They endure as images as stylishly stitched into the fabric of the game they dominated and illuminated as the brash green-and-gold uniforms they flaunted as a beacon of nonconformity.
They still glow vividly on brittle celluloid more than a decade old:
The handlebars on Rollie Fingers’ mustache. The audacious swing and swagger of Reggie Jackson. The desperate, twisting leap of Joe Rudi against the left- field wall. The spontaneous emotion of Charles O. Finley and Dick Williams embracing their wives atop the dugout in the bliss of World Series triumph.
They were a colorful outfit, Charlie O’s “Swingin’ A’s,” baseball’s sultans of the early ’70s. As wild and wonderful a bunch of players as ever were assembled in a dugout; rebels whose cause was excellence afield.
They could be ornery and irreverent. They feuded with their owner and fussed with each other. Yet united they soared.
“It was a unique bunch of guys. We had 25 individuals, 25 different personalities. There was a tremendous amount of talent there,” says Gene Tenace, who vaulted from obscure catcher to World Series MVP with four home runs and nine RBI in the 1972 Series.
Cut through the crust of conflict and the embellishments of time, and the achievement of those teams stands on a stout pedestal, a lofty standard for today’s playoff-bound Athletics to emulate: American League West champions five years running (1971-75), three consecutive World Series titles (’72-74). Only the Yankees have had longer runs on top.
“We all signed on about the same time and we all grew up together. We knew what we could do on the field and when we went out there it was 100 percent baseball,” says pitcher Catfish Hunter, the first from that club in the Hall of Fame. “That’s the reason we won even through the fights off the field.”
BASEBALL — OR BOXING?
Oh, those scrappin’ A’s. History conveys an image of bearded ruffians in gaudy double-knits, one fist cocked at the opposition, the other hand clawing at each others’ throats. You’d have been loath to enter that clubhouse without a hardhat and body guard.
It makes for a spicy portrayal. But it falls short of reality.
“It was all wrong. We didn’t do any more than anybody else as far as getting on each other,” says Ray Fosse, a catcher for the A’s then, one of their broadcasters now. “We did have a couple of fights (before) the World Series with the Dodgers (1974), and we had a fight that I broke up in ’74 in Detroit. But anything the A’s did at that time was blown up out of proportion, especially in the postseason because then all the writers were traveling with us.”
But things did get out of hand now and then. The fight he broke up in Detroit between Jackson and Billy North wasn’t much fun for Fosse. He injured a disc in his neck in the scuffle, had surgery and missed 12 weeks. Jackson hurt his shoulder and his average plummeted 46 points.
Other times the damage was to egos. Once in Boston, Sal Bando hit a fly ball to right field that he thought should have scored Jackson from third base. Jackson stayed where he was, and rightfully so in the view of most everyone else. But Bando, in his frustration, batted his helmet off the dugout wall. The next inning he and Reggie had a discussion on the bench.
“Reggie, being a close friend, was very hurt by it,” said Bando, now dividing time between his own business and duties with the Milwaukee Brewers front office. “When I realized I was totally wrong, I apologized. I was wrong, but (Reggie) got very quiet for about a week.”
Tenace, who was Bando’s roommate, recalls that Jackson responded loudly with his bat, stinging Cleveland with two home runs.
“I always got to the park early because I wanted to get a good seat for the show,” Tenace said.
If Tenace was in the clubhouse after one defeat in ’74, he heard his roomie storm in and proclaim that then-manager Alvin Dark “couldn’t manage a meat market.” Dark heard. He was standing right behind Bando.
The Oakland clubhouse could be just as stormy when the team was winning. Hunter has said the A’s often played their best when they were fighting among themselves.
“Playing with the A’s was a lot like a family to me. Anyone who says that families don’t fight is a liar,” Hunter said.
Said Bando: “I can tell you from being around other clubs that we had no more disagreements than anybody else. With us it was more of an aura built by the media simply because we had an owner that was very temperamental and eccentric.”
THE FINLEY LEGACY
The players who made up those Oakland teams were very much their own men. But make no mistake, they were Charlie Finley’s team. They won because of him and, at times, in spite of him.
They butted heads with him over contracts and grumbled about his penny- pinching. And though many departed under unpleasant circumstances, most praise Finley as an astute architect of those championships.
A one-time minor league batboy who made his fortune selling insurance, Finley submitted to his boyhood infatuation with baseball when he purchased the downtrodden Kansas City A’s in 1960; he moved them to Oakland in ’68. He assembled a solid corps of scouts and sent them out to beat the bushes for talent.
They turned it up in abundance, striking gold with players such as Jackson, Bando, Hunter, Vida Blue, Fingers, Blue Moon Odom, Tenace, Claudell Washington and Rick Monday. One of the best finds and the best bargain was signing shortstop Bert Campaneris out of Cuba for $500.
Finley played an active role. Anytime a scout wanted to sign a player for more than $25,000, the owner went to have a look for himself. Finley made the trip to the backwoods of Hertford, N.C., to sign Hunter for $75,000. As a bonus he gave the kid a nickname and a cover story to explain it.
When asked why he was called Catfish, Hunter was to relate a tale about being missing overnight when he was 9, and that when his parents found him by the creek he had two catfish on the bank and another on the line. The name stuck with the help of a biting curveball and pinpoint control.
