Dark Spring: 1974 Auto Pilot Model

The 1972-73 A’s were the first team not named the New York Yankees to win back-to-back world championships since, well, the A’s. Some four decades and two franchise relocations earlier, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics had claimed the 1929 and 1930 world championships. His team reached a third straight World Series in 1931, but the A’s fell in seven games. Oakland’s Charles O. Finley was not Connie Mack, who managed the team he owned and built. Tempted as it might have seemed to follow Mack into the dugout as the ultimate hands-on owner, Finley needed a manager for his championship team. Yet he was in no hurry after what happened with the last man to hold the position.

Manager Dick Williams had made up his mind to quit when the 1973 World Series ended, win or lose. Finley had been lambasted, reprimanded, and fined for his treatment of infielder Mike Andrews, who committed two errors in the 12th inning of Game Two. Finley pressured Andrews to sign a statement saying he was hurt, thus vacating his roster spot. With Andrews forcibly placed back on the roster by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Oakland rallied to beat the New York Mets in seven games. Williams then quit, true to his word. Finley’s word was a different matter.

In the victorious locker room, NBC cameras running, the A’s owner said he wouldn’t stand in his departing manager’s way of getting another job. Yet Finley refused to work out a deal to let Williams out of his contract to take over the Yankees. Finley dug in his heels even deeper when the Yankees held a press conference, dressed Williams in a pinstriped uniform, and introduced him to New York at a fancy media shindig. Outgoing American League President Joe Cronin upheld an existing A’s contract, barring Williams from going to New York. Ralph Houk, who’d left the Yankees and first-year owner George Steinbrenner, took over as the manager in Detroit. Former Pirates manager Bill Virdon was the afterthought choice to manage the Yankees. By the time manager musical chairs ended, the world champion A’s were left waiting. For four months.

While Finley stayed silent on his managerial vacancy, others chimed in. Dick Williams –powerless to work in baseball yet still being paid by the A’s – stated that team captain Sal Bando would make a fine player-manager. Bando, not yet 30 years old that winter, publicly turned down a job that hadn’t been offered. Likewise mentioned in the press was Dave Bristol, who had preceded Sparky Anderson in Cincinnati and was the first manager of the Milwaukee Brewers prior to his 1972 dismissal by owner Bud Selig.1 Bristol remained Montreal’s third-base coach in 1974.2  Frank Robinson, coming off a 30-homer year at age 38 with the Angels, was an intriguing name bandied by writers and by Oakland right fielder Reggie Jackson, who’d been managed by F. Robby in winter ball in Puerto Rico in 1971. Though Robinson would soon become baseball’s first African-American manager, it would be with the Cleveland Indians in 1975.3  Other names came and went, while those expecting Dick Williams to show up in Arizona, slip on an A’s uniform, and finish out his contract would have a very long wait.

With spring training just days away, Finley got on the phone and summoned a manager he’d already unceremoniously fired. Now Alvin Dark was unceremoniously hired.

Finley offered Dark a one-year, $50,000 contract, with bonuses for winning the division, the pennant, and the World Series. Dark would be working for the man who’d fired him, rehired him, and fired him again in an eight-hour span because of a raucous Kansas City A’s plane flight in August 1967. He would take the place of a man who preferred to quit a two-time world champion rather than put up with the owner for one more day.

The Bible-quoting Dark had been a football star at Louisiana State, Rookie of the Year shortstop for the pennant-winning 1948 Boston Braves, igniter of the ninth-inning rally that culminated in the 1951 “Shot Heard Round the World,” a .400 hitter in two World Series as captain of the New York Giants, manager of the San Francisco Giants in the 1962 World Series, and, after his first term under Finley, manager and general manager of the Cleveland Indians for four years.4 Dark called Finley’s contract “better than I’ve ever had in baseball.” Contract details later revealed that Finley essentially had Dark on a day-to-day string. Against standard baseball policy, the manager would not be paid the rest of his salary if he was fired during the season.5 

Finley introduced Dark as A’s manager on February 20, 1974, just three days before the start of spring training.6  Good thing those games didn’t count.

