowledges the rich pre-existing baseball history in Kansas City
reflected by the Monarchs of the Negro Leagues and the minor league Kansas
City Blues of the American Association before addressing the city’s
boosters attempts in luring the Philadelphia Athletics westward in the wake
of the geographical relocations of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn
Dodgers. And Ehrlich reads the California migrations of these ball clubs as
a catalyst for Oakland’s efforts to enlarge its own profile by way of
sports: “Now with San Francisco and Los Angeles having joined the big time
via the Giants and Dodgers, Oakland wanted to follow suit” (34).

Throughout, Ehrlich analyzes the reversal of fortune promised by
professional sports on both civic and individual levels: “If Oakland and
Kansas City hungered for respect, so too did the athletes who played in the
two cities” (174).  And while great strides in equity and agency occurred
during this period, the cost of some of its other elements are just now
starting to come due. Ehrlich persuasively reveals how “The heyday of the
Kansas City-Oakland rivalry corresponded with profound changes to
professional athletes’ working conditions;” both to their benefit, such as
in the emergence of free agency, but also to their detriment, such as with
the widespread adoption of artificial turf which “may well have exacerbated
the neurological symptoms that many NFL players would develop later in
life.”  He thus concludes that “Many athletes paid a price to be ‘big
league’ just as cities did” (174).

One of the intriguing elements of Ehrlich’s treatment, introduced in this
opening chapter, is the way in which he uses this story from the 1960s and
1970s to comment upon the current state of sports and society by invoking
both a sense of nostalgia for what was, and also an awareness that past is
merely prologue. For instance, he outlines the immense political power the
local press and its newspapers possessed and wielded in efforts to recruit
sports franchises but and to shape public opinion concerning the financing
of these efforts. Ernie Mehl, sports editor of the *Kansas City Star*, “one
of the nation’s most influential newspapers,” was integral in the campaign
to lure the A’s to Kansas City, and Joseph Knowland, the owner of the
reactionary *Oakland Tribune*, possessed an influence that “has run through
every facet of city life” which, of course, included fervent support of
“Oakland’s efforts to land major league sports” (22, 33-34).  For the
reader in 2019 who daily witnesses the slow decay and shuttering of local
newspapers and the proliferation of the media multiverse, the idea of local
media possessing such power seems like a quaint historical footnote.  Such
wistfulness stands to reason; Ehrlich is professor emeritus of journalism
at the University of Illinois, and his previous books include the
title, *Heroes
and Scoundrels: The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture*.

In addition to these nods of nostalgia, Ehrlich also relates the story of
these cities and this period to several contemporary cultural
characteristics of professional sports. In keeping with the iconoclastic
character of the period, Ehrlich quotes from Dave Meggyesy’s tell-all
memoir that derided professional football’s “‘maudlin and dangerous
pre-game patriotism’ directed toward the flag and national anthem” (95).  And
he addresses Oakland’s homegrown Black Panther party, founded in 1966,
stimulating race pride and consciousness and their platform that demanded
“an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people” (59).

The study is at its best when it stays close to the parameters of sports
and culture in this sense; however, the scope is sometimes strained when it
colors a little too far outside of these lines and attempts to weave in
other urban labor histories such as plumbers’ and carpenters’ strikes. The
book is meticulously researched—it contains thirty pages of notes—and
although it is apparent that Ehrlich is interested in linking the sports
history to the larger progressive spirit of the era, these digressions can
sometimes bog down the otherwise methodically paced and plotted structure
of his main narrative.

            *Kansas City vs. Oakland* provides a compelling, detailed, and
exceedingly well-documented story of big-league aspirations, outsized
owners, legendary athletes, and the pitfalls of considering professional
sports as a kind of civic panacea. Such was the tale of the efforts to lure
the Athletics and the Dallas Texans to Kansas City, only for the
authoritarian Charlie Finley to uproot the A’s to Oakland. And as history
would have it, Ehrlich’s story comes full circle in its conclusion with the
owner of an historic but beleaguered franchise, in this case the Oakland
Raiders, making the move to the ostensibly greener pastures of Las Vegas.
As Faulkner famously stated, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Ehrlich, Matthew C. *Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry
That Defined an Era*. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019. 256 pp.
16 B&W Photographs, 2 Maps, Notes. Paper, $19.95.
Copyright © 2019 by Richard Black

Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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