In a move that came as a shock to
almost no one, earlier this week Major League Baseball voted to authorize the
Oakland A’s moving to Las Vegas at the end of the 2026 season. The A’s will become the first
franchise to relocate since the Expos departed Montreal and became the
Washington Nationals in 2005.
This is hardly stunning because
for the last few years the A’s have become fundamentally a joke in baseball.
Over the last three years, they have regularly been at the bottom of attendance
in Major League Baseball, this year averaging fewer than 10,000 fans per
game. The few who came in 2023 did not
exactly get great baseball: for much of the season the A’s seemed like they had
a real possibility of breaking the Mets record of 40 wins and 120 losses. While they avoided that dubious distinction,
their final record of 50-112 is not the record that will send fans coming to
the stadium in droves – not that they ever really have.
Notoriously the A’s have been one
of the worst drawing teams in the majors almost since they took up attendance
there in 1968. And while part of that
has to be laid at the foot of their ballpark – which has been loathed by
everyone who played their as ‘the Mausoleum – the fact is for the more than
half of a century they have resided there,
no matter how well the A’s did, packing them in was something that the
A’s never had much luck accomplishing.
This has always been something of
a mystery because almost from the moment they moved in, the Oakland A’s have
been one of the most successful franchises in the American League. During the era of divisional play they
won the American League West ten times
in a period of twenty four years, six American League pennants and four World
Championships. When the divisions were split in 1995, they never won another
American League Pennant, hut they did
manage to qualify for the postseason eleven times, most recently in the
shortened season of 2020.
During the era of divisional
play, competition was at its height in a way it just hadn’t been before. Dynasties were harder to come by. In the 24
years the AL West existed from 1969 to 1993, the A’s ten division titles were
by far the most any team won and that is because of the two A’s dynasties that
bracketed either end of it.: the 1971-1975 A’s and the 1988-1992 version. Only the Pirates (yes, the Pirates) came
close to the A’s with nine NL East divisional titles during that period. The
Yankees won only five; the Dodgers just six.
But the A’s attendance rarely came close to those of the
Dodgers or the Yankees during this era; even the Red Sox, who barely contended,
always seemed to draw better. There have
been other factors – the presence of the
Raiders; the San Francisco Giants across the bay – but the fact remains Oakland
has never been the best town for baseball. Indeed at the end of the 20th
century when the A’s were up for sale again, there was speculation they would
relocate then, perhaps to San Jose or Sacramento. Billy Beene’s ability to help
the A’s contend may have helped the franchise for a while, but at the end of
the day, it seems he was fighting a losing battle.
The A’s will also have the dubious
distinction of setting another major league record: this will be the third time
in their history that they have relocated. Those of you who have read my blog might
know I spent a lot of time and energy relating the early history of the
Philadelphia Athletics, how they were one of the most successful franchises of
all time for a quarter of a century and how they ended up being forced to move
to Kansas City in 1955. In that article
I facetiously referred to the curse of Connie Mack for the A’s troubles ever
since. The truth is more complicated, and the only way to describe it is to
give the story of the A’s dynasty of the 1970s, one of the most glorious and
notorious dynasties in the history of baseball led by one of the most infamous
owners in the history of the game.
Because much of the game as it
exists today is due to the influence of Charles O. Finley, who owned the A’s
from 1961 to 1980 and from the moment he bought it until the day he left, was
loathed by everyone in the entire game.
Commissioners and his fellow owners loathed him. The residents of the
cities the A’s were residing in couldn’t stand him. And his treatment of his
players and managers was so horrific that one writer said that in comparison to
Finley, George Steinbrenner looked like Eleanor Roosevelt. Even Steinbrenner could barely stomach the
man.
And to be clear, defending
Charles O. Finley the human being is beyond my capabilities: apologists for
Stalin or Hugo Chavez might have an easier time. The A’s
of the 1970s were by far one of the greatest dynasties in the history of the
game but there’s a very good argument its success was propelled by the team’s
hatred of their owner who absolutely deserved it. And
that horrid behavior permeated throughout the city of Oakland. The horrid
publicity that Finley generated was almost certainly a reason that, even at the
height of their success, his team couldn’t even draw a million fans a year.
But defending Finley’s skills as
a judge of talent and building a great team – that never gets the credit it
deserves. Neither does the fact that many of the changes that the game ended up
putting into baseball starting in the 1970s were suggestions of Finley, and most
of them were beneficial. So as the A’s leave
the city that they have brought so much glory to and generally received so
little recognition from its fans, let’s look back at how the A’s came to be and
their first dynasty.
