Why do the Oakland A's have an elephant as their symbol?
96588
Finley's stunt was a continuation of a long-time use of the elephant as a symbol of the Athletics.  They started using it when, sometime in the 1910s, New York Giants manager John McGraw said the team was a white elephant for its owners.  A's manager/part-owner Connie Mack adopted a white elephant as their mascot as a defiant act.
868822
My guess is with the Oakland As. He needs to be on an AL team so he can be DH. It'll be easier on his knees. He also wants to stay in the Bay area. There ya have it. Oakland.
1088361
The new owners wanted to change the name, and the logo, because they wanted to break ties with the old owner, Disney.\n\nThe owners polled various season seat holder (including me) if we wanted a name change or keep the names Ducks (and drop the Mighty).  We all agreed to keep our name Ducks and drop the Mighty part.\n\nThe colors were changed to reflect a bolder team.  The gold and black highlighted with orange (to reflect Orange County) looks very nice.\n\nthe new website is anaheimducks.com.
314734
I think it was because when they first moved to LA, they had "Los Angeles" on their uniforms.  The names on the back of the jersey were taken off in either 2004 or 2005, which is a bit of a retro look.  The front road uniform was changed (I think) in the late 1990s from Dodgers to Los Angeles.
448953
It's a memorial for fallen riders. \n\nThe statue was donated by the Portolas, a riding club formed in memory of California's first governor, who led theSpanish  missionairies into the area, and pioneered the settlement of the Alta region. Check the article I've linked in sources for more information about the tradition of the group, and the statue itself.
838175
It's not clear where the donkey came from, but it's believed that in the 1828 campaign, Andrew Jackson's opponent started calling him "Andrew Jackass". Rather than rebelling, Jackson latched onto the name. \n\nThe image resurfaced in the 1830s and again in a political cartoon by Thomas Nast, which depicted "a live donkey kicking a dead lion."  A few years after that, Nast depicted the Republicans as an elephant stomping on the flimsy planks of the Democrats.\n\nNast's images tended to stick in the public's minds (he's the guy who also created our modern-day conception of Santa Claus), so the symbols stuck after that.
953724
What about an elephant?
1081505
My teams: San Diego Chargers, L.A. Dodgers, L.A. Clippers and San Jose Sharks. *But I was born and raised in California. I'm very loyal to my teams, but I don't face paint or anything like that. Decals, hats, shirts, pennants, etc. And a loud cheer at the games. I go to have fun, not to make trouble or disrespect others. (That's what alot of Raiders fans do, unfortunately.) But you'll notice that Oakland's not on my list. Go Chargers!
1140207
They always do that for every game that countries play. I don't really know, but it seems like a nice gesture. And I think that it means that they are the idols of the player that they stand next to ? I don't really know, like I told you before.\n\n\n\n-MeXiCo RoX mY sOx!!!
698126
They are logos representing Gillette Field
666985
There'a actual mention of it on their website that I could find.\nBut it looks like a picture of a Bulldog to me.\nwww.eastonsd.com/athletics
446889
because a bat is a symbol of fear, and secrecy.
243
IMHO, the A's will be traded Zito this off-season or in the middle of next season.  The "Money-ball" philosophy has been working for them and they will continue.  Trading Zito will also get them some good young players too.
306882
to check whether elephant was wearing mouse's underwear...\n\nhe he he\n\nBTW it was ANT !!!
1040560
It's gonna be a toss up between the Oakland A's and the Texas Rangers. In the end, the A's will win.
534104
I was at the Cubs vs. Padres game today which all the cubs used them and most of the padres did, and i thought that it was a neat idea.  They all wore pink arm bands and breast cancer survivors sang the national anthem.  It was a nice touch for the MLB to do since baseball is the sport that more women watch than any other.  I liked the idea.
25735
An elephant''\n\nThis symbol of the party was born in the imagination of cartoonist Thomas Nast and first appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874.\n\nAn 1860 issue of Railsplitter and an 1872 cartoon in Harper's Weekly connected elephants with Republicans, but it was Nast who provided the party with its symbol.\n\nOddly, two unconnected events led to the birth of the Republican Elephant. James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald raised the cry of "Caesarism" in connection with the possibility of a thirdterm try for President Ulysses S. Grant. The issue was taken up by the Democratic politicians in 1874, halfway through Grant's second term and just before the midterm elections, and helped disaffect Republican voters.\n\nWhile the illustrated journals were depicting Grant wearing a crown, the Herald involved itself in another circulation-builder in an entirely different, nonpolitical area. This was the Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874, a delightful hoax perpetrated by the Herald. They ran a story, totally untrue, that the animals in the zoo had broken loose and were roaming the wilds of New York's Central Park in search of prey.\n\nCartoonist Thomas Nast took the two examples of the Herald enterprise and put them together in a cartoon for Harper's Weekly. He showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion's skin (the scary prospect of Caesarism) frightening away the animals in the forest (Central Park). The caption quoted a familiar fable: "An ass having put on a lion's skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings."\n\nOne of the foolish animals in the cartoon was an elephant, representing the Republican vote - not the party, the Republican vote - which was being frightened away from its normal ties by the phony scare of Caesarism. In a subsequent cartoon on November 21, 1874, after the election in which the Republicans did badly, Nast followed up the idea by showing the elephant in a trap, illustrating the way the Republican vote had been decoyed from its normal allegiance. Other cartoonists picked up the symbol, and the elephant soon ceased to be the vote and became the party itself: the jackass, now referred to as the donkey, made a natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democratic party that had frightened the elephant.\n\nby William Safire