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The Forgotten
Dynasty
Ron Fimrite covered the A's for Sports Illustrated. Here
are his thoughts on the 25th anniversary of Oakland's first
championship.
They seemed at the time like a team for the ages.
Everything about them—their inimitable style, their
indomitable spirit, their triumphs over even their own
folly—seemed destined to reward them with everlasting
fame. They offended convention with their
verdant uniforms and foppish white shoes. They grew
mustaches and sideburns at a time when ballplayers, if not
the general run of young men, were clean-shaven. They
fought among themselves like schoolchildren. Their owner
was as self-consciously
"colorful" as any of baseball's legendary eccentrics. And they
won three World Series championships in a row, the only
team other than the Yankees to accomplish that feat. And
they did so not with the raw power of the old Bronx Bombers
but with guile and
finesse.
And yet the Oakland A's of the early 1970's—the
self-styled Swingin' A's—are all but forgotten today,
even, I fear, in Oakland. Why is this? Well, it may be
because in this electronic age of the here and now, history
itself has become, more than in name
only, a thing of the past. This is the age of fleeting
celebrity, not lasting fame, a time when heroes of another
time are recalled, if at all, only dimly by even those fans
who fancy themselves
knowledgeable.
Then again, maybe not enough people actually saw those A's
perform their wonders. The 2.8 million total home
attendance for the three championship seasons of 1972, '73
and '74 did not equal the 2.9 million who saw the A's of
Mark McGwire and Jose
Canseco in 1990 alone. And it is those Bash Brothers teams that,
perhaps because of chronological proximity, people
remember. Of course, those earlier A's had for an owner a
Barnum manqué so intent on stealing the thunder from
his players that he outraged the
community whose support he so ineptly courted. Charles O.
Finley never did learn that fans didn't come to the
ballpark solely to see him and his mule. If there is any
justice at all in baseball it is that he, too, is little
remembered
today.
But give Charlie
credit: He did know how to build a ball club. And with his
penny-pinching, self-aggrandizing ways, he united his
players against a common foe—him. If they couldn't take
out their frustration on their employer, they certainly
could on
opposing teams. "Character," not overwhelming
ability, is what made these teams tick, in the opinion of
third baseman Sal Bando, their captain. Although character
does seem an odd word to use in regard to players who
indulged in locker-room fistfights even
on the eve of World Series games. But, protested Bando,
"these are people who are not satisfied with making a
big salary. They want more than that. They want to
win."
And so they did. Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Rollie
Fingers and Jim (Catfish) Hunter were the established
stars, but lesser lights such as Bando, Joe Rudi, Ken
Holtzman, Vida Blue, Dave Duncan, Billy North and Campy
Campaneris all had their moments.
What is perhaps most remarkable about these teams is their
modest statistics. These A's didn't win 100 games in any of
their three championship seasons. They never had a team
batting average above .260 or hit as many as 150 home runs.
Only one player,
Rudi, hit above .300 in any of those years, and only Jackson
hit more than 30 homers. No player scored as many as 100
runs. And the team batting averages for the three World
Series victories were .209, .212 and
.211.
They won on pitching, brilliant defense and a killer
instinct that led them to capitalize on the most minuscule
mistakes. "We wait for the door to open," said
Jackson. "And when it does, we go
through."
Those of a sociological bent should not make too much of
their well-trumpeted rebelliousness, since it was largely
directed at one man—Finley. No, these were not 1970s
hippies. The mustaches were a gag, the garish uniforms
merely tolerated, the anger
wholly justified. They were merely good ballplayers and,
basically, good guys, the sort who instead of stiffing a
newsman after a game would buy him a
drink.
After their last World Series triumph,
I wrote that because of their own and their owner's often
foolish antics, the A's seemed doomed to be remembered more
as clowns than champions. I was wrong. Sadly enough, I'm
afraid they're not even remembered for
that.
Posted: Fri October 10,
1997
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