by Gruver , Ed;
Rudi was an excellent all-around player but not a naturally gifted one. He played baseball and football in high school, but his father, Oden, a product of Norway, never saw him play. Where Tenace’s father had pushed his son to play ball, Rudi’s father prodded his son not to play. Rudi remembered it as a “constant battle” between him and his father, who was from the old country, where baseball and football weren’t part of the culture. Oden thought his son should be doing more constructive things—homework, for instance. He didn’t understand Joe’s need to practice and would tell him to stop the foolishness and concentrate on preparing himself for a real career. Oden reminded his son that in Norway young men worked hard learning to be shipbuilders, fishermen, or engineers. They didn’t waste time fooling with bats and balls.
Rudi enrolled at Downey High in Modesto as a sophomore and despite being big for the position—he was 6-foot-2, 215 pounds—played shortstop on the baseball team. He was also a heavyweight wrestler and played split end and cornerback. Rudi loved defense and thought seriously about playing college football rather than baseball. But when he saw that there would be players weighing up to one hundred pounds more than he, he decided to stick with baseball.
Hit on the left hand by a pitch from future major leaguer Pat Jacquez—Rudi would stay in the game and hit a two-run homer—Joe’s baseball career was in jeopardy. Oden believed the injury—a broken bone in the hand—was a sign that sports was ruining his son. The four or five scouts following him believed it ruined Rudi’s hopes of a big league career. One scout stuck by him. Don “Ducky” Pries of the Athletics called Rudi to check on him, drove him to the doctor’s office, and told him that because some of the players on the Athletics were older, Rudi would have a better chance of making it to the majors with the A’s.
Rudi signed and in 1966 was assigned to Modesto, one of the top teams in the California League. He hit .297 with 24 homers and 85 RBIs and, more important, Oden began attending his games. Another benefit of playing in his hometown was that Rudi was able to marry Sharon Nickerson six months sooner than he had planned.
Rudi’s sweeping swing had been good enough for minor league ball, but he struggled when called up to the majors in 1969. His turnaround came in the spring of 1970, when he began working with A’s hitting guru Charlie Lau. Rudi credited Lau for changing his whole batting style.
Rudi had been using an open stance at the plate, but Lau instructed him to put the bat on his shoulder and move his left foot in closer. Lau also taught him the mental aspects of hitting. Rudi thought Lau’s instructions enlightening and likened the experience to going from the boonies to the big city and finding the metropolitan library.
Rudi spent the ’71 season splitting time between major league baseball and the Marine Reserves. By ’72 he was lining hits to all fields and ranked either first or second in the league in batting average, hits, doubles, and triples. It wasn’t just his hitting that improved. DiMaggio, an A’s outfield coach in 1968–69, had taught Rudi how to go back on drives hit over his head. Bob Kennedy, the A’s first manager when they moved to Oakland in 1968, was also instrumental in Rudi’s development defensively. Kennedy had been a strong-armed outfielder in a major league career that ran from 1939 to 1957, and he helped make Rudi a much better defensive player.
The A’s awesome display of defense wasn’t over. Geronimo followed with a low liner that seemed destined to be a double to right. Mike Hegan, playing first base for Epstein in Oakland’s late-innings defensive platoon, dove to his right. Smothering the ball on the turf, he turned and scrambled—lobster-like—and beat the speedy Geronimo to the bag.
Williams said Hegan blocked everyone’s view of Geronimo’s pretty hit with a prettier dive to stop it. Hegan had been playing the baseline to prevent an extra-base hit down the line. While the outfield was still soaked in sunlight, late-afternoon shadows covered the infield. It was difficult to see the ball in those conditions, and when Geronimo pulled Hunter’s pitch, Hegan reacted by diving to his right and reaching for the ball. Following Rudi’s gem, Hegan’s rob-job was another game saver.
Rudi’s kangaroo catch is more famous, but some believe Hegan’s stop just as impressive. Williams praised his defense-minded first baseman in the locker room, telling reporters Hegan was the best left-handed fielding first baseman in baseball. “And,” Williams added, “that includes Mr. [Wes] Parker.”