That was Finley, always hatching an idea. While his young players were being nurtured on the farm, he was scheming to enliven the major leagues. He got a mule for a mascot and hired ballgirls in hotpants; installed a mechanical rabbit to feed balls to the plate umpire and signed track man Herb Washington as a pinch runner, or as he called it, a “designated runner.”
Finley was a pistol. His fellow owners regarded him as a loose cannon. Former Twins owner Calvin Griffin called him the P.T. Barnum of baseball. Finley was never shy about cutting across the grain of convention. He offered his players $300 to grow beards or mustaches. The establishment cringed when he dressed his team in Technicolor uniforms with white shoes. But within a couple of years most teams were similarly attired.
The designated hitter rule was part of Finley’s plan to put more offense into the game. He pushed for playing World Series games at night. Never could sell the orange ball, though.
“The thing I feel I contributed to the game of baseball was to make the game more interesting for the fans who pay the freight,” Finley said from the office of his insurance company in Chicago. “I wanted to put some color into the game. I think I’ll be remembered for that, and for winning five straight division titles and three straight World Series.”
Sometimes he roused hornets’ nests. He battled then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and clashed with his players and managers.
“When I first started and until we experienced success, he was a very generous and warm person, like a father to the players. As the success continued he got very difficult to deal with,” Bando says.
Player resentment festered over issues such as the lack of charter flights, playing conditions in the Oakland Coliseum and the rings Finley bought for the champion A’s of ’73 and ’74 which, according to Tenace, “looked like they came out of Cracker Jack boxes.”
“My players to a man would tell you I was the cheapest owner in baseball. I’ll tell you that as far as salary, I had to be because we were not drawing well. I had to live within our means,” Finley says. “Players are still the same, they’re never happy with what you’re giving them. I think I was being fair with them. In the same breath I’d have to say I don’t think any of them were overpaid.”
Finley’s frugal ways backfired after the ’74 Series when Hunter sued for breach of contract over a late payment of a $50,000 annuity and was declared a free agent. Hunter went on to sign a five-year, $3 million contract with the Yankees, but only after offering to return to the A’s if Finley would buy him a farm he wanted for $250,000 in North Carolina.
“I really thought Mr. Finley would get me back,” Hunter says.
“I should have bought him that farm. But I was so disappointed about him taking me to arbitration,” Finley says.
Perhaps the most bizarre Finley escapade involved the “firing” of Mike Andrews after the second baseman committed two errors in the 12th inning of the second game of the 1973 World Series, enabling the Mets to even the series. Afterward Finley announced he was deactivating Andrews and had a doctor certify that Andrews was unfit to play because of an arm injury.
In the uproar that followed, Kuhn ordered Andrews reinstated and A’s manager Dick Williams announced he would resign after the series. Andrews received a memorable ovation from the New York crowd a few days later when he pinch-hit and grounded out.
To this day, Finley sticks to his story that Andrews was hurt. Hogwash, say players who were on the team. Andrews has stated that Finley “made it clear if I didn’t sign the (medical) statement, I would never be back with the A’s.”
Even so, he was gone the next season, and so was Williams. But Finley gained some satisfaction from the incident: “Dick Williams resigned using the Mike Andrews story as an excuse, when in reality he had sneaked around my back and signed a contract with the New York Yankees.” Finley succeeded in blocking Williams from jumping to the Yankees and Williams was in temporary limbo while the A’s, under Dark, won their third title.
GLORY DAYS LOST
Through the glory years, the turmoil didn’t seem to matter. Finley went through managers like kindling wood, 17 in 20 years. In 1972, 47 players wore A’s uniforms. Finley’s juggling act was a hit. When the homegrown talent was ready for prime time, deals for players like first baseman Mike Epstein and reliever Darold Knowles and veterans such as Matty Alou and Dal Maxvill filled the gaps.
Williams melded the ingredients masterfully in 1972, when the A’s won their first title, defeating Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine in a seven-game struggle billed as the Hairs vs. the Squares.
Those were the outrageous A’s, brilliantly unpredictable.
It all unraveled sadly, dramatically, beginning with Hunter’s departure and the onset of the free agent era. Jackson was dealt to Baltimore in ’76. After that season Bando, Rudi, Fingers, Campaneris, Tenace and Don Baylor rode the free-agent express out of Oakland.
Players pointed fingers at Finley for the demise of the dynasty. “If we hadn’t lost Catfish we would have won for sure in ’75 and ’76,” Bando says. Finley blames Kuhn, whom he still refers to as “that kook.” Kuhn voided sales of Blue, Fingers and Rudi as not being “in the best interest of baseball.”
“I knew those players were going to become free agents and I had an opportunity to get $3 1/2 million from Boston and the Yankees together,” Finley says. “I was going to take that $3 1/2 million and beat the bushes again for young talent. I wound up getting nothing thanks to Kuhn.”
That was it, end of era. The mule died. Coliseum crowds dwindled to a trickle. Finally Finley sold out and went back to selling insurance.
The legacy remains.
Says Tenace, “I don’t think you’ll see another ballclub for a long time with that much talent under one roof.”
