Students and fans of the game
have argued that in the 1970s, baseball was the best it has ever been. I am not
qualified to comment on that. What I can say with confidence is that by far
some of the greatest teams ever assembled played in the 1970s and that several
of these great teams were in cities that would come as a shock to a fan of the
game today. Because many of these teams will be critical to the articles to
come, I feel it’s worth discussing them.
The most dominant team in baseball
during the decade were Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles. Their three year tenure of 1969-1971 was by
far the pinnacle of Weaver’s tenure as manager but they would be a force
throughout the decade, compiling the best record of any team in either league.
After being upset by the Miracle
Mets in 1969, the Orioles came back to win 108 games the following year and
sweep through both the Minnesota Twins in the Divisional Series, then take the
overmatched Cincinnati Reds in five games for their second World Championship
in five years. They would win four more AL
East Titles the rest of the decade and two more pennants and would always be at
the top of the standings.
The Orioles and the A’s would be
fighting against each other for the next four years for AL prominence (we’ll be
dealing with those battles in detail in both this article and the ones to come)
and the Orioles would always be built on power, defense and pitching. The Orioles had one of the greatest three-men
rotations in the history of baseball: Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar and Jim
Palmer. Ironically at the start of the decade Palmer, one of the greatest pitchers
of all time, was considered the weak link in the bunch, due to an arm injury
that had taken him out of action for the better part of two seasons. In 1970,
he had ‘only’ won 20 games which seems minor compared to the work of his
teammates who won 24 games apiece.
Cuellar had tied with Denny McClain for the Cy Young award in 1969 and McNally
would one year win 23 consecutive games.
At the start of the decade, the Orioles
were, of course, known for the Robinsons: Frank, who even at thirty-five was
still one of the most dominant hitters in baseballs and Brooks, probably the
greatest third baseman in the history of the game, certainly from a defensive
perspective. Mark Belanger, the
definition of good-field, absolutely no-hit, was their shortstop and Boog
Powell held down first base. Powell had won the AL MVP in 1970.
When Frank was traded in 1971 (we’ll
get to that) and Brooks began to decline at the plate, the O’s wouldn’t quite
be as dominant. Rather they would spend
the decade fighting it out in the AL East, which would feature superb play from
the rebuilding Boston Red Sox, the aging but still talented Tigers and a newly
resurgent Yankees. All three of these team would play a critical role in the A’s
dynasty in different ways.
In the National League, the
dominant player would be Sparky Anderson’s Big Red Machine, which had almost as
good a record in baseball as the O’s did, winning six NL West Division Titles, four
pennants and two World Championship.
Their offensive lineup is one of the most storied of all time and it
would dominate the NL MVP race for the 1970s with four different Reds winning
seven MVPs. Two of them, Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan are among the greatest to
ever play at catcher and second base, both defensively and offensively. Pete Rose is, of course, the all-time hits
leader who was beloved in Cincinnati and would also face the ultimate disgrace.
George Foster would be one of the most undervalued offensive players in the
decade, hitting 52 home runs in 1977, the only player in the entire decade to
hit 50 or more. The infield was anchored
by the incomparable Tony Perez. Their offense, sadly, did not have a comparable
pitching staff which led Anderson to earn another nickname, ‘Captain Hook’ for
the frequency he substituted pitchers in every game.
For all the Reds dominance they
would spend much of the decade in competition with a resurgent Los Angeles
Dodgers. The team had collapsed when Sandy Koufax had retired at the end of the
1966 season but by the start of the 1970s they were rebuilding into one of the
better teams of the decade. The Dodgers
and Reds would spend the decade fighting for dominance in the NL West, with the
Dodgers taking three NL West titles, all of which led to Pennants. They would slowly build one of the greatest
infield of all time led by Ron Cey at third base, Steve Garvey at first and
Davy Lopes at second. While their
offense would never quite by the equal of the Reds, they were superior when it
came to pitching helped by such stalwarts as Don Sutton, Andy Messersmith and Tommy
John and the unparalleled relief work of Mike Marshall. Both of these teams would be critical to the
A’s fortunes over the years.
