The next year, featuring a pitching staff that had three 20-game winners, the A’s would dominate the American League’s regular season. In the playoffs they found sweet revenge for their loss in ’71 by beating Baltimore in the American League Championship Series, reaching the World Series for a second consecutive year, this time facing the surprise New York Mets. The Mets featured the best pitcher in the game, the great Tom Seaver, and 42-year-old Willie Mays, a fading Hall of Fame talent making the final appearances of his legendary 22-year career.
The teams split the first six games, forcing a deciding seventh game for the second straight year. In the finale, Jackson, back and recharged, hit his first World Series home run on his way to being named series MVP.
After a long drought, the A’s had won back-to-back World Series.
The A’s continued their roll through the 1974 season, beat Baltimore again in the playoffs, and faced the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first all-California World Series.
This one ended quickly. The A’s were too good, too sharp, and too talented. They beat the Dodgers in five games. Hunter got a win and a save. Jackson homered, but this time it was Fingers, who appeared in four of the five games and saved two, who won the MVP.
The A’s were champions again, becoming the first and only team in baseball other than the Yankees to ever win three straight World Series titles.
History has a way of repeating itself. True to the team’s historical roots, Finley was out of money and sold off this Oakland A’s championship team the same way Mack had sold off the 1910–1914 and the 1929–1931 Philadelphia A’s teams. Oakland had its run of championships interrupted not by opponents on the field, but by big business off of it. Catfish Hunter, owed money by Finley, successfully sued him for breach of contract, became a free agent, and signed a $3 million deal with the Yankees. Jackson would be traded to Baltimore, before signing with the Yankees as a free agent. Outfielder Joe Rudi would later join the Red Sox and then the California Angels, while Vida Blue would join the San Francisco Giants. Rollie Fingers became a San Diego Padre.
Finley’s antics would rob a great team of something they had truly deserved—the right to be considered one of the all-time greatest teams—but it was only temporary, because Fingers, Jackson, Hunter, and Dick Williams, the manager of the title teams in 1972 and 1973, all ended up in the Hall of Fame. They were that good.
And so were the A’s.
The 1972–74 Oakland A’s
TOP TEN LIST
The green-and-yellow uniforms, white shoes, and distinctive personalities made the A’s a colorful team, but nothing made them more memorable (outside of winning three World Series titles in a row) than their nicknames. More than any other sport, baseball has the best nicknames. Catfish and Blue Moon have lots of company. Here are ten (okay, eleven; this one was just too hard to narrow down!) awesome nicknames.
Oil Can Boyd (Dennis Boyd, 1982–1991)
Chicken Wolf (William Van Winkle Wolf, 1882–1892)
The Only Nolan (Edward Sylvester Nolan, 1878–1885)
Moonlight Graham (Archibald Graham, 1905)
Teddy Ballgame (Ted Williams, 1939–1960)
The Yankee Clipper (Joe DiMaggio, 1936–1951)
The Say Hey Kid (Willie Mays, 1951–1973)
Pee Wee Reese (Harold Reese, 1940–1958)
Shoeless Joe Jackson (Joe Jackson, 1908–1920)
Scrap Iron Garner (Phil Garner, 1973–1988)
The Mad Hungarian (Al Hrabowsky, 1970–1982)
Saved
THE 1993 SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS
When you’re a kid, few things are more important than your favorite team. It is a member of the family, as close and meaningful as a pet or a little brother. The summers are marked by playing baseball, watching baseball, and going to games wearing the hat and colors of the home team. You and your team are one and the same.
In 1992, the San Francisco Giants, the team that had been in the same city since Major League Baseball first moved out west in 1957, announced it would be moving to Saint Petersburg, Florida. Big business and money were trying to get in the way of the fun, and fans everywhere in San Francisco were getting ready to see their team leave town. The team wanted a new stadium to replace cold and windy Candlestick Park, but the city wouldn’t build one for them. The Giants took their case directly to the public, hoping voters in San Francisco and the San Jose area would force the politicians to build them a new stadium. But the voters said no, too.
So the Giants looked and looked around the country for a place that would build them a new stadium, and Saint Petersburg was just the place. It wasn’t even a promise of what might be: The stadium was already built. All the Giants had to do was pack up and leave.
It looked like history repeating itself, really, because in 1957, kids all over Harlem and the rest of New York City had felt the pain of the New York Giants—their team since 1883—leaving town for California for the promise of a new stadium. Nearly forty years later, the kids in San Francisco were feeling the same way when the team announced it was planning to move to Florida for the same reason.
The difference was, Superman must have been on vacation when the Giants were still in New York because there were no heroes to save the New York Giants. They left for California. The San Francisco Giants, however, got lucky. A group of local businessmen bought the Giants from their previous owner, Robert Lurie, and promised to keep the team in San Francisco. They promised to do something else, too: make the team good again. The Giants had been to the World Series as recently as 1989, only to lose to their crosstown rivals, the Oakland A’s. It had been all downhill from there, culminating in a ninety-loss season in 1992. There was no way around it—this team was bad.
