Oakland Athletics: Westward-Ho, In Stages 

Rock and roll is the métier of choice at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (a.k.a. O.co Coliseum since 2011). For example, the Allman Brothers Band’s hit “Ramblin’ Man” can often be heard at the baseball Athletics’ 35,067-capacity home. It is fitting, given the franchise’s peregrination from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland in 1968. In particular, the Coliseum’s ups and downs deserve reliving – especially the Summitry of 1972-74. As Oscar Wilde once said: “Grief has turned her fair.”

The Athletics’ trek began with original owner, manager, and president Cornelius McGillicuddy – Connie Mack. In 1909 he opened Shibe Park at Philadelphia’s 21st Street and West Lehigh Avenue. Shibe touted baseball’s first ramps, umpire and visiting team rooms, terra-cotta trim above each archway and windows, and the cupola – the age’s skybox. The first double-decked arena was built by modern material and design – cutting off, lifting, and pushing forward the top half of a deep single deck.

After Shibe, supports linked most parks’ upper and lower levels, putting fans nearer the diamond than in the past wooden-seat age. For the first time, concrete and steel let you round façade angles behind the plate, extend stands down each foul line, and form the double deck. Shibe flaunted a Beaux Arts tower and churchlike dome behind the plate, miming the French Renaissance, and also a green wall and seamless web of angled blocks, planes, and triangles. Presiding was McGillicuddy, tall and gaunt, in suit and tie, a scorecard in one hand, signaling to fielders from the dugout, his name trimmed to Mack to fit a box score.

In 1910-14 Mack’s Athletics won four pennants, three World Series, and more games than any other club. Mack then sold or traded players, partly to pay for Shibe. Living on thin profit’s edge, he added left-field seats, then covered the pavilion. By 1925 a second tier tied third and first base, respectively, to center field and right field’s corner. “Seventy percent of the park was now double-decked,” sportswriter Allen Lewis noted. “Shibe stayed that way the rest of its life.” The park’s last big-league match was played there on October 1, 1970.

Like a bobbed cork, Shibe Park again rose in 1929-31, hosting each American League titlist, then resurfaced in the public eye in 1941 as Ted Williams went 6-for-8 there in a last-day doubleheader to finish with a .406 average. A decade later, A’s pitcher Bobby Shantz won the 1952 AL MVP award. It wasn’t enough to overcome 1954’s wretched 51-103 record and 304,666 attendance. That winter Mack, for whom Shibe had been renamed in 1953, sold the A’s to Kansas City tycoon Arnold Johnson. “We just couldn’t make a go of it,” said Connie, who retired in 1950 and died, at 93, in 1956. Instead, the franchise chose to go about 1,125 miles west, to a city that soon deserved better than it got.

“For years Kansas City had been a great Yankees farm club,” recalled Kansas City Star sports editor Ernie Mehl. “Mantle, Rizzuto, they all played here with the American Association Blues.” In 1938 Muehlebach Field was renamed Ruppert Stadium after Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert. When Arnold Johnson bought the Athletics in 1954, he renamed the stadium after the Triple-A Blues. In 1945 Johnson’s pals Del Webb and Dan Topping had bought the Yankees. After Mehl convinced him that Kansas City deserved a club, Johnson used Webb and Topping to run interference, get the AL to OK the A’s sale, and move them from Philadelphia. Kansas City straightaway gave Johnson $500,000 for Blues Stadium, renaming it Municipal.

Johnson bought the Braves Field scoreboard for $100,000, put it in right-center field, and moved the plate 25 feet toward the outfield. Dimensions fell, rose, then fell again. At Shibe Park center field had been as much as 468 feet from home plate. At Municipal, center veered from 410 to 430; left, 312, 369; left-center, 375, 408. The bottom of the light tower was in play. Right-center followed the bouncing ball from 382 to 360; right, 347, 325. Wall heights wavered: left, 10 to 38; center, 10 to 40; right, 4 to 40. In 1955 the city rebuilt and double-decked Municipal Stadium in 22 weeks:  capacity 30,296. Over time, the Athletics, like the park’s lengths, shrank.

