Reddit mentions of The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s

Arnold Johnson of the Kansas City A's.

The owners of the Yankees (Del Webb and Dan Topping) pushed Commissioner Ford Frick to allow Johnson, their business partner, to purchase the A's ballpark, knowing that he would eventually be able to maneuver into position to own the A's (which, of course, happened). Under Johnson's ownership, the A's became a de facto farm team for the Yankees, making a series of lopsided trades that helped sustain the Yankee dynasty into the 1960s.

There a book about it, if anyone is interested.

>Forgive me, but this is new to me. Can you cite which players these were? I'm trying to learn your position, not trying to act douchey.

Roger Maris would be the most famous example. Bobby Shantz and Clete Boyer. The Philadelphia/Kansas City A's had an explicit agreement to serve as a de facto farm team for the Yankees; you can read about it in depth in this book I just read. The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s

Charlie Finley bought the A's in 1961 and terminated this unholy alliance, and "coincidentally" the Yankees did not win a World Series from 1963 to 1977, after winning 20 of the previous 40. With the loss of the A's connection and the advent of free agency, they lost their ridiculous and ill-gotten stranglehold on MLB and had to do things like "normal" teams did. With much less success.

Of course the A's were far from the only team to surrender players for almost no return to the Yankees; this was pretty much commonplace in baseball because most of the guys who owned teams were not interested in winning baseball championships, but in turning a profit. They were short sighted robber barons. There were 4 or 5 teams who competed for the championship every year, and the only time one of those 4 or 5 would fail to win a championship would be when they all had down years at the same time, or some upstart team like the 1960 Pirates had a fluke victory against them.

That kind of stuff happened all the time with the Kansas City A's and the Yankees back in the 1950's. One of the Yankee owners arranged for his friend to buy the Philadelphia A's and move them to KC. That's how Roger Maris ended up in New York.

From 1953-1961 the two teams traded 76 players back and forth: http://www.wcnet.org/~dlfleitz/kca.htm

Also, here's a book on that: http://www.amazon.com/Kansas-City-Wrong-Half-Yankees/dp/0977743659