The statement angered some National League observers since Parker, a slick fielder for the Dodgers, was considered by many the best defensive first baseman in the game. Williams, who had played first base in his major league career, considered Hegan the finest fielding first baseman he had coached in his twenty-one years as manager. That included Steve Garvey, whom Williams had managed in San Diego and who he claimed broke Hegan’s 178-game errorless record through a fluke.
Pinch hitter Hal McRae followed with a single to left that plated Perez. Hunter was fatigued but still fighting for the final out. Williams headed to the hill.
“I don’t want to come out,” Hunter said. “I’m still throwing good. I’m not missing by much.”
Moments earlier the Catfish had been badgered by Bando. “You’re not even trying!” Bando yelled from his position at third base. Hunter knew it was the captain’s way of encouraging his pitcher in tough spots, trying to get the Cat so mad that he would work his way out of the jam.
Williams, however, was thinking about the great plays made by Rudi and Hegan, particularly the latter. Geronimo had smoked the ball, and his drive sounded to Williams like a sure double. He had left Hunter in two hitters too long, Williams thought. Rudi and Hegan had taken their skipper off the hook, but in Williams’s mind they shouldn’t have had to.
Williams signaled for Fingers. Anderson answered with pinch hitter Julian Javier, a Series-seasoned veteran of the Cardinals’ title teams of the 1960s. Oakland’s lead had been trimmed to 2–1, and Cincinnati had the tying run on base in the person of pinch runner Concepcion. With the roaring of a sold-out stadium serving as a backdrop, Simpson called the final pitch of Game Two: “Big curve ball, it is popped up, in play. . . . Hegan comes off first base, has it! Oakland goes home leading two games to none!”
Williams was ecstatic. “We’d have been thankful for a split,” he said.
The Big Red Machine, a team so heavily favored that it was predicted by some pundits to win the best-of-seven series in three games, had dropped the first two in its own stadium. Was it possible, Bench wondered, the Reds were down two games to Oakland?
It suddenly seemed as if all the leaves were brown and the sky was gray in Cincinnati.
The A’s, meanwhile, were California dreamin’ as they prepared to wing westward.
14
The team flights from Cincinnati to Oakland provided a startling study in contrasts. Trailing 2–0 in the World Series and facing the fact that no team had ever lost the first two Series games at home and come back to win it all (the 1985 Kansas City Royals would become the first team to do it), the Reds were singing and dancing in the aisles.
What had been billed as a breezy coronation for the Big Red Machine had become a brutal battle, but there was Johnny Bench leading the Reds in a rousing rendition of “The whole town’s batty / About Cincinnati.”
The Swinging A’s, true to their combative nature, were set to start swinging at each other. Benched catcher Dave Duncan screamed in the face of owner Charlie Finley, and manager Dick Williams and hulking first baseman Mike Epstein nearly came to blows.
Williams said Epstein had cursed his way into the dugout in the sixth inning of Game Two after drawing a walk from Pedro Borbon and then being replaced by pinch runner Allan Lewis. Williams said he had been planning on substituting defensive specialist Mike Hegan for Epstein regardless and felt Hegan’s stunning play at first on Cesar Geronimo’s liner in the ninth justified his move. Epstein acknowledged that Hegan’s play was “a beauty” but believed he could have done the same. Both men were left-handed, meaning it was to their benefit
to not have to suddenly turn and make a backhanded stab, which they would have had to do had they been right-handers. Epstein, however, had committed 12 errors in ’72 and had a .990 fielding percentage. Hegan, albeit playing just over one-tenth of Epstein’s 1,101 innings that season, fielded his 175 chances flawlessly.
But Big Mike was a proud man. A product of the Baltimore Orioles farm system, Epstein drew a Star of David on his glove while playing for Class AAA Rochester. He got his nickname, “Super Jew,” in the minors when he launched a homer over the light tower in right-center and third base coach Rocky Bridges told him, “You launched that one in the night, you Super Jew.” A clubhouse kid picking up bats nearby heard it, and when Epstein arrived at the ballpark the next day, “Super Jew” was written on his locker and his equipment. The nickname stuck, and though Epstein didn’t like the phrase, he took it as a compliment.
