"Inside the Stacks: Exploring important documents in Chiefs history" is a series of columns based on never-before-seen documents and correspondence from the Lamar Hunt archives, including many from the founding and early days of the American Football League, the merger with the National Football League, and other historic moments up until the time of Hunt's death.
The first regular season game the Chiefs played in Kansas City after moving from Dallas in 1963 did not happen until October 6.
By that time, the team had already played two pre-season games at old Municipal Stadium — the team's designated new home. Three regular season contests on the road followed, and the team had compiled a 1-1-1 record as fans gathered to see their club's first game that would count.
Why so late for the new team in a new town?
Major League Baseball's Kansas City Athletics, who had come to town in 1955, had by an earlier contract with the city first use of the stadium.
Playing in a converted-for-football Municipal, located at 22nd and Brooklyn, the crowd that showed up that day was 27,801.
Franchise founder Lamar Hunt remembered the Chiefs selling more than 15,000 season tickets that year and that it set an American Football League record.
An unseasonably hot day for October, Hunt came to town with his wife, Norma, and their children and sat in temporary bleachers in what would normally be left field on the north side of the stadium.
The Chiefs emerged with a 28-7 victory that day over the two-time AFL champion Houston Oilers.
Hunt found the turnout more encouraging that the first pre-season game ever held in Kansas City on August 9th against the Buffalo Bills, won by the Chiefs, 17-13, but played before just 5,721 ticket holders.
"It was a sobering moment," Hunt recalled years later, "only to have so few people in the stands."
Later that year, the Chiefs managed to draw a crowd of 30,107 to see San Diego defeat Kansas City 38-17.
Municipal Stadium sat 49,002 for football, and at the close of the Chiefs' first year, the team had drawn 150,567 in home attendance.
SOURCES: "Kansas City Chiefs 1999 Chromo File, July-August, Cabinet 17, Drawer C. "Lamar Hunt looks back at 40 years of Chiefs football," Chiefs Report, September 2000.
