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Philadelphia A's Historical Society Struggles To Maintain Memories

Hatboro baseball museum is financially strapped as fan base fades.

In their prime, both the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team and the flamboyant entertainer Liberace had a devoted following.

Years after the Athletics no longer played in Philadelphia and Liberace no longer played in Las Vegas, faithful fans supported museums dedicated to their quite different legacies.

But the once-successful Liberace Museum in Las Vegas closed in 2010 after 31 years in operation. As fans aged and memories faded, attendance dropped from a peak of 450,000 annually in the late 1990s to 50,000 in 2009.

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While considerably smaller, the in Hatboro hopes to avoid the same fate. Fifteen years after it was formed, the society is trying desperately to keep open its museum and gift shop on North York Road.

"We struggle every day. We somehow find a way to get through the month," said Ernie Montella, executive director of the nonprofit organization. The group is committed to preserving the legacy of the Athletics, which won nine American League pennants and five World Series playing in Philadelphia from 1901 to 1954. The Athletics moved to Kansas City before the 1955 season, and moved again to Oakland, Calif. in 1968.

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Membership has dropped from a peak of nearly 1,000 five years ago to about 700. About half live in the Philadelphia region. The rest are former area residents who moved away and baseball buffs from across the United States and even foreign countries, according to Montella, 76, of Warrington.

While 128 former A's players were alive in 1996, today there are fewer than 40, mostly in their 90s. As a result, the society no longer holds dinners or events featuring ex-ballplayers, each of which used to draw hundreds of fans, Montella said.

Gift shop sales - which raise most of the society's revenue - have dropped, due both to a decline in fans and the poor economy. The majority of sales are from the Web site, not the estimated 50 to 100 people who visit the museum each week, according to Montella. The storefont shop and museum, which opened in 1998, sells books, replica jerseys, sweatshirts, T-shirts, caps, autographed baseballs, player figurines and other items related to the A's, the Phillies and other baseball teams.

Last year's total revenue, which also included the $30 membership dues, barely covered the $70,000 cost of operating the mostly volunteer museum, publishing a periodic newsletter and maintaining a Web site, Montella said. The society this month held one of its periodic auctions of surplus donated baseball memorabilia (not from the Athletics collection), but those sales bring in only a few thousand dollars.

 Museums nationally are suffering because of the recession, according to Dewey Blanton, spokesman for the American Association of Museums in Washington, D.C.

"It's not just small museums. It's not just sports or history museums," he said. Even large institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have laid off staffers. Government grants to privately run museums are dwindling.

He said "niche" museums devoted to a deceased celebrity or a defunct organization face an added burden to stay afloat.

"As the memory fades, it's a real challenge to keep that person relevant to contemporary Americans," Blanton said.

That's the case with the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pa., the actor's hometown. Opened two years before the actor's death in 1997, the museum has seen attendance cut in half, from 10,000 to 5,000 a year, as fewer of Stewart's aging fans make the pilgrimage. The museum, which relies on volunteers, remains open but faces an uncertain future.

Blanton said the Philadelphia A's Society is the only independent museum he knows of devoted exclusively to a single former professional sports team. In Washington, for example, there is an organization for fans of the former Senators baseball team, but it doesn't run a museum.

He suggested the Athletics museum could broaden its appeal by partnering with the Phillies and relocating to downtown Philadelphia.

Montella said the A's society has considered both options. It previously approached the Phillies, but the team was not interested in preserving Athletics history.

The society is talking with the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent (formerly the Atwater Kent Museum) in Center City. The history museum, closed since 2009 for a $5.8 million renovation, is due to reopen in September.

"We've worked with them in the past (on a baseball exhibit)," said Kate Bieg, the Philadelphia museum's director of marketing and public relations. "We're continuing the discussion. What would work with our collection?"

When it reopens, the museum will have a gallery called "Played in Philadelphia," with exhibits on the city's sports teams, broadcasting, movies and other activities. The museum owns some Athletics and Phillies memorabilia.

"It's obvious this is a sports town," Bieg said. "Our main goal is to make Philadelphians feel at home."

While nothing has been decided, the museum is interested in the A's society's collection, according to Bieg.

A few of the items currently on display in Hatboro include: A's souvenir programs dating back to the early 1900s, baseballs and photographs signed by A's players, tickets from the 1929 and 1930 World Series won by the A's, a silver loving cup presented to the A's as the 1910 World Champions and even a turnstile from the former Shibe Park, the Athletics stadium in North Philadelphia.

Over the years, the society has sold hundreds of bricks from Shibe Park, obtained from a man who worked on the crew that demolished the ballpark in 1976, according to Harry Adams of Bensalem, a board member and the society's auditor. Originally priced at $99, the bricks now sell for $150.

Several Athletics society board members, in their 70s, remember going to A's games at Shibe Park as boys.

"I went to my first ballgame in 1948," said Dick Rosen, 70, of Huntingdon Valley, vice chairman and the society's historian. "By the time I was 8 years old, I could recite the names and batting averages of the [World Champion] 1929 A's."

"My first game was on Memorial Day, 1943. The A's played the Tigers," said chairman David Jordan, 76, who grew up in communities along Old York Road and now lives in Chesterbrook, Chester County.

Rosen and Jordan acknowledged that the society's long-term survival depends on interesting a new generation of fans who don't share their first-hand experiences in the Athletics.

"We like to talk about the most successful sports franchise in Philadelphia sports history," Jordan said. None of the city's other professional teams - the Phillies, the Flyers and the Sixers - can match the Athletics' record of nine league and five world championships.

"I think we're out to keep that history alive," Rosen said. "We don't want to abandon the A's at all. I'm hoping we can keep it afloat."

The Brooklyn Historical Society, located in the New York City borough, has found there still is a lot of interest in the former Brooklyn Dodgers, although the baseball team relocated to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

Its special exhibit, "Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field," opened in June 2009 and was due to close this month, but has been extended until August because of the enthusiastic public response, according to Keara Duggan, development and communications manager.

"There are people who still live in Brooklyn who have a soft spot in their heart for the team," she said. "I think the Dodgers are part of the brand of Brooklyn as we know it today."

The museum does not have a permanent exhibit on the team, but its Dodgers collection includes photographs, baseball cards, uniforms, autographed baseballs, scorebooks and the papers of the last Brooklyn team owner, Walter O'Malley. The Brooklyn Cyclones minor league team displays some Dodgers memorabilia in a gallery at its Coney Island stadium, according to Duggan.

A's society board members said they would like to keep their museum in Hatboro if possible, but they have to explore options to make sure the collection remains intact.

"We want to keep the collection together," Montella said. "We'll never sell it off piecemeal. We'd put it in storage first."

If the society is forced to close the museum, it could continue as an A's fan club, publishing a newsletter and operating a Web site. In that event, Montella said, his feelings would be, "We've had 15 good years. It's time to call it quits."

But he and the other directors hope it doesn't come to that.

"We're proud of our museum. We'd like to keep it as such," Jordan said.

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