1973 World Series: Two for the Money

In 1973 the movie The Way We Were earned awards, swelled receipts, and required Kleenex across the land. Baseball more resembled One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film released two years later. In 1973 Yankees pitchers Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich took the unusual step of swapping wives with each other. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn denounced their immorality. On April 6 the designated hitter debuted in the American League, New York’s Ron Blomberg batting just ahead of Boston’s Orlando Cepeda as baseball’s first DH. The rule change helped the AL batting average soar 20 points to .260. Today the National League still hopes to revoke it, a cause as hopeless as King Canute trying to halt the tide. In 1973 the Mets’ Willie Mays, 43, acquired from the Giants a year earlier, got his last hit, showing, he said, how “growing old is just a hapless hurt.” His team won 82 games, baseball’s ninth-best total, and somehow made the World Series. The Baltimore Orioles won baseball’s most games, 97, and somehow didn’t. In the fall classic, the A’s error-prone Mike Andrews became a folk hero, his boss Charles O. Finley made Scrooge look beloved, and Oakland became the first team since the 1961-62 Yankees to win back-to-back World Series. After a while a cuckoo’s nest looked stable.

Return to the 1972-73 offseason. Finley either traded or released Matty Alou, Mike Epstein, and, most notably, Cepeda, squandering baseball’s first regular celebrity DH. In a major deal, the A’s swapped one catcher, Dave Duncan, for another, Cleveland’s Ray Fosse. Their Opening Day lineup read: catching, Fosse; pitching, Catfish Hunter; DH, Billy North; infield, third to first base, Sal Bando, Dal Maxvill, Dick Green, and 1972 Series titan Gene Tenace; and outfield, left to right, Joe Rudi, Billy Conigliaro, and Reggie Jackson, soon a/k/a Mr. October. What The Sporting News called “the best lineup in the league” began 1973 by losing the first three games at home to Minnesota, soon seguéing to 4-8, then 9-12. On May 6 Oakland finally hit .500. A month later it was still even-steven at 28-28. The A’s finished the year 15-14 in September. What won them the AL West was a .667 stretch between June 25 and August 29. The club compiled a 94-68 record, six games ahead of the team from its former home, second-place Kansas City.

A 1920s operetta, Moon, debuted the song “Stout-Hearted Men.” The A’s men were led by Jackson, the league MVP, who averaged a team-high .293 and topped the AL in home runs (32), RBIs (117), runs (99), and slugging average (.531). Bando was an iron man, leading in A’s games (162) and hits (170) and ranking league-best in total bases (295) with George Scott and Dave May and doubles (32) with Pedro Garcia, third in slugging average (.498), fourth in home runs (29) and runs batted in (90), and fifth in runs (97). North was a revelation in center field, adding a .285 average to his team-high and AL-second 53 steals and runner-up 98 runs. Fosse hit .256, Tenace .259 with 24 dingers and 84 ribbies, and Rudi .270, down from 1972’s .305. Designated hitter Deron Johnson batted the lowest of the starters, .246, with 19 homers and 81 RBIs. Campaneris hit a next-to-last .250, offset by a team-high 601 at-bats and 34 steals. Green averaged a surprising .262 and with Campy made the A’s impregnable up the middle. For the first time a million regular-season customers – 1,000,763 – saw Oakland’s likely best-ever defense. 

A’s pitching was almost as good, keyed by a starting hat-trick: Ken Holtzman 21-13, Catfish Hunter 21-5, and Vida Blue 20-9, compiling a 62-27 record and, in the first year of the DH, impressive ERAs of  2.97, 3.34, and 3.28, respectively. Catfish led the league with an .808 winning percentage. Blue Moon Odom fell to 5-12, but Dave Hamilton was again an anchor: 6-4 in 16 games. Rollie Fingers had a deceiving 7-8 record and was third in the AL with 22 saves in 62 games. Darold Knowles, Horacio Pina, and Paul Lindblad graced 52, 47, and 36 games, respectively, saving a combined 19. The staff had a 3.29 ERA, trailing only the A’s League Championship Series foil, the Baltimore Orioles. The Birds also were league-best in triples, stolen bases, walks, and fewest opponent hits, among other things. The ALCS, a five-year-old gateway to the World Series, promised to be, as Red Barber said, “as tight as a pair of new shoes on a rainy day.” And was.

