1972 A’s: A World Champion Worth the Wait

For those of you keeping score, the Oakland Athletics’ 1972-74 infield consisted largely but not exclusively of Sal Bando, third base; Bert Campaneris, shortstop; Tim Cullen and Dick Green, second base, 1972 and 1973-74, respectively; and Mike Epstein and Gene Tenace, first base, 1972 and 1973-74, respectively. Left field was Joe Rudi’s. Reggie Jackson and fleet Billy North patrolled center field in 1972 and 1973-74, respectively. Jackson moved to right field in 1973-74, replacing 1972’s Angel Mangual. Dave Duncan caught most of 1972, then was traded. Tenace, Ray Fosse, and Larry Haney crouched behind the plate in 1973-74. Designated hitter Deron Johnson preceded 1974’s Jesus Alou. Mike Hegan, Ted Kubiak, and Mangual gave new connotation to utilitymen. The brightest star, an Arcturus or Cassiopeia, was pitching: Catfish Hunter, Ken Holtzman, Blue Moon Odom, Vida Blue, and relievers Dave Hamilton, Joel Horlen, Bob Locker, Darold Knowles, Paul Lindblad, Horacio Pina, Greg Abbott – and Rollie Fingers.

The dynasty began with a most interesting 1972. It, in turn, began with a players’ lockout that cost 13 days, fairness (Boston lost seven games, Detroit six), and attendance (before August, many teams drew sparsely). The Phillies had a 59-97 record. Incredibly, their ace, Steve Carlton, won 27 games. Roberto Clemente got his 3,000th and final hit, but died on New Year’s Eve on a mercy mission to help earthquake victims in Nicaragua. According to Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, the American League batted an overall .240, leading to 1973’s designated hitter. The 1972 A’s lost seven games to the strike, also hit .240, but led the AL with 134 homers and were second with 604 runs. The A’s began wearing solid green or solid gold jerseys with contrasting white pants. Owner Charlie Finley officially changed the team name to “A’s,” banning “Athletics.” Either way, Oakland had a brilliant 2.58 ERA, topped the league with 43 saves, and had a 93-62 record.

The A’s vaulted to a 42-20 start, then lost three of four games to the second-place White Sox. This augured a banal July and August of barely .500 baseball – Oakland was 30-28 – before the A’s forged a 20-11 September-October record, winning the American League West by 5½ games over Chicago. Rudi led the “Junior Circuit” in hits (181) and triples (9) and trailed only the Yankees’ Bobby Murcer in runs (94 to 102). He had 32 doubles, 288 total bases, and a team-high .305 average that A’s voice Monte Moore dubbed “phenomenal” in the 1972 World Series vs. Cincinnati. Given the AL’s lack of offense, Moore may have had a point. He had an Okie twang: also, a hankering for hyperbole, terming “miraculous” Green’s survival of a Reds block at second base in October. Campaneris hit .240, but led the league in steals (52) for the sixth and final time. Epstein had 26 home runs, 70 runs batted in, and a .490 slugging average. Jackson hit .265, had 25 home runs, and added 75 RBIs; Bando, .236, 15, and 77; Duncan .218, 19, and 59. Paraphrasing Earl Weaver, the A’s lineup had “deep depth.”

At one time or another, Connie Mack is said to have claimed that pitching is 75 or 90 percent of baseball. All apply to the club a/k/a The Mustache Gang. Finley offered any player $500 to grow a mustache by Father’s Day. In that very different salary age, each player complied. One, Catfish Hunter, had a 2.04 earned-run average and won 20 games (21-7) for the second of five straight years, leading in 1972 win percentage (.750). Cooperstown ’87 retired 224-166 with a 3.26 ERA. “There was no one like him to win the big one,” said manager Dick Williams. Few equaled Fingers’ handlebar mustache, or his genius in relief. Once Finley voided a major pay hike by giving Rollie a year’s supply of mustache wax. Fingers repaid him in 1972-74 with 61 saves, including 1972’s third most in the league’s 21 with a 2.51 ERA in 65 games. Holtzman was 19-11; Odom, 15-6; Blue, 6-10; and swingmen Dave Hamilton 6-6 and Joel Horlen 3-4. Relievers Bob Locker and Darold Knowles finished 6-1 with 10 saves and 5-1 with 11, respectively. The A’s fought like other teams played pepper. “So what else is new?” said Fingers of a Jackson-North brawl. “Being on this club is like having a ringside seat for the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fights.”

The A’s clinched their division in September. The AL East Division was stickier. On October 2 the Red Sox readied for a year-ending series – three games at Detroit. “That schedule!” said Boston announcer Ken Coleman. “The strike made us play one fewer game than the Tigers.” The Sox led their division by a meaningless one-half game, needing two of three to win. Instead, base-running bungling – two Sox simultaneously landed at third base – cost Boston the first game, 4-1. A day later Detroit’s Al Kaline’s single scored the division-winning run, 3-1. The 1972 League Championship Series began October 7 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum before 29,536.Before it was over the LCS reminded you of the Capulets vs. the Montagues. Sparta.