When the A’s relocated to Kansas
City, the owner Arnold Johnson was a close friend of Yankee GM George
Weiss. During his tenure as owner, Weiss
negotiated many ‘trades’ with the A’s in which the Yankees got rid of spare
parts in exchange for the best players on the team. Hank Greenberg said sarcastically:
“It must be nice to have a farm system in your own league.”
And that is what Weiss did from
1957 to 1960. The Yankees got rid of
players who Weiss considered to old or unnecessary with the Yankees’ depth. In
return, such players as Bobby Shantz, Hector Lopez, Art Ditmar, Clete Boyer and in
1960 Roger Maris, became Yankees. Weiss was so flagrant with this that in 1957
he traded Ralph Terry to the A’s for Harry Simpson. The next year he traded
Simpson back to the A’s for Virgil Trucks and Duke Maas and the following year,
he traded Tom Sturdivant and Johnny Kucks to the A’s for Lopez and Ralph Terry!
When Finley took over the A’s in
1961, this came to an end nearly immediately which no doubt came as a relief to
the Kansas City fans. That relief would not last long.
Finley’s first act as owner was
to fire manager Joe Gordon and install Hank Bauer as manager for the remainder
of the season. Bauer made it until the end of 1962 when Johnson, unhappy with a
ninth place finish, fired him and replaced him with Ed Lopat. Bauer was hired
by Baltimore, finished second his first season and would win the World Series
in four games over LA in 1966.
Eddie Lopat got the A’s to eighth
that year but was fired before the season was a quarter over. In his first five years he changed managers
five times, three times in the middle of the season. By that time Kansas City
was starting to get royally sick of him and his demand for both a new stadium
with local officials and the antics he engaged in on the field.
The first in a long line of
performative stunts that Finley would engage was his decision to have a mule
become the mascot of the A’s. He claimed this had to do with something called
the Missouri Mules, which he credited for winning World War II. Charlie O.
became a fixture at games in 1964 and sadly became more attention grabbing then
the team. Catcher Johnny Blanchard once related a story in which the same was
stopped by the manager so that the entire team could sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to
Charlie O. the mule. In another stunt Finley insisted one of his pitchers ride
the mule from the bullpen to the mound. (The A’s lost the game.)
Finley had already gotten the
reputation as one of the games most parsimonious owners which made all the
players under his command hate him even more.
This had become so prevalent that it led to an incident that for any
other owner would have been the most ridiculous in their tenure but for a man
like Finley it barely made the top ten.
In 1967 Manager Alvin Dark was in Finley’s doghouse
in the middle of the season. The team heard he was being let go. Outfielder Ken
Harrelson, a fan of Dark’s excoriated Finley in the press. While Dark was being
let go by Finley, Dark told him that Finley was building a good team and that
by 1971 they could be a pennant contender. (Dark was righter than he could have
known.) The conversation went so well that Finley actually reversed his
decision and gave Dark a two year contract. But moments after doing so Finley
was called by a reporter to comment on Harrelson’s story. Finley exploded, blamed
Dark for losing control of the team and fired the man he’d just rehired. (Dark, however, would be back under circumstances
not even he could have predicted.) Harrelson was so outraged he refused to play
for Finley any more and ended up becoming a free agent of sorts. Boston got him
for $135,000 and he helped them down the stretch in their drive for the Impossible
Dream.
By the end of that year Finley,
who had been threatening to pull the team from Kansas City had he not gotten a
new stadium built, decided to follow through. He ended up relocating the A’s to
Oakland. Kansas City was glad to see Finley go. Even as the A’s began to build
up a dynasty in Oakland, I have little doubt they still thought they got the
better of the deal.
In the second expansion of 1969
Kansas City would get a replacement team, the Royals. They were more than
willing to build a new park for them, and they were more than willing to turn
out in numbers they never would for the A’s. It helped matters that the Royals
very quickly became a very good team: by the time the A’s won their first
division title in 1971, the Royals finished in second place. By the mid-70s they had the framework for a
dynasty of their own which would win seven division titles, two American League
pennants and one World Championship in ten years. Years later Finley acknowledged that he had
blundered when it came to moving the A’s from Kansas City.
No one was noticing because of
all Finley’s bad behavior the kind of team he had started to build. Much of it
was helped by the foundation of the amateur draft, which came into existence in
the early 1960s and which could help a team that, like the A’s, was at the
bottom of the league. By 1964 players who would be critical to the dynasty had
begun to become part of the team, including second baseman Dick Green, starter
Blue Moon Odom, and reliever Paul Lindblad. But two critical players came up in
1965 and 1966.