On April 12, 1955, former President Harry Truman, flanked by Connie Mack, threw out the first ball at Kansas City’s big-league opener. “The Boss is the real fan,” Harry said of his wife, Bess. Her rookie Athletics finished sixth (in 13 years, Missouri’s A’s never made the first division) and drew 1,393,054 (quadrupling Philadelphia’s last year). The following season the club won just 52 games and attendance fell to 1,015,154, a mark the franchise wouldn’t hit again until 1973. Midway through the 1957 season, skipper Lou Boudreau was fired: over the club’s remaining nine years in Kansas City, nine other managers succeeded him. Bob Cerv bashed 38 homers in 1958. In 1960 Municipal hosted an All-Star Game, Nationals winning, 5-3. Seven Yankees made the AL All-Star team – a common trend.

“The Yankees! They called us their cousins!” cried 1955-61 A’s broadcaster Merle Harmon. “Johnson kept trading our fine players – Art Ditmar, Bobby Shantz, Ralph Terry, Hector Lopez – the Yankees got every one.” The New York Central Railroad shipped Vic Power, Irv Noren, Enos Slaughter, and Jerry Lumpe west. In late 1959, KC dealt Roger Maris to the Big Apple for Norm Siebern, Don Larsen, Hank Bauer, and Marv Throneberry. “Oh,” said Merle, “and how the trades goaded our fans.” One July night the A’s ripped New York for 27 hits. “For one night we felt like the powerhouse.” Self-effacement lit the air. “’Course, that feeling didn’t last for long.”

What did last was disarray. Through 1960 the A’s never settled above sixth place. That December, Chicago insurance broker Charles O. Finley bought 52 percent of the club from the Johnson estate, Arnold having died in March. Finley tried to bully a rental reduction. He also showed a fine baseball sense and showman’s yen to please. In 1961 Lew Krausse got $125,000 to sign. “The first great bonus baby,” said Mehl, and “the first pitcher to start without any minor-league experience.” Blue Moon Odom and Catfish Hunter signed for $64,000 and $75,000, respectively. Bert Campaneris arrived from Venezuela. Sal Bando jumped from Arizona State. Alumni Rick Monday and Reggie Jackson led baseball’s 1965-66 free-agent draft. “Finley was his own scouting system,” said Harmon, “signing them all.” He seemed less adept at winning and drawing. The style was mom ’n’ pop, not U.S. Steel.

“We’ve got nowhere to go but up,” eighth-placers once cried in an eight-team league. The 1961 A’s differed: tied for last in expansion’s new ten-team AL.  Only 683,817  found the park, two miles east of downtown. By 1964 Finley wanted to move to Louisville. The AL told him to sign a KC lease or lose the team. Campaneris, who went on to star at shortstop for the 1972-74 Oakland world champions, pitched ambidextrously for 1962 Class A Daytona Beach. At 22, Campy debuted in the big leagues with two homers in a game, his aid not enough: The 1964 club went 57-105. One day in 1965 he played each position versus California. That September Satchel Paige, 59, pitched for the first time in the majors since 1953: one hit in three innings. “If you think I’m gonna throw anyplace but your letters, shame on ya!” he growled. Finley’s shame was the Yankees: He envied, but hated, them.

On August 18, 1962, New York drew Municipal’s best crowd – an overflow 35,147. “What a social occasion,” said Mehl. “People from all over Mid-America arrived by car, bus, and train.” Many sat on a grass slope between the right-field fence and Brooklyn Avenue behind it. It was too steep to be mowed. Finley imported sheep and dyed them A’s green and gold. An employee with a shepherd’s cap, cloak, and stick managed the animals. “When the Yankees played [invariably, selling out],” laughed Bando, Finley put the sheep behind the fence. One day a man accosted him and said he had sat on sheep manure. “My pants are ruined. What you gonna do about it?” Finley had them cleaned and pressed.