The then-best-of-five series began at Baltimore, the Orioles taking their tenth straight LCS victory dating to 1969, on a first-inning four-spot of four hits, two walks, and a hit batsman. Jim Palmer yielded five hits and fanned 12, the A’s whimpering, 6-0. Following: a next-day bang, Campaneris, Rudi, and Bando (twice) homering, decking Dave McNally and two relievers, 6-3, and tying the series at a game apiece. The second game was nip-and-tuck through seven innings. Back at Oakland, Game Three was even tighter. A 1-0 O’s lead forged by Earl Williams’ second-inning homer lasted till the A’s eighth, when Jesus Alou singled, pinch-runner Allan Lewis was sacrificed to second base by Mike Andrews, and Rudi’s single tied the score. In the 11th, Campaneris, leading off, drove a home run over the left-field fence. A’s win, giving them the game and Series lead, 2-1. Holtzman beat Mike Cuellar, each throwing a complete game, today a relic to rival the daguerreotype and corset zipper.

A day later the A’s bombed Palmer with three runs in the second inning and one in the sixth. In the seventh catcher Andy Etchebarren socked a three-run homer to key a four-run Orioles rally. An inning later Bobby Grich went deep: Baltimore, 5-4, Fingers losing. The shock was apparently too much for Oakland – or was it too preoccupied with the National Football League Raiders? On October 11 Hunter yielded only five hits to blank the Orioles, 3-0, before a mere 24,265 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, winning the LCS. “How bad is this?” said Fingers. “Walk-up playoff tickets are a breeze.” Oakland’s opponent in the World Series would be the Mets, whose .509 percentage winning the National League East was baseball’s lowest-ever pennant record. What came then was a storm.

The fall classic opened the same week that Vice President Spiro Agnew, having enlarged America’s vocabulary – e.g. “vicars of vacillation” and “effete corps of impudent snobs” – and split its public, resigned over charges of bribery as governor of Maryland. Someone called Agnew’s fall the day’s main headline. Kuhn disagreed, calling baseball’s postseason pre-eminent. Already the year mocked credulity. The Watergate scandal plunged President Nixon from 68 percent approval in February 1973’s Gallup Poll to 28 percent in October, when the Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon’s refusal to turn over court-requested White House tapes, prompted first calls for impeachment. After hitting an all-time record high, the stock market fell 400 points in a year. Films like Last Tango in Paris mocked traditional values – less sensitive cinema about sexuality than pornography masquerading as art. An Arab oil boycott was about to make it very difficult for US drivers to find enough gas to fill their car. As Yeats said, the center would not hold.

Before the Series opener at the Coliseum, Holtzman, not batting all year, took extra batting practice. He doubled in the third inning, scoring when Campaneris’s grounder went through Felix Millan’s legs. Campy then stole second, scoring on Rudi’s single. John Milner’s single scored the only Mets run in a 2-1 loss. Jon Matlack was the loser, Holtzman, Fingers, and Knowles allowing only seven hits. Game Two was a corker – in a way, a metaphor for the year. “Sunshine turned every ball into adventure,” said voiceover Curt Gowdy on the World Series highlight film, “helping produce” one of the “longest and weirdest games in Series history.”

The “Metsies,” in Casey Stengel’s term, won, 10-7, in 12 innings and 4 hours and 13 minutes, the Series’ then-longest game by 45 minutes. Willie Mays got his final hit, lost a fly ball in the sun, and missed another he once would have caught barehanded. Jesus Alou’s double gave

Oakland a 2-0 first-inning lead. Next inning Rudi’s single plated Campaneris, who had tripled. Cleon Jones and Wayne Garrett homered for New York: A’s, 3-2. In the sixth inning, the Mets loaded the bases, at which point Don Hahn and Bud Harrelson knocked in two runs. Jim Beauchamp tapped to the mound, where Knowles threw to the plate trying for a 1-2-3 double play. Instead, his wild throw made the score 6-3. In the seventh Jackson doubled for a run, Mays lost Johnson’s fly and fell down trying to catch it, and two singles tied the score at 6-6. Surprises vied: the game’s ping-pong rhythm and Mays being mortal.

In the tenth Harrelson tried to score from third on Millan’s fly to left. He appeared to avoid Fosse’s tag at the plate, but umpire Augie Donatelli bayed Out! Mays, on his knees in the on-deck circle, proceeded to vainly and frenetically protest. Like falling down, it is how millions remember him. Two innings later, Harrelson, at third again, scored on Mays’s two-out single – the final hit and RBI of his glorious career. Ahead 7-6, Milner bounced a bases-loaded grounder through the legs of Mike Andrews, the new Oakland second baseman replacing the slumping Green, and McGraw and Mays scored. Jerry Grote then grounded to Andrews, who threw past first baseman Tenace: 10-6 – his second muff of the inning. In the last of the 12th inning, Mays lost another fly. The plot had turned surrealistic. George Stone finished, saving; McGraw pitched six innings, winning. The 10-7 loss, A’s manager Dick Williams said later, made Finley “lose his mind.”