The Game One prologue to the World Series was tied, 1-1, for the first ten innings. In the top of the 11th, Kaline took Fingers deep: 2-1 Tigers. In the bottom half, pinch-hitter Gonzalo Marquez singled to tie, right fielder Kaline threw the ball away, and Gene Tenace scored the winning run: A’s, 3-2. The next day 31,088 saw Odom blank the Tigers, 5-0, on three hits in a match recalled for another kind of hit. In the seventh inning, Campaneris batted, having already singled thrice and scored and stolen a base twice. Lerrin La Grow’s first pitch plunked him in the ankle, after which Campy flung his bat toward the mound, narrowly missing the reliever; at which point a bench-clearing brawl began; whereupon Tigers skipper Billy Martin had to be restrained from attacking Campaneris. Like the year’s regular-season attendance – 921,323 – the crowd was so loud as to compensate in volume for what it lacked in size. 

Behind two games to none, the Tigers flew home to “the corner of Michigan and Trumbull,” as their great announcer, Ernie Harwell, dubbed Tiger Stadium. Joe Coleman kept Detroit alive, fanning an ALCS record 14 in a seven-hit 3-0 victory. Next day the teams played the playoff’s most riveting game. Tied 1-1 after nine, the A’s scored twice in the top of the tenth inning on a Matty Alou double and a Ted Kubiak bloop single. Ahead 3-1, Dick Williams asked Bob Locker to uncork the champagne in the A’s clubhouse. Instead, Locker, Joel Horlen, and Dave Hamilton yielded two singles, two walks, a wild pitch, were pricked by an error, then allowed another single by Jim Northrup to score Gates Brown with the winning run: Tigers, 4-3. The noise in the ancient chamber, opened in 1912, was almost insupportable. Twice playing extra innings, the two combatants had split the first four ALCS games.

Tiger Stadium hosted the best-of-five’s decisive game. The score was 1-all entering the fourth inning. “Here’s the pitch to Tenace,” said Moore’s partner, the gravelly Jim Woods. “Line drive into left field – this may be tough to score on. Here’s [George] Hendrick around third. Here’s the throw coming on into the plate. The ball is dropped – ball is dropped by [catcher Bill] Freehan! And Oakland moves into the lead, 2 to 1, on Gene Tenace’s first hit of the playoffs!” The same 2-1 score held forth in the ninth. Left-handed Blue, relieving, faced Detroit’s Tony Taylor: one on, two out, a 2-2 count. “Vida gets set,” said Moore. “He kicks high, he throws. There’s a drive into center field. Back goes Hendrick. He is under it! The Swinging A’s have won the American League championship! The Oakland A’s are champions!” Odom got the win, Blue the save, the A’s the franchise’s first pennant since 1931.

For Oakland, the LCS had been, as Wellington said of Waterloo, “a close-run thing.” You could also say that of the National League titlist that emerged from its League Championship Series. Born in 1969, five of the first six best-of-five LCS had ended in a sweep. The 1972 Pirates-Reds series, like the A’s, went the maximum length. In Game Five Pittsburgh led, 3-2, Johnny Bench batting in Cincinnati’s last of the ninth inning. “Change – hit in the air to deep right!” said Reds voice Al Michaels. “Back goes Clemente! At the fence – she’s gone! Johnny Bench – who hits almost every home run to left field – hits one to right! The game is tied!” With two out, the pennant – George Foster – led off third base. Hal McRae pinch-hit. “In the dirt – it’s a wild pitch!” Michaels bayed. “Here comes Foster! The Reds win the pennant [4-3]! Bob Moose throws a wild pitch, and the Reds have won the National League pennant!”

Would the Series be as close as either LCS? Many wondered. The A’s had lost Jackson for the Series, No. 9 tearing his hamstring in the LCS. It further lengthened the long Classic odds that the Big Red Machine would flatten the A’s. Baseball’s oldest professional team entered the Series running on every cylinder. The Reds finished 95-59, winning the National League West by 10½ games. Catcher Johnny Bench hit an NL-high 40 homers, had 125 RBIs, and was the MVP. Pete Rose led the league with 198 hits. Second baseman Joe Morgan had an NL-best 122 runs and 115 walks, stole 58 bases, and with shortstop Dave Concepcion turned the double play so fast it was as though the ball was radioactive to their gloves. Starters Jack Billingham, Ross Grimsley, and Gary Nolan went 41-25. Manager Sparky Anderson was named “Captain Hook” for pulling them. He had ample reason: a brilliant bullpen. Clay Carroll, Pedro Borbon, and Tom Hall compiled 60 saves.

Beyond baseball, the Series acquired a cultural coloration. The A’s were rebellious, often fought, and had a counter-culture air. The clean-shaven Reds were a metaphor for the Silent Majority itself. In fall 1972, Middle America was in the saddle. The economy was booming, President Nixon having frozen wages and prices, cut taxes, and severed the dollar’s link to gold. Said the New York Times: “The United States is in the midst of a new economic boom that may prove to be unrivaled in scope, power, and influence by any previous expansion in our history.” Earlier that year Nixon had ended a quarter-century of estrangement between America and the People’s Republic of China, visiting in February; signed the first agreement of the nuclear age to limit strategic arms, in May in Moscow; and two weeks after the Series ended won statistically America’s greatest landslide re-election, taking 49 states and 60.7 percent of the popular vote. June 1972’s break-in by Republican officials at D.C.’s Watergate offices seemed an asterisk. Nixon appeared invulnerable.

