Former ballpark · 1955 – 1972
Municipal Stadium
Kansas City, MO
Also known as Meuhlebach Field; Blues Stadium.
- Opened
- 1955
- Closed
- 1972
- League
- AL
The lore
The Park Finley Couldn't Leave Alone
Municipal Stadium stood in Kansas City from 1955 to 1972 — rebuilt in ninety days, fitted with a mechanical rabbit, and replaced by a garden.
Ninety Days
The original structure had stood under three decades of Midwestern winters, and by 1955 the footings could no longer support an upper deck. So the city tore the whole thing down and rebuilt it from scratch in 90 days. The expanded design called for 38,000 seats, but cost overruns from overtime payments forced officials to cut capacity to just over 30,000. They bought the Braves Field scoreboard from Boston for $100,000 and set it up in the new yard. On opening day, former President Harry S Truman threw out the first pitch and the Kansas City Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers 6-2.
The stadium sat in the inner city neighborhood near 18th and Vine, a few blocks from where the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum would later be founded.
The Porch
Athletics owner Charles O. Finley could not leave a wall alone. He installed a 296-foot right-field fence and called it Pennant Porch, after the short porch at Yankee Stadium. The league vetoed it and ordered the fence moved back. Finley repainted the sign to read "One-Half Pennant Porch." He tried adding a canopy extension; the league ordered that removed too.
The gimmicks extended below the fence. Finley placed a mechanical rabbit nicknamed Harvey at home plate that popped out of the ground with new baseballs for the umpire, and a compressed-air device called Little Blowhard that blew dirt off the plate.
According to legend, Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard allegedly told a Kansas City crowd that a routine flyout in Yankee Stadium's left field "would have been a home run" in Kansas City. Finley had his own announcer reciprocate — until he noticed opponents were hitting most of the would-be homers.
The Last Afternoon
The expansion Royals arrived in 1969 and played their first four seasons at Municipal Stadium before moving to Royals Stadium at the Truman Sports Complex. The Royals won the final game there on October 4, 1972 — a 4-0 victory over the Texas Rangers, managed by Ted Williams.
The stadium was demolished in 1976. The site is now a community garden.
Reporting: Wikipedia, Ballparks.com. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.
By the Desk · filed 2026-07-24 — the piece reads as of its filing; the park record around it is live · every fact in this piece comes from a filed, sourced research pack and clears an independent fact-check, and nothing is edited after filing.
Where it stood
Kansas City, MO. We don’t have exact coordinates for this park in the historical record — we’d rather say so than pin the wrong spot.
From the record
KC1:1955-67; KCA:1969-1972
Retrosheet park KAN05 · first game 4/12/1955 · last game 10/4/1972
Sources
- Retrosheet · as of 2026-07-23
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.