Often forgotten by the power of
these juggernauts was that baseball in the 1970s may have been the greatest
time ever to be a fan if you lived in Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Pirates were
about to have one of the quietest dynasties of all time, winning six NL East
titles during the decade. Anderson himself once considered that the Pirates of
that era would one day be remembered alongside the Yankees teams of the 1920s
and 1930s and while that was not the case, he wasn’t just speaking in hyperbole.
The Pirates may have been the
most balanced team of the decade. They had a superb offense, led at the start
of the decade by the peerless Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell in the outfield.
Two of the most underrated players of all time, Al Oliver and Dave Parker would
be playing right field and different times. Oliver would win three batting
titles and hit .304 lifetime; Parker was a superb defensive outfielder and a
great power hitter. Defensively their infield was superb and unlike the Reds,
they had consistently good pitching. At the start of the decade, they were led
by such capable workhorses as Dock Ellis, Steve Blass and Nelson Briles as well
as the solid reliever Dave Giusti. They
got to the World Series twice in the 1970s and both times would defeat the
Orioles in seven games.
During the middle of the decade,
the Philadelphia Phillies, having spent the 20th century being the
joke of baseball were about to become another undervalued dynasty. Steve Carlton would become arguably the
greatest pitcher of the decade winning four Cy Young Awards after being traded from
St. Louis. They would have a superb double
play combo of Dave Cash and Larry Bowa and were about to get a third baseman
named Mike Schmidt. By the mid-1970s Phillies fans would be coming to the
ballpark to cheer, not boo as the Phillies would manage to win six division
titles and two NL Pennants between 1976 and 1983, and in 1980 finally win their
first World Championship.
This brings us to the AL West of
the 1970s and perhaps one reason the A’s may never have been considered as great
as they were. While in all of the other
divisions it was not uncommon for at least one winner every season to win 100
games or more, the A’s were never at the same level. Indeed, their best season was in 1971 when
they won 101 games, the only time they ever won that many as a dynasty. (They wouldn’t
win more than that until their 1988 season.) Their records for a dynasty are
not particularly strong; indeed in 1974, they won the AL West with just 90 wins.
Many thought the AL West was the
weakest of the four divisions and there is something to be said for that. As we shall see in each of the AL Pennants
they won, the second place finisher in each division was the only team to
finish over .500 that year. And while
many teams did have many great players, none of them could ever gel the way the
A’s did and make it work. This factor, along with the bad publicity that
followed Finley and the A’s throughout Oakland and the American League, is at
least part of the reason they were never respected at the time. As time went
on the A’s players would wear this as a
badge of an honor: it would be the A’s against the world and against Finley –
and as we shall see very soon, often against each other.
Two separate factors started the
A’s going in 1971. It is worth noting
that by 1971 the A’s were Finley’s team almost literally. Finley was such an absolute
horror to work for. The director his
farm system quit his first month working for Finley. Soon after the vice
president , traveling secretary, sales manager and much of the scouts would
quit or were fired. Not long after, he dispensed with a general manager, taking
the role himself. Within just a few years, the A’s front office had exactly
seven people. You get the feeling Finley would have just as soon managed the
team himself, but he had to know that his players were young enough and strong
enough to kill him if they had to deal with him on a daily basis. In 1971, he
found a manger capable of dealing with both him and his team: Dick Williams.
Williams had led the Boston Red
Sox to their 1967 Impossible Dream his rookie year as a manager. A steely authoritarian
who had drilled discipline into a last place team the year before, he was fired
halfway through the 1969 season. Williams knew very well what he was getting
into when he joined the A’s but he thought he could handle it. It’s worth
noting he was the only manager of the A’s who dealt with Finley on his own
terms.
From the start of the 1971 season
Williams made this rowdy, undiscipline team capable of realizing their full
potential, something his team appreciated, even though he was far from pleasant
when it came to defeat. Six games into the season, the A’s were 2-4.
Going back to Oakland for their
first road trip, they stopped in Milwaukee.
