Charlie-O — Baseball’s Favorite Mule
The Oakland Athletics have not always called the Bay Area home.
Before moving to Oakland for the 1968 season, the Athletics played at Municipal park in Kansas City, Missouri.
Five years after the 1955 inaugural season for the Kansas City A’s, Charles O. Finley took the reigns as owner. Commonly referred to as the Finley Era, the A’s made a few changes that would become common practice throughout the Major League.
Charles O. Finley designed new uniforms which sported Kansas City on the away tops, and KC on the caps. This is the first time a team had acknowledged its home city on their jerseys. Finely also introduced the green and gold color scheme the Oakland Athletics still wear to this day.
Perhaps his most memorable touch on the entertainment side of the diamond was the adoption of Charlie-O The Mule as the A’s mascot, named after the owner himself of course.
Charlie-O was a genuine, eight year old Kentucky mule. The A’s, as Finley insist the team be called rather than the Athletics, were the only team with a live mascot.
Charlie-O was presented to the A’s owner in 1965 as a gift from Warren Hearnes, the Governor of Missouri. Finley was determined to make his mule, the state animal of Missouri, the most famous of all. Charlie-O traveled with the team in his own air conditioned trailer pulled behind a custom green and gold station wagon.
After several disappointing seasons and underwhelming enthusiasm for his team among fans, Finley made the choice to move the ball club to Oakland, California in 1968. Charlie-O The Mule was right behind them.
The A’s moved to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and without hesitation to his new location, Charlie-O made an appearance before every weekend game as he walked around the warning track and took a bow with his trainer at the end of his trot.
In 1976, at the age of 20, Charlie-O’s time with the A’s ended. Five years after the mule’s death, Finley sold the team to Walter A. Haas and in 1988, the A’s once again adopted their original elephant logo. Stomper, the current A’s mascot, first appeared in 1997.
The joyful elephant runs around greeting fans as all mascots should, but it is hard to forget the impact Charlie-O The Mule had on fans all around major league baseball.