Epstein believes his “Jewish side” gave him tenacity and perseverance and allowed him to overcome his doubts and survive in the majors. In ’72 the bull-like Epstein—he had played fullback at the University of California at Berkeley for future NFL head coach Marv Levy—ranked third in the AL in homers (26), fifth in slugging percentage (.490) and OPS (.866), and sixth in on-base percentage (.376).
Big Mike thought Williams’s taking him out of the game made him look like a goat. Williams thought Epstein selfish. On the flight home, the A’s were imbibing while getting hit in the butt by the trombones of Finley’s roving Dixieland band members. Williams, Scotch in his hand, found himself confronted by an angry Epstein.
“I feel you don’t appreciate me,” Epstein said, and Williams thought Big Mike was slurring his words. “I’ve been busting my ass all season and you take me out of a World Series game and I don’t appreciate it. I don’t want it to happen again.”
Williams could take everything but that last line. Epstein didn’t want it to happen again? To the surprise of all who thought they were in the midst of a party, Williams began screaming back at Big Mike: “You get your ass to the ballpark tomorrow and be ready to play! I’m the manager and I’ll do whatever I want!”
Williams wanted to slug Epstein, and he knew Epstein wanted to slug him. “We nearly went fist city,” Williams recalled in his autobiography. Here were the A’s, two wins from a world championship, and the skipper wanted to beat up his first baseman and vice versa. Even the A’s, Williams thought, weren’t that crazy.
Oakland’s fans, however, were going crazy. Despite repeating as Western Division champions, the A’s ranked fifth in the twelve-team American League in attendance. Yet some eight thousand fans had crowded the airport when the A’s plane brought them back from a five-game postseason road trip. Accustomed to lukewarm loyalty from fans, the A’s were shocked by the reception when they returned from Cincinnati. “Where Is the Love?” was a 1972 hit song by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, and the A’s often wondered the same when it came to fan support.
“I can’t believe we’re in Oakland,” a startled Sal Bando said upon seeing the throng.
After their 707 jet, bearing a huge picture of Finley, his mule Charlie O., and the words “Good Luck Swinging A’s” on its nose, taxied to a stop, some players and their wives were mauled by the delirious mob. A few of the A’s bolted for the team buses rather than the terminals. Finley exploded. Any player too scared to go to the terminal and show appreciation to the fans, he shouted, was someone he didn’t want on his team. He ordered Jimmy Piersall to “round up these cowards and bring them in here.”
One player unafraid of the Oakland crowd was Bert Campaneris. The A’s scrappy shortstop had been booed loudly on each of his plate appearances in Cincinnati. Oakland fans at the airport greeted him with thunderous approval. They were aware that without their speedy sparkplug for the final three games of the American League Championship Series against Detroit the A’s had lost twice before prevailing. With Campy back in the lineup Oakland had beaten Cincinnati two straight.
Campaneris was the first A’s player to speak to the roaring crowd, and it reacted as if he was a rock-and-roll idol. Teenaged girls swooned, and people of all ages reached out to touch him. Homemade signs were held high showing their support for the roadrunner.
The fans’ outpouring of affection was a bit surprising, considering that it was offered at the time that everyone knew Campy Campaneris but few knew Dagoberto Campaneris. Born in 1942 in Pueblo Nuevo, Cuba, he began playing ball as a young boy. He loved the game so much that he worked as a groundskeeper just so that he could be close to the playing fields. Campaneris tells people he never worked while in Cuba; all he did was play baseball.
Campaneris’s father played as well, and because he was a catcher, his son started out as a catcher. Signed in 1962 by scout Felix Delgado, it was apparent that Dagoberto, weighing all of 142 pounds, wasn’t going to be a catcher any longer. The transition to shortstop was a painful one since Campaneris lacked the gifted hands of a natural fielder.
What he did have was speed and quickness. He pilfered 27 bases his first year in the minors in 1962, another 25 two years later. Yet when he made his major league debut with the Kansas City Athletics on July 23, 1964, it was his surprising power that gained notoriety. He hit the first big league pitch thrown to him—a delivery made by Minnesota’s Jim Kaat—for a home run, then homered again. At the time, he was just the second man in major league history to have two home runs in his first game.