By 1965 Finley, increasingly at sea, became convinced that the Yankees’ dynasty stemmed from the 296-foot right-field line at The Big Ballpark in the Bronx. His riposte: the Pennant Porch, a four-foot-high fence 296 feet from the plate. “Baseball regulations said it had to be at least 325,” said Harmon. Defiant, Finley ad-libbed a 325 line, indenting it to 296 five feet from the pole. The AL cried foul. Charlie finally painted “K.C. One-Half Pennant Porch” at the 325-foot pole. Stymied on the field, Finley again looked beyond it. Recalling Shibe’s opulence, you mused what Philly’s high society might have thought of this.

Finley built a children’s zoo on an incline beyond right field. Its cast included his mule mascot Charlie O., a Chinese golden pheasant, German checker rabbits, peafowl, a German shorthaired pointer dog named Old Drum, and Capuchin monkeys. The Kansas City Farmers Market kept them happy, Tigers pitchers once feeding the monkeys vodka-soaked oranges. Another time Finley led a young Nebraskan on a tour. “He thinks they’re going to the zoo,” said Campy. “Instead, they wandered by mistake on the field [near outfielder Jim Landis] as the pitch was being thrown.” The style was home style: A “Sam’s Baseball Parking” sign still spruces a nearby bridge. Finley listened by radio from his Indiana home. He had a soft spot for Paige, ensuring his pension. Groundskeeper Smokey Olson used Charlie O.’s blanket to warm Satch’s legs in a bullpen rocking chair.

Some thought Finley off  his rocker. “Charlie didn’t want umpires to have to stash baseballs in their pocket,” said longtime A’s Voice Monte Moore, “so he built Harvey the Mechanical Rabbit,” rigged a basket, and buried him behind the plate. “The ump would point to a ballboy, who pushed a button,” making the rabbit rise, unload stock, and return to terra firma. Finley felt umpires demeaned by cleaning home plate – thus, “Little Blowhard,” a compressed-air jet. Not everyone was aware of Finley’s brainchild. In sequence, one batter readied for a pitch, the ump pressed the button, the airjet hissed, and the hitter, stunned, leapt straight up and fell backward in the box. Little worked. The 1967 A’s finished last, drew a next-to-AL-last 726,639, and in 1968 vamoosed to Oakland. A year later the league expanded to Seattle and back to Kansas City. The A’s were succeeded by the Royals, more quickly at the box office than on the field.

Finley arrived in Oakland already with the reputation for making Jack Benny seem generous. In August 1967 the A’s flew a regularly scheduled plane from Boston to Kansas City, “Finley so cheap he spread us three across in coach,” said first baseman Ken Harrelson. Priorities: Charlie O. went first class. En route, Lew Krausse had too much to drink. Finley wanted to suspend him. Manager Alvin Dark refused, leading Finley to fire him, at which point Harrelson called Charlie “detrimental to baseball.” Next day Finley called, swearing, asking if Harrelson wanted his unconditional release. Hawk said no, wanting and needing his $12,500 annual salary. Charlie said he would call back. Instead, he had Harrelson’s roommate, Mike Hershberger, phone: “As of this moment, you’re no longer a member of the green and gold.” Released, Hawk became baseball’s first free agent, signing with Boston. Harrelson’s take: “Charlie built a lot of things – a prime-time World Series, a great A’s team, free agency – by mistake.”

Oakland’s reputation had been forged by Gertrude Stein, who said famously, “There’s no there there” – although the city had hosted minor-league baseball continuously since the Oakland Pioneers of 1879. It had never had a major-league club, however, until  Finley relocated the A’s. Starting in 1911, the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League played in homespun Oaks Park, near Emeryville.  The bleachers began ten feet off the ground. “That way,” said owner J. Cal Ewing, “we can avoid a white hitter’s backdrop.” The clubhouse also had a washing machine. “If you want to look neat on the field,” said trainer Red Adams, “you have to start from inside out.” Casey Stengel won the 1948 pennant with “Nine Old Men,” the team averaging 34 years old. The park was older. “Every time a ball hit the left-field fence,” said ex-NL batting champion Ernie Lombardi, “the boards fell down.” The Oaks moved to Vancouver in 1958 when the National League Giants arrived across San Francisco Bay. In late 1967 Finley moved into a park at Oakland’s C.W. Nimitz Freeway and Hegenberger Road. Divide and conquer may work in politics. It nearly killed baseball in the Bay.