Before they left the bus, the traveling
secretary told Williams that a bullhorn, essential for the safety of the
flight, had been stolen. Williams saw this as an offense.
“Gentleman,” he said calmly. “Some
of you think you can be pricks. I have news for you. I can be the biggest prick
of all.” Then he told they were not leaving until the megaphone was returned.
Immediately, it clattered to the pavement outside. No one accepted
responsibility. “Gentlemen,” he said again. “I have no small fines. I would
suggest you stay in your rooms the entire road trip.”
Williams had dealt with Red Sox
players going over his head to owner Tom Yawkey when he was managing their and
he knew that Finley knew everything that went on in the ballpark. There were
players occasionally ratted to Finley, though no one knew who. Williams made it
very clear he knew this: “If you’ve got an f—ing problem, call Charlie. I have
five or six phone numbers where you can reach him…some of you have them. But he
ain’t here – I am – and you better live with it.”
Every previous manager had to
deal with Finley’s utter determination to control exactly what happened on the
field. Perhaps Williams got away with what he did because the A’s started to
win immediately afterwards. The next day, Rollie Fingers threw a four hitter.
Vida Blue followed up with a two-hitter. The A’s won 12 of their next 13, grabbed
first place and never let it go.
Of course the real story of 1971
was Vida Blue. Blue had lost Opening Day to the Washington Senators, 8-0. He
won his next ten games. By early May, he
was being compared to Sandy Koufax. “Funny,” the 21 year old African-American
said. “I don’t look Jewish.” He was pitching like him, however. By July 1971,
he was 17-3 and leading both leagues in
wins, shutouts, strikeouts and ERA. He
did not seem human.
The 1971 All-Star Game was, naturally,
started by Blue. However, it would be remembered for other reasons. Both
lineups had a combined thirty-four Hall of Famers. Dock Ellis, the Pirates ace
started against Blue, the first time two African-American pitchers had started
an All-Star Game. The American League beat the National League 6-4 in a game
where every run was accounted for by a home run by a future Hall of Famer.
Blue, who’d pitched two innings and
eleven inning shutout four days earlier, was not at his best: he gave up home
runs to Johnny Bench and Hank Aaron in his three innings of pitching. But while
Ellis got through the first two innings fine, he melted down in the third.
Reggie Jackson pinch hit for Blue
with a runner on. He hit a homerun that
went anywhere between 520 and 550 feet before it hit the light tower at Tigers
Stadium. Everyone wondered how far it
would have gone if it hadn’t rocketed
off it; Pete Rose remembering it years later said simply: “That ball would have
gone out of Yellowstone. “
Frank Robinson hit a two-run
homer to follow it up, putting the American League ahead. Harmon Killebrew
added to the lead with a two run blast
off Ferguson Jenkins. Roberto Clemente would narrow the gap with a home run off
Mickey Lolich but the American League held on to win 6-4. Blue got the win.
Jackson had rebounded in 1971;
his 32 home runs were tied for second place in the American League and just one
behind Bill Melton of the White Sox. The
A’s were a threat offensively; 7 of the 8 regulars managed double digits in
home runs and the one who didn’t Bert Campaneris was a threat on the bases,
stealing 34. The A’s were second in the American League in home runs, trailing
only the powerful Red Sox and second in pitching only to Baltimore. However by mid-July Blue began to run out of
gas. While many had thought early in the season he could win 30 games, after he
managed to get to 20 in August 7, he only managed to win four more the rest of
the year. As a result while Blue’s
season was spectacular by today’s standard, he didn’t quite do as well in the American
League. Mickey Lolich, one of the workhorses for the Tigers, went 25-14, and
led the league in strikeouts with 308 and an incredible 376 innings pitched.
But no one denied who the best
pitcher in baseball that year was. In his first full season Blue had gone 24-8,
struck out 301, thrown eight shutouts and 24 complete games and had a miniscule
1.82 earned run average. He became only
the third player in major league. In the aftermath of the 1971 season, he would
win both the American League Cy Young Award and the MVP, the fifth
pitcher to do both. Don Newcombe, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Denny McClain
were the four previous winners of both.