One year later Campaneris led the league in triples and steals and snapped Luis Aparicio’s run of nine straight stolen base titles. In a thirteen-inning game against California on September 8, 1965, Campaneris became the first man to play every position in a single game. When he took the mound for an inning in the eighth, he pitched ambidextrously, throwing right-handed to righty batters and southpaw to left-handers.
To improve his fielding he took hours of infield practice. Still he struggled. He made 40 errors in ’65, 30 at shortstop alone. Two years later he tied for the league lead with another 30 errors and committed 34 in ’68. By 1970 continued hard work helped him dramatically reduce his miscues, and then A’s manager John McNamara was calling Campy “one of the finest defensive shortstops in the league.”
Teammate and fellow Cuban reliever Diego Segui said Campaneris was always thinking and talking about baseball. Campy made a science of running the bases and stealing. He studied pitchers and catchers and developed multiple ways of sliding into the bag. One of his favorites was to keep his left leg stiff, thus giving the fielder covering the base little more than the tip of Campy’s white cleat to tag.
By 1972 Campaneris had established himself as the AL’s premier base pirate over the previous decade. What kept him from becoming more well known was a language barrier. Quiet and contemplative, he struggled with his English. He believed the language gap caused reporters to avoid him. It cost Campy interviews, and some believed it would cost him even more—the 1973 World Series MVP award that went to Reggie Jackson.
There was no shortage of love for Campaneris on the A’s return trip to Oakland. Nor did Campy feel anything but genuine regard for the synthetic surface in Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. Oakland infielder Dal Maxvill thought it didn’t take long for the A’s to acclimate themselves to the Astroturf. Maxvill said Campaneris and Bando liked the artificial surface because of the true bounces and because the ball got to them quicker.
There was nothing artificial about the angry words surfacing between the two teams. Like the hit song that year from the group America, the heady A’s felt as if they were cruising California’s Ventura Highway in the sunshine, the free wind blowing through their hair.
“We’re handling Cincinnati easier than we did the Texas Rangers,” Vida Blue crowed.
“Before the Series is over we’ll thank Vida Blue,” Sparky Anderson shot back. “I’ve always heard that when you’ve got an athlete down, you let him sleep. Don’t wake him.”
The Reds were seizing on every slight, perceived or real, as motivation. In
the A’s clubhouse following Game Two, Catfish Hunter told reporters he thought the Big Red Machine might have underestimated the speed of his fastballs. The Cat’s comment caused Pete Rose to explode in anger. “He’s a good pitcher but I’m not gonna make him out to be a super pitcher because he’s not,” the Reds’ captain spat. “If they don’t get those two plays in the ninth, he’s just a super loser.”
Rose compared Hunter to lesser known National League pitchers Rick Wise of the Cardinals and Jim McAndrews of the Mets. “That’s about how hard he throws,” Rose said. “He certainly is no Tom Seaver or Bob Gibson.”
Now it was Hunter’s turn to be angry. The Cat said he might deck Rose the next time he pitched against him. The Catfish Hunter–Charlie Hustle imbroglio was part of what was becoming a white-hot war of words between the two teams. At the same time, Rose coldly analyzed the Big Red Machine’s lack of offense over the first two games.
The Reds had rolled over opponents that summer with a strategy that was wonderfully simple: table-setters Rose, Morgan, and Tolan got on base, and big guns Bench and Perez brought them home. During the regular season Morgan reached base 282 times, Rose 278, and Tolan 221. They combined to score 317 runs, steal 111 bases, and reach base at least once in 153 of the Reds’ 154 games that season.
But as Sporting News writer Lowell Reidenbaugh noted at the time, the Big Red Machine had not been facing the A’s armada of arms in the regular season.
Rose scoffed. “Don’t tell me their pitching is that much better than Pittsburgh’s,” he snapped. But he acknowledged the A’s had kept him, Morgan, and Tolan from hitting.
“I don’t want to make any excuses, but it’s just that we put so much into that series with Pittsburgh,” said Rose, overlooking the fact that Oakland had overcome Detroit in an equally emotional five-game series.