Public funds built the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum for the American Football League Raiders. It was symmetrical, like most new 1960s multisport facilities. Lines were 330 feet long. Alleys were 378 (later, 375, 372, and 367), center field was 410 (400 in 1969, 396, 397, and 400 again in 1990), and foul ground reached to Berkeley. (“Balls kept getting caught,” said 1968 skipper Bob Kennedy. “Cost you 10 points a year.”) Tall grass stemmed triples. Heavy night air killed would-be dingers. The backstop – a notch in the stands – lay a league-high 90 feet from the plate. The Coliseum lay hard by parking lots nowhere near downtown Oakland. It was easy to reach by highway and train, but had little buzz, less community shopping and dining, and outside concrete walls made increasingly dull by the brick and sandstone exterior of the 1990s and beyond “old new” parks: a Camden Yards, a Target Field, the phantasmagoric PNC Park.

Set in the ground like a D-Day concrete pillbox, barely visible from the Freeway, the Coliseum’s appearance fit the neighborhood, plain and rough and spartan. “No cable cars or great skyline,” said Half Moon Bay native and future A’s and Giants voice Jon Miller, “just train tracks and warehouses.” A visitor descended to the ticket window, sighting a next door complex housing skating and hockey and hoops. The Coliseum – almost from the start, wags dubbed it the Mausoleum – was stark, outside and in: no arch, roof, or sculpture. Official baseball capacity was 50,000. Three tiers reached beyond each line. A single 7,000-seat bleacher deck trimmed the 8- foot (10 in 1981) outfield wall. A green hill lay beyond it. “Given the park’s sterility,” read the Oakland Tribune, “you focus on the hill, not field.”

The Coliseum premiered on April 17, 1968. First pitcher: Lew Krausse. Batter: Baltimore’s Curt Blefary. Homer: Oriole Boog Powell. Score: Orioles, 4-1. First ball: thrown out by California Governor Ronald Reagan. “One thing I’m sure of,” he said of Income Tax Day, “is that a lot of you paid your taxes.” Boos rained from 50,164. Reagan smiled. “Up to a few moments ago, I was glad to be here.” Straight off, the A’s practiced hand-to-mouth artwork. Charlie O. stepped from a luxury van, stopped at each base, and bowed. Tennessee Ernie Ford and a marching band readied for the National Anthem. “But Finley couldn’t negotiate an agreement on live music from the union,” said Monte Moore. “We played a recording.”

Finley’s $1 million right-field scoreboard flopped for several months. The pitcher’s mound lay on a steel shell for Oakland’s soccer team. The exposed shell was covered between innings. “Opening Night had sort of a wing-it feel,” confessed Charlie. A worse feel was empty seats. On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game against Minnesota at the Coliseum – the AL’s first since 1922. The game wasn’t televised. No TV outlet even covered it. Improbably, given today’s media landscape, all that remains is the last radio out. In the ninth inning Hunter faced Rich Reese: A’s ahead, 6-0, two out, and full count. Reese fouled off a panoply of pitches, then fanned.  Moore and Al Helfer divided 1968 A’s radio, Al doing the night’s last 4½ innings. From the old school, Helfer never noted the no-hitter till it happened, afraid that he might jinx it.

Al said only, “My goodness, the boy has pitched a no-hitter” at the end – a hard drinker, he may not have noticed that “the boy” had also pitched a perfect game. Either way, a tiny announced crowd of 6,298 watched. “Baseball hadn’t caught on yet in the Bay,” Moore said. “What those of little faith missed.” Bay baseball beat writer Bob Stevens believed that “Finley thought you could create new fans in the Bay Area.”  Instead, he stole the Giants’, dividing a finite market.  In 1968 both clubs drew a combined attendance of 1,711,069 versus the 1966 Giants’ 1,657,191. Oakland’s 837,466 placed eighth in league attendance. Those missing in action for the no-hitter could have seen the Athletics’ first .500 year since 1952. 