Almost unnoticed was Catfish Hunter having his
own breakout season, going 21-11 with sixteen complete games. The A’s won the
AL West by an incredible 16 games over Kansas City.
You would think this would have
made Finley happy. It did not. The A’s had become the first team in history to
draw a million fans on the road but they didn’t even come close to 900,000 at
home. When this became clear, Finley canceled Fan Appreciation Day and banned
the team from attending a civic luncheon given in their honor. The A’s fan base
reacted with only 2660 attending the final two home games of the season.
The A’s were facing off against
the Baltimore Orioles. Ostensibly they should have been evenly matched. Like the
A’s the Orioles had won 101 games that year and had the exact same balance of
offense and pitching. The problem was while the A’s had two pitching juggernauts;
the Orioles had four. In what would be the second and likely last time
in baseball history, the O’s had four twenty game winners, not just Cuellar,
McNally and Palmer, but also Pat Dobson. They had also won the last eleven games of
their season and had swept Minnesota the previous two division series.
Blue went up against McNally in
Game 1 and Blue held a 3-1 lead until the seventh, when a four run rally
climaxed by a double by Paul Blair put them ahead 5-3 and gave the first win.
In Game 2, Hunter and Cuellar
both pitched complete games. Hunter gave up seven hits, but four of them were
home runs, two of them by Boog Powell. That would have been enough as Cuellar
only gave up seven.
The A’s were out of pitching by
the time they came back to Oakland, with Blue Moon Odom and Chuck Dobson (Pat’s
brother) suffering through injuries. Left with journeyman Diego Segui, the A’s
had little chance against Jim Palmer. Palmer gave up two home runs to Jackson
and one to Bando but threw his third complete game Division series victory to
win 5-3.
The A’s played Game 3 with 17,000
empty seats. Strangely enough they had played to half-empty seats in Baltimore
as well. Despite the superb play of the
Orioles in the 1970s, they would periodically be among the lowest draws in the
American League and play their division games to half empty stadiums.
The A’s mourned their loss, none
harder than Jackson who was playing in his first postseason. Still the A’s knew
this had been a learning process and that their youth and inexperience was
exposed. Even Finley was magnanimous in defeat giving each player five
mementos, all inscribed with the logo 1971 A’s World Series.
During the World Series, which Baltimore lost to Pittsburgh in seven games,
an idea Finley had been pitching for over a decade finally unfolded. Game 4 was
the first World Series to ever be played at night. Finley had argued strongly
that the average man did not have the time to watch the World Series in the
afternoon where it had always been played and that this would be a boon to the
game.
Bowie Kuhn, by far Finley’s
greatest adversary gave in and it would slowly end up being that the entire World
Series would be played in prime time. Since that time, sportswriters and
purists have decried how much America had lost now that the greatest of all
postseasons is now being played at night when the ‘kids’ can’t watch it. As one such ‘kid’ who grew up as it was
becoming a fact of life I think this was a rare case of Major League Baseball
having to change to accept reality. It has always struck me as a flawed idea that
millions of children could grow up in America and go home while the greatest of
games was being played. This might have
worked in a pre-expansion era, but by the 1960s night baseball was becoming
necessary for the game to exist in the modern era, much less thrive. The idea
that students would be able to enjoy a game while listening to the radio in
schools is charming, but it’s not plausible for the 1970s and 1980s, much less
the age of the internet. (I also find it doubtful that so many children were
watching baseball in the daytime before.)
Baseball is a game that opposes
change, even when it might help it survive in the modern era. Finley in many ways did see the future of the
game and had ideas that were revolutionary. Many of them baseball adopted reluctantly
and they helped improve the game. Others were far poorer idea, which Finley
insisted on carrying out. We’ll be dealing with some of each in the articles to
come.
In the next article we will deal
with the 1972 A’s which brought out the best in the team and the worst in Finley.
The difference was that horribleness was about to become exposed nationwide.
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