So did the Reds. “The A’s were lightly regarded,” Ron Fimrite wrote on the eve of the World Series. We should have recalled Yogi Berra: “In baseball, you don’t know nothin’.”  Gene Tenace had hit five homers in the regular season. October’s Hero twice went yard his first two at-bats in the Series – a Fall Classic first. In the second inning, the .225 part-time catcher/first baseman bashed a two-run stiletto. Cincinnati tied the score, 2-all, in the fourth. Then: “One out in the Oakland fifth,” said NBC Radio’s Jim Simpson. “Hits this one a long way to left field down the line! Rose looking up! It is – gone! Home run, Tenace!” His second home run gave the A’s their final 3-2 edge. The next day Hunter singled in a run and pitched 8⅔ one-run innings. Rudi homered, and in the ninth robbed Dennis Menke of a potential game-tying blast, leaping face-first against the green board fence at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. “I didn’t think I had a chance,” he said. “I thought it was gone.” A’s win, 2-1. Gone was the Reds’ invulnerability, down two games to none, the Series moving west.

Before 1976, each rival home-team announcer aired the World Series. Thus, in 1972-74 Moore did half of each NBC TV and radio game at Oakland and away, respectively. Monte recalls Jack Billingham beating Odom in Game Three, 1-0 – especially the eighth inning. With Reds runners on second and third base, a 3-2 two-out count on Bench, Williams asked for time, went to the mound, called catcher Tenace and third baseman Bando over, talked, sauntered back to the bench, and pointed to first base. Fingers, Tenace, and Bando nodded at Williams’ diktat: clearly, an intentional walk. Bench readied. Fingers set and looked at second base. Said Bench: “I thought they were putting me on.” As Fingers kicked, Tenace suddenly squatted behind the plate and nabbed a slider that caught its outside corner – called strike three! – that left Bench vowing, “I’ll never be set up like that again.”

Next day’s affaire was just as close: Six of seven Series games, in fact, were decided by one run. In the fifth inning, Tenace homered: 1-0 A’s. Bobby Tolan knocked in Concepcion and Morgan in the eighth: 2-1 Reds. In the bottom of the ninth inning, four straight singles, including three pinch-hits, set a World Series first and brought Oakland within a game of another first – a title. A’s win, 3-2, leading the Series three games to one. How could Cincinnati survive? Courageously, as it happened. In Game Five the Reds braved that man again. “McGlothlin is ready, throws,” Jim Simpson said of Tenace, batting with two A’s on base. “Long drive – left field! Back goes Rose, looks up. Home run! His fourth of the Series! It’s 3 to 1, Oakland!” The Reds rallied one run at a time, Rose’s ninth-inning single giving them a 5-4 edge. In the bottom of the inning Morgan’s great throw doubled pinch-runner Odom at the plate – the potential tying run. Cincy was alive – till when?

Game Six was a clunker: Reds, 8-1. The finale, though, was taut and exhausting, like the whole. Tolan’s first-inning error gave the A’s a run. Hal McRae’s sacrifice fly tied things in the fifth. An inning later Tenace and Bando each doubled in a run: 3-1, A’s. Cincinnati scored its second run in the eighth inning , but Fingers said no mas. “Rose steps in,” Simpson said in the ninth. “He is two-for-four today and has made great contact all four times. The other two were driven deep to the center-field wall … Fly ball, deep left field! Rudi goes back near the warning track, is there. The World Series is over! And on one pitch, Rose is out, and the underdog Oakland Athletics win their first world championship since they were in Philadelphia in 1930! The A’s win it, 3 to 2!”  Neither team pitched a complete game. The two teams hit an identical .209. Oakland was outscored, 21-16. Fingers relieved in six games. Tenace, the Series MVP, had four homers, 9 RBIs, and a .348 average.

The contrast was indelible: Kiwanis vs. camp, Main Street vs. Woodstock, gray/white vs. green and gold. A Series to shout about. A classic Fall Classic. Its last tableau was unforgettable. On the roof of the A’s dugout, Charlie Finley and Dick Williams kissed their wives, the straw-hatted A’s Swingers Band playing Finley’s favorite song. “Sugartime” lyrics went: “Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at supper time. Be my little sugar, and love me all the time.”

At that moment, Oakland loved Charles O. Finley. “Mr. Finley has been wonderful to me,” Williams said, full-heartedly. One year later, he pined to punch Charlie in the nose.

 

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

Fimrite, Ron, The World Series: A History of Baseball’s Fall Classic (New York: Time Inc. Home Entertainment, 1997).

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).

Thorn, John, Peter Palmer, and Michael Gershman, Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball (Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing, 2001).

Websites

Baseball-reference.com