In the winter of 1992, the Giants went out and signed the best player in the world, left fielder Barry Bonds, to a massive (at the time), six-year, $43 million contract. Bonds had won two Most Valuable Player Awards with the Pittsburgh Pirates and, along with Ken Griffey Jr. of Seattle, was considered the best all-around player in the game. Bonds was a dream player: He could run, throw, hit for average, hit for power, and he did it with the kind of style and flair that made people notice. There was an added bonus, too: Barry Bonds was from the San Francisco area. His father, Bobby, had also begun his career for the Giants, and Barry’s godfather was none other than the greatest Giant of them all, Willie Mays.
The Giants immediately went about creating a sense of connection between the team and city, to remind San Franciscans that the Giants were as big a part of the city as the Golden Gate Bridge. They hired a new manager, Dusty Baker, who had grown up in Sacramento, just a couple of hours to the east, and hired Barry’s father, Bobby, to be the first-base coach. They pledged that the legends of the great Giants teams of the past—Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal—would be around the ballpark to meet fans. After being so close to leaving, the Giants’ new owner Peter Magowan showed the hometown fans that the Giants would forever be a part of the San Francisco community.
Once the season started, no one quite knew what to expect. Sure, the fans were excited that the Giants were staying, but they had lost ninety games the year before. Would they be any good? And in 1993, $43 million was the richest contract in baseball history. How could Bonds, as good as he was, live up to that pressure?
He did, and the team embarked on a magical summer. Bonds drove in the winning run in the very first game of the season. On May 11, Bonds hit a double and a triple, third baseman Matt Williams hit a home run, and the Giants beat Colorado to take the lead in their division.
The Atlanta Braves, who at the time were in the same division as the Giants, had been known as the best team in the league, having appeared in the last two World Series, yet all of a sudden the Giants surpassed them. The Giants were the most exciting team in baseball. During much of the first half of the season, Bonds was hitting over .400.
On June
24, the Giants rapped twenty hits and belted five home runs in a 17–2 win over Colorado, boosting their lead in the National League West all the way to nine games. The city of San Francisco, once again, was in love with baseball.
Baseball, however, is a long season. Sensing that the Giants might just run away with the whole season, Atlanta looked to San Diego, a team that was struggling both on the field and financially. The Padres were hoping to trade all of their best players to save money. They traded power-hitting Gary Sheffield to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and moved Fred McGriff, one of the most dangerous home run hitters in the game, to the Braves.
That trade changed the season. With McGriff, the Braves had the power hitter they had lacked, and they soared with newfound energy.
The fall of the Giants came quickly. On August 23, leading the division by 7 1/2 games, San Francisco hosted Atlanta. Led by future Hall of Fame pitchers Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux, the Braves swept a three-game series, dropping the Giants’ division lead to 4 1/2 games.
From there, the losses kept coming. A defeat at the hands of the Cardinals dropped the Giants into a tie with Atlanta. When they needed to win the most, the Giants lost eight straight at home to St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and the Chicago Cubs, all losing teams themselves. Now Atlanta led the division by 3 1/2 games.
As the season began to crumble, the Giants made one last run, winning eleven of their next thirteen games to catch the Braves, setting up a classic end to the season: a four-game series in Los Angeles with their greatest rivals, the Dodgers.
The Giants trailed the Braves for first place in the division by one game going into the final four games of the season. The Giants beat the Dodgers in the first game of the series 3–1. On the same day the Houston Astros beat Atlanta 10–8, leaving both teams deadlocked for first place.
The next night in Atlanta, just hours before the Giants were set to play their own game, the Braves beat Colorado 7–4. That meant the Giants knew they needed to win before stepping on the field in Los Angeles. The Dodgers scored three runs in the first inning off of John Burkett, but the great Bonds would not let his team lose. Bonds hit two home runs and a double, driving in seven runs, and the Giants came back to win 8–7 to remain tied with Atlanta.
On Saturday, Atlanta crushed Colorado 10–1, forcing the Giants to win again. They did, 5–3, leaving the final game of the season to decide it all. If both Atlanta and San Francisco won, the two teams would play a winner-takes-all one-game playoff in San Francisco the next day.
In Atlanta, the Braves won again 5–3 over Colorado to finish the season 104–58. Thus, a season that had started with the Giants thinking they would be playing in Florida continued with a summer of riveting baseball for the people of San Francisco. The Giants had already won 103 games, more than any team in baseball except for the Braves. So it all came down to one game against the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Giants had come too far, Bonds said, to lose now. The magic would continue. They would win.
They didn’t.
Los Angeles ended the Giants’ miracle run, beating San Francisco badly, 12–1. The Giants finished the season 103–59. It was only the third time since 1900 that a team had won one hundred games and did not make the playoffs. Only one team in baseball had won more games, but it did not matter. The Braves were division champions by one heartbreaking game, and the season was over.
Barry Bonds was named National League Most Valuable Player, hitting .336 with 46 home runs and driving in 123 runs. He had carried an entire team seemingly for the whole season. He and his team had done everything the fans could want, even though they fell short by one game.