Inexorably, Nixon drowned in the Watergate affair. Finley now authored the Andrews affair. After Game Two, the A’s owner forced the second baseman to sign a false affidavit saying he was disabled, ruling him ineligible for the rest of the Series. Even Williams and A’s players backed Andrews, making Kuhn order Finley to reinstate him, after which Andrews sued Charlie for libel and slander. Before the third game, the Series tied, the A’s worked out at Shea Stadium, Andrews’ number 17 taped to their uniforms, the subject briefly back home in Massachusetts. Jackson said, “Half of my thoughts are on the mucking up that Finley has done and half my thoughts are on Tom Seaver.” He had cause to worry: Seaver thrice fanned him. In the first inning Garrett homered and Millan scored on a wild pitch. In the sixth, two A’s doubles scored a run. Rudi’s eighth-inning single plated a tying Campaneris: 2-all. That man again: In the tenth, Mays pinch-hit vainly for McGraw – Mays’s last big-league appearance. And that man, too: An inning later Campy’s single beat the Mets, 3-2.

In Game Four, Rusty Staub pricked Holtzman for a first-inning three-run homer. Odom, then Knowles, relieved, the score soon 6-0. Matlack pitched eight innings, tying the Series. Williams had told Andrews, pinch-hitting, “They’ll probably give you a standing ovation.” Both laughed – until they did. Pinch-hitting, Andrews walked to the on-deck circle, identified by the number on his uniform. The Shea crowd roared as though reliving the Miracle Mets of 1969. Finley sat frozen, finally twirling an A’s banner. Andrews grounded out, his last big-league at-bat, Charlie benching him for the rest of the Series. Next night Koosman beat Blue, 2-0. Milner’s single and Don Hahn’s triple scored the runs; McGraw got the save.  New York led, three games to two as the Series returned to Oakland. “We’d come all the way from underneath everybody,” said Seaver, “to one game from the top.”

Oakland scored in the first inning in the Mets’ first try to win their first Series since October 16, 1969: Jackson doubled, driving in Rudi. Two innings later Reggie doubled Bando home: 2-0. The Mets scored in the eighth, Ken Boswell singling, but Knowles, in a crucial Series at-bat, fanned Staub with two runners on. Fingers then got Jones to fly out to end the threat. In Oakland’s half-inning, Jesus Alou’s sacrifice fly scored Jackson as 3-1 insurance. Hunter beat Seaver, Fingers saving his second game. “It’s like the fighter who has his opponent on the ropes and can’t put him away,” said Staub, who hit .279 with 76 runs batted in during the regular season but hurt his shoulder prior to the Series. “We let the A’s get away.” Next day the Mets confronted Holtzman amid the feeling that they had treated momentum, to quote Ring Lardner, like a side dish they declined to order.

In the third inning Holtzman, as in the opener, doubled. Campy then lined the A’s first Series dinger, to the opposite field: 2-0. Later that inning Jackson’s long two-run homer found the right-center-field bleachers, Reggie triumphantly spiking home plate. Mets runs in the sixth and ninth innings were insufficient: 5-2. “There’s a little looper out to Campaneris,” said NBC-TV’s Gowdy in the Mets’ two-out ninth. “The A’s are the world champs! Oakland has won it again!” Tenace’s 11 walks tied Babe Ruth’s record, set in 1926. Garrett, whose pop Campy caught, fanned 11 times to tie Eddie Mathews’ record for futility, set in 1958. Knowles became the only pitcher to appear in every act of a seven-game series. Batting .310 with nine hits and six RBIs, Jackson became MVP. The Mets outhit the A’s, .253 to .212, with four homers to two, but were unlikely to forget leaving a Series-record 72 men on base. Williams would never forget Finley’s constant meddling in managerial personnel and strategy.

According to Matthew Silverman’s book Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season, the A’s skipper had told Rudi, Bando, and Jackson that September that he was quitting. Andrews had been the final straw. In 1967 Williams and Andrews were Red Sox “Impossible Dream” rookie manager and infielder, respectively, linked forever in New England’s heart. It enraged Williams for Finley to treat a player from that magical year like chattel. “He’s a raving maniac,” the A’s manager said, announcing he would resign before the Series was even over. “A man can take only so much of Finley.”

Finley got his pound of flesh by KO’ing Williams’s acceptance of an offer to manage the Yankees in 1975, saying he still owed Oakland the last year of his contract – thus, couldn’t work anywhere else. Later that year Finley finally let Williams manage the California Angels.  In Charlie’s view, Williams had been a hellion as A’s manager and a 1950s Dodgers journeyman. In early 1974 Finley named his antithesis as once-and-again-A’s manager: Alvin Dark, previously fired by the Giants and Indians and later canned by the San Diego Padres. Williams had won two A’s titles for the money. Dark, a Bible-touting Baptist, would need every prayer he could summon to win a third for the show.

 

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