Finley had helped sign a North Carolina
pitcher named Jim Hunter. Out of the idea of a countrified nickname added to
his box office appeal, he told Hunter to take the name Catfish and sent him to
directly to the majors. His first year he went 8-8 and by the time the A’s were
in Oakland, he was the teams workhorse.
Just as important was shortstop
Bert Campaneris. Campaneris was such a versatile player that in one game in
1967 as a stunt Campaneris played every position in the lineup for one inning.
He was a great fielding shortstop and one of the best base stealers of the
era. In his rookie year he led the
American League in stolen bases with 52.
By the time the A’s were in
Oakland, the framework for their team was in place. Joe Rudi was a rookie
outfielder and Sal Bando had established himself at third. Catfish Hunter went
13-13 and pitched a perfect game. But the man who would become the center of
the team had and by far the greatest players the A’s had was a rookie
outfielder named Reggie Jackson. 1968 was termed the ‘Year of the Pitcher’
(Hunter’s perfect game attracted little attention) so Jackson’s 29 home runs
were good enough for fourth in the American League. Because of the circumstances of the year –
Carl Yastrzemski led the American League in batting with a .301 average – the fact
that Jackson had only hit .250 didn’t strike anyone as abnormal. The A’s had
their first winning season in nearly twenty years and in the last year of the
traditional lineup finished in sixth place in the American League with an 82-80
record. It was a promising sign.
But the impatient Finley fired
Bob Kennedy and rehired Hank Bauer who the Orioles had let go at the start of
the 1968 season. (His replacement Earl Weaver would do quite well with the
Orioles; the A’s would end up facing them a lot in subsequent years.) Bauer was
not particularly popular with the pitchers and his training. Finley’s attitude also didn’t help him with
Hunter.
Hunter had gone 13-13 the year
before and Finley had given him a raise and a loan to buy farmland in North
Carolina. From the start of the 1970 season to the end of it, Finley regularly
called and harassed Hunter demanding repayment of the loan. Hunter had a 12-15
season and at the end of the year to get Finley off his back, sold the land. The
feelings between the two men never recovered.
However few people cared in
Oakland in 1969 because the A’s were having their best season in 20 years. Odom
and pitcher Charles Dobson picked up the slack and were helped in the bullpen
by a new pitcher named Rollie Fingers.
The offense had exploded as well. Campaneris sole 62 bases. Sal Bando
hit 31 home runs, drove in 115 runs and scored 106 runs.
But for much of the season the
baseball world was looking at Reggie Jackson for the first time as he spent
much of the year chasing Roger Maris’ record of 61 homeruns. By August he had
hit 40 home runs.
Covering him in the New Yorker,
Roger Angell wrote of Jackson as ‘the genuine article – a superior natural
left-handed hitter with enormously powerful wrists and shoulders.” He also
accurate predicted his flowering of Jackson as a new superstar and ‘one-man
gate attraction’ both of which would come true by the mid-70s. The pressure got
to the 22 year old Jackson and he trailed off, finishing the year with 47 home
runs and 118 RBIs. Harmon Killebrew would end up leading the league in both
categories for the Minnesota Twins.
For much of the 1969 season the A’s
were in first place in the division. Near the end of the year, they began to
sputter out and they would finish the year in second place, seven games behind
the Twins. The Twins, its worth noting, were a great team in their own right
with superb pitching from Jim Kaat and Jim Perry (Perry tied for the Cy Yong
Award that year) base running by Cesar Tovar (he stole home seven times) and
hitting by future Hall of Famers Killebrew, Rod Carew and Tony Oliva. Still it
was the best finish the A’s had.
The A’s finished second to
Minnesota in 1970 but it somehow seemed disappointing. Jackson had been in the
first of many salary disputes with Finley, held out and had a miserable season,
hitting just 23 home runs. This hurt him with the Oakland fan base and he returned
the feeling. After hitting one home run, the fans began to applaud
sarcastically. When he touched home, he spat at them. Friends of Jackson sense their was a
difference between the warm and open person who had played so well the year
before. He became more guarded with the press and more inclined to anger. Finley had that effect on his team.
With the exception of Hunter, who
went 18-14, most of the A’s had poorer seasons. However, there was excitement
at the end of the year as a rookie pitcher was called up.
Vida Blue had made a few starts
at the end of the 1969 season and was not much better in his appearances in
1970. Then he was called up in September. On September 11, he shutout Kansas
City 3-0, giving up just one hit. Ten days later, he started against the
Minnesota Twins. He no-hit them, becoming the fourth youngest pitcher in
history to ever throw a no-hitter.
The groundwork for the dynasty of
the 1970s was ready to begin.
In the next article, I will deal
with the 1971 A’s and the incredible season of Vida Blue.
No comments:
Post a Comment