The following year the A’s installed the 24-foot-high and 126-foot-wide “Finley Fun [computer score] Board” with cartoons and other graphics. They had much to hail in 1969-70 – in one year or the other, Reggie Jackson’s 47 homers, Sal Bando’s 113 RBIs, and Vida Blue’s no-hitter – but even fewer showed up to celebrate. “Youngest [21] to no-hit anyone since Daffy Dean,” Finley said of Blue. On the other hand, the ’69 and ’70 A’s each drew less than 800,000, Vida’s gem luring 4,284.  “Charlie was hung up on his color scheme – white, gold, and Kelly green,” added Hunter. “I remember one home opener had gold-covered bases.” Ironically, more marketing gold would have reaped more green.

From the start Oakland was unsure how to view the enigmatic Finley. After high school, the son of a steelworker entered the mills, sold insurance at night, formed a company, and was a millionaire by 35. Buying the A’s, Finley badgered grounds help, phoned the dugout, hatched trades, and had a reverence for talent developed there. In 1970 he hired baseball’s Jackie Gleason to do radio and TV. Holy Cow! It might be! It could be! It was! Harry Caray became the A’s Voice for a season, selling beer, sacking pomp, and on his arrival in Oakland predicting that “here was a club that’ll soon be a world champion,” youth not  wasted on the young. “Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, and Dick Green, left to right in the infield and all in their early 20s,” he said. “Don Mincher and Mike Epstein at first base. Gene Tenace behind the plate. Joe Rudi, Rick Monday, and Reggie Jackson in the outfield.” Pitching wed “Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter and Blue Moon Odom and Kenny Holtzman. On and on.”

Quoting Ring Lardner, to some Finley seemed to treat employees like a side dish he declined to order. Caray said Finley treated him like a friend. He let Harry use Charlie’s penthouse on a lake and his Cadillac – “gave me the keys. I only wish his team had been in the Midwest where my roots were” – Caray left after 1970 to join the White Sox – “but you didn’t have to be a scientist to know they were going to be great.” Finley had one scout, carried a briefcase, lived two time zones away, yet “wound up with this world of talent.” Without free agency forcing Finley to break up the A’s, “he’d have won a ton of titles more.”

There was a lot to follow, if only Charlie could arrange it. One year he didn’t sign a commercial station to carry games in English, giving A’s rights to the UCLA-Berkeley radio outlet, its peewee signal limited to the campus and a few downtown blocks. Meanwhile, his 1,000-watt Spanish AM flagship station reached most of the area, an engineer explaining that because its tower/transmitter was installed on top of cement pillars in the bay, water as a conduit increased power. This didn’t help Oakland English-speaking listeners even as, ironically, the A’s English radio network stretched to Honolulu. A protester phoned Finley: “It’s nice they can hear you in Hawaii. Why can’t we hear you here?”

Those who heard, rejoiced. In 1971 Blue burst like Vesuvius: 24-8, 8 shutouts, and a 1.82 earned-run average, receiving the MVP Award. Oakland won the West, still drew only 914,993, and lost the League Championship Series to Baltimore. One night league executives had dinner in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Casey Stengel, 81, began giving tales the “Stengel treatment.” Suddenly the mule Charlie O. entered, wandered to Casey’s table, and nudged the Ol’ Perfessor, by now slightly wasted. “A very remarkable horse,” Stengel mused. “He hasn’t seen me for a year, and still remembers.” There was much to remember about the next three years – Oakland’s 1972-74 dynasty – baseball’s first threepeat since the 1949-53 Yankees. The minor stars changed, but the firmament’s brilliance remained.

 

Sources

Virtually all material, including quotes, is derived from Curt Smith’s books Voices of The Game, Storied Stadiums, Voices of Summer, The Voice, Pull Up a Chair, A Talk in the Park, and Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park’s Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV (published, in order: Simon & Schuster 1992; Carroll & Graf 2001 and 2005, respectively; the Lyons Press, 2007: and Potomac Books 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively.)

Books

Lowry, Philip, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All Major League Ballparks (New York: Walker & Company, 2006).

Silverman, Matthew, Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season (Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2013).

Websites

Baseball-reference.com