The team mascot of the Oakland Athletics is Stomper, an elephant wearing the Athletics uniform with number 00. Stomper entertains at Athletic home games at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum. When he is not visiting with and cavorting to entertain Athletic fans, he is active in the community. Stomper has performed at a number of All-Star Games and even done a public service announcement to discourage the use of chewing tobacco.
Although Stomper (the elephant) has only been in uniform as the mascot for the Oakland Athletics since 1997, the elephant as a team symbol goes back to when the Philadelphia Athletics were one of the original American league teams in 1901. A group of Philadelphia businessmen first owned the Philadelphia Athletics. John McGraw, the manager of the New York Giants in the National League said that they had purchased a “white elephant.”
(White elephant = useless, troublesome, and expensive to maintain)
In response, the manager and later the owner of the Athletics, Connie Mack, adopted the elephant as the team symbol and mascot.
Then-owner Charles Finley changed the team mascot to a mule when the Athletics moved to Kansas City. Finley believed that the folks in Missouri who were predominantly Democrats would take offense at a “Republican” elephant and would prefer the “Democratic” mule.
Stomper is proud to be the team mascot of the Oakland Athletics who won three consecutive World Series Championships from 1972 to 1974 led by Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, and Reggie Jackson and then repeated as World Champions in 1989 with skills of Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson, and Hall of Famer, Dennis Eckersley.
But, Stomper is an elephant and this elephant will never forget the early days of the Athletics in Philadelphia where Connie Mack both owned and managed the team for 50 years!
The list of Hall of Famers who played at least part of their career with the Philadelphia Athletics includes Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, Jimmy Foxx, Nellie Fox, Lefty Grove, Rube Waddell, and (in his last season) Ty Cobb.