Arnold Johnson (industrialist)

Arnold M. Johnson (January 11, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois – March 3, 1960 in West Palm Beach, Florida) was an American industrialist, businessman and sportsman, who purchased the Philadelphia Athletics baseball club and moved it to Kansas City, Missouri in the autumn of 1954.

He was a stockbroker and banker, served on the board of directors of a number of corporations, and invested in the Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League.

Spurred by Kansas City officials, Johnson decided to bring a major league team to town, and found a target in the Philadelphia Athletics.

The Athletics of Connie Mack had once been one of the pillars of the American League, with nine pennants and five World Series wins to their credit; however, the team's chronic failures on the field since the early 1930s and its lack of resources undermined it.

Cox was forced out after one year for betting on his own team, but his successor as owner, DuPont heir Bob Carpenter, began building out a farm system, hired Herb Pennock as general manager, and spent lavishly on young prospects.

Second, the franchise was enveloped in a power struggle between two branches of the Mack family—essentially, Roy and Earle, Mack's two sons from his first marriage, were ranged against Connie's second wife and their son from that union, Connie Jr. Roy and Earle were unwilling to depart from their family's bargain-basement approach to running the team, and dismissed their half-brother's proposed innovations almost out of hand.

Connie Jr. then made an alliance with the heirs of franchise co-founder Benjamin Shibe, and began taking steps to upgrade the team and the park.

One of the few things on which the two factions agreed was that it was time for Connie Sr. to step down as manager; the three brothers persuaded their father to retire at the end of the season though he nominally remained team president.

Cleveland's Myron Wilson, Detroit's Spike Briggs and Washington's Clark Griffith had all opposed the sale because they knew Johnson had no intention of keeping the team in Philadelphia.

The team drew 1,393,054 fans in 1955, its first year in Kansas City—the third-highest figure in baseball (behind only the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves) even as they finished in sixth place with a record of 63–91.

[3] The A's never approached their 1955 attendance figures again, in large part due to a team that was barely competitive and never finished with a winning record over thirteen seasons in Kansas City.

[6] Later that season, his estate sold its controlling interest in the team to medical insurance executive Charles O. Finley, who moved the A's to Oakland and assembled a sports dynasty there in the early 1970s.