In the end, the San Francisco Giants did not make the playoffs, but they achieved something greater: They made the people of San Francisco fall in love not only with baseball again, but with their team. The Giants again belonged to them. They weren’t moving to Florida or anywhere else. It was a victory almost as sweet as the World Series, and the San Francisco love affair with their baseball team has lasted to this very day.
While it did not take the pain away from not reaching the playoffs that year, the 1993 Giants would also have a lasting impact on baseball. After the season, Major League Baseball decided a team that enjoyed such a great season deserved to make the playoffs and, for the first time, starting in 1995, they added an extra playoff spot, called the wild card, allowing a team with the second-best record in its league to qualify for the playoffs. The Giants didn’t benefit that year, but they were a large part of the changes that were to come.
The 1993 San Francisco Giants
TOP TEN LIST
The 1993 Giants didn’t win the World Series. They didn’t even make the playoffs after winning 103 games. What they did do, however, was connect to their city in a way that made the victories that were to come more special. Here are ten teams that did the same for their cities, proving that winning the final game isn’t always the only way to win.
1953 Milwaukee Braves: Having left Boston, the Braves became beloved in Milwaukee because they were the city’s first big-league team. They took on the powerhouse Dodgers and Yankees, and beat them both.
1962 New York Mets: After the Giants and Dodgers left for San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1958, the National League finally returned to New York.
1995 Seattle Mariners: For the first time since the team was founded in 1977, it made the playoffs.
1995 Cleveland Indians: Cleveland hadn’t made the playoffs since 1954—a drought of forty-one years. Until this team.
1967 Boston Red Sox: After years of losing following the retirement of Ted Williams, this team went from worst to first place and returned the Red Sox to the heart of Boston.
1936 New York Yankees: The first champions since Ruth. Joe DiMaggio became a star.
1968 Detroit Tigers: After the five-day riots of 1967 that divided the city, baseball reunited the people.
1979 Pittsburgh Pirates: The team slogan of “We Are Family” became a rallying cry for the city and helped propel the Pirates to the World Series.
2013 Los Angeles Dodgers: Years of turmoil generated by a messy divorce between the co-owners of the team resulted in Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball having to take control of the Dodgers and had made the team the laughingstock of the league. With new ownership in place and an exciting team on the field, the 2013 team made baseball fun again in Los Angeles.
1985 Toronto Blue Jays: The Montreal Expos had been the first Canadian team to make the playoffs, but it was this Canadian team that turned one of the great hockey cities into baseball lovers, too.
Too Good to Be True
MARK MCGWIRE AND SAMMY SOSA
No one thought it would ever happen, but in the mid-1990s, America had finally, once and for all, become sick of baseball. More accurately, America had grown sick of the fighting between the players and team owners when it came time to negotiate a new contract. Since 1972, each time a contract expired, a work stoppage had followed. There were strikes, like the first one in 1972 and the worst one in 1981, during which the players decided not to play because they did not feel they were being treated fairly, and there were lockouts, when the owners refused to allow the players to play unless they agreed to new working conditions. The public wanted to watch their favorite sport. The players were rich. The owners were richer. They should have been able to get along.
Yet they couldn’t, and the final straw came on August 12, 1994, when the players walked out—simply stopped showing up, stopped playing games—because they did not believe the team owners were working fairly with them. The owners and the commissioner believed the players were making too much money, had too much control, and they wanted some of that control back. Ownership held so firm that they did the unthinkable: instead of negotiating with the players, they shut baseball down. No more games. No pennant races. Perhaps most painful, they cancelled the World Series for the first time in nearly a hundred years. The ye
ar 1994 became known as “The Year of the Strike.”
The last time a World Series had been canceled was in 1904, when the National League New York Giants refused to play the American League Boston Americans. It was only the second-ever World Series and the event had not yet become the monumental stage that we know it as today. Millions of people weren’t watching the games on TV, and millions of dollars weren’t at risk.
The 1994 stoppage was infinitely worse, and not only because the sport was so much bigger in terms of popularity. Fans were smart. They knew all too well that players were making millions of dollars a year, and they knew that owners were making tens of millions of dollars a year—yet somehow the players and owners couldn’t agree on how to split up all that money, so they stopped playing. There were no more games, yet the fans kept on losing. After years of forgiving baseball teams and players for the previous work stoppages, the fans finally walked away filled with anger and frustration. America’s love affair with baseball was officially over.
For the next three seasons, from the time the game returned in the spring of 1995, baseball tried to rebuild its relationship with the public, one fan at a time. Cal Ripken Jr, the great Baltimore Orioles shortstop, and Tony Gwynn, the legendary right fielder for the San Diego Padres, signed autographs before and after games. The fans came to love both players even more for the gesture, but still the bitter feelings toward Major League Baseball persisted. The hurt ran deep and it showed; both stadium attendance and television ratings plummeted.
But on the first day of the 1998 season, Mark McGwire, the hulking first baseman of the St. Louis Cardinals, hit a grand slam to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers. The next day, he hit a three-run home run, and then another home run on the third day. Three days of baseball, three home runs. By the end of April, McGwire had twelve home runs and slowly, the public, though still mad at baseball, began to take notice.
Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball Page 6