The Oakland Athletics are a Major League Baseball team based in Oakland, California. They are in the Western Division of the American League. The team is also known as the A's. The Athletics' name--originating in the term "Athletic Club" for local gentlemen's clubs--dates back to 1860 when an amateur team, the Athletic (Club) of Philadelphia, was formed. (A famous image from that era, at left, published in Harper's Weekly in 1866, shows the Athletic players dressed in uniforms displaying the familiar blackletter "A" on the front.) The team later turned professional through 1875, becoming a charter member of the National League in 1876, but were expelled from the N.L. after one season. A later version of the Athletics played in the American Association from 1882–1891. The team name is typically pronounced "Ath-LET-ics", but their long-time team owner/manager Connie Mack called them by the old-fashioned colloquial pronunciation "Ath-uh-LET-ics". Newspaper writers also often referred to the team as the Mackmen during their Philadelphia days, in honor of their patriarch. Full Article on Wikipedia