The first exhibition season since 1971 not interfered with by labor disputes saw the A’s go 8-16, their worst exhibition mark in the six years since they changed their spring home from Florida to Arizona. At the same time, though, the two-time defending champions also set a new high with more than 2,200 fans per game at Mesa’s Rendezvous Park.7  Spring training records often have no correlation to the regular season, as evidenced by the three-time AL West champions finishing with losing records in two of the previous three springs – and that was with a manager not hired as spring training started.

Coming off two straight World Series victories, anything less than a world championship would be considered a letdown. Even if Dark won, Williams, Finley, and the players would get the credit. But Dark understood what he was getting into. Having managed the A’s in 1966-67, he was not only familiar with the unpredictable owner, he was familiar with several players. And not all of those players had fond memories.

Before joining the A’s the first time in Kansas City, Dark had managed the San Francisco Giants for four seasons. He was not retained by San Francisco in the wake of a 1964 Newsday article featuring quotes not complimentary to the black and Latino stars on the Giants. In a matter of weeks he went from being a hot managerial commodity sought by both New York teams to not managing at all. He latched on with the A’s as a consultant in 1965 and a year later took over in Kansas City as Finley’s sixth manager in as many years.8  It was a new start for Dark, but the stain on his reputation remained. After Blue Moon Odom was demoted from Kansas City to Vancouver in 1967, the outspoken pitcher accused his manager of racism.9  Odom, who had a 5.15 ERA upon his demotion, returned to the A’s starting rotation and lost a 14-1 blowout two games before Dark was fired in ’67. Yet Odom did not forget the demotion. After Dark joined the Indians the following year, Odom took special delight in beating the Tribe. He tossed four shutouts plus a 2-1 victory against Cleveland in Dark’s first two seasons with the Indians. “That man never gave me a chance,” Odom told Sports Illustrated about Dark in 1969. “Man, every time I make a good pitch or strike out a guy on his team I look right at him in the Cleveland dugout.”10

Odom was now in Dark’s dugout and coming off a 5-12 season and 4.49 ERA in 1973. But Dark, reaffirmed in his religious faith, vowed to be less confrontational: “Being a born-again Christian, there is no color involved or race involved as far as love is concerned. He made a mistake, that’s all.”11  Dark looked beyond past problems – and the pitcher’s regression on the field – to anoint Odom as the team’s fourth starter. But when Odom struggled during the season, Dark shifted him to long relief.

The back end of the rotation was a problem throughout ’74, though when a team has starters like Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, and Ken Holtzman – all 20-game winners in 1973 – the back end can look ragged. One pitcher who was not part of the mix was Chuck Dobson. Elbow problems and ineffectiveness had kept him to only one major-league start the past two years. Faced with paying Dobson a major-league salary of $28,500 to stay in Triple-A Tucson in 1974, Finley released the right-hander in March. Dark had wanted to keep Dobson in the organization as insurance, but it was clear that the manager would not go against his owner’s decisions.12  Even when it came to pinch-runners.

Rosters in the 1970s generally had nine or ten pitchers, which allowed teams more backup infielders, outfielders, and catchers than seen on most 21st-century rosters. Even then, as now, it was generally accepted that a player needed to be able to play a position to merit a major-league roster spot. Unless Charlie Finley was calling the shots.

On March 16 Finley announced the signing of a new player – and a new position. Herb Washington, a former Michigan State sprinter and the owner of the indoor track record for the 50- and 60-meter dashes, became the A’s “designated runner.” Finley had long pushed for implementation of the designated hitter, which came into the American League the previous year, but he actually was one of four AL owners to vote against the DH rule because there was no proviso for a designated runner.13  Finley maintained a soft spot for running specialists, no matter what the position was technically called. He had employed Allen Lewis as pinch-runner for parts of six seasons. “The Panamanian Express,” scouted and signed in 1961, batted .282 in the minors over more than 4,000 at-bats. Promoted numerous times to the A’s, Lewis stole 44 bases – in 61 tries – and even appeared in the previous two postseasons, though Reds catcher Johnny Bench threw him out in both of his steal attempts. Lewis did, however, score four runs in 11 postseason appearances. He appeared in the outfield in ten major-league games – even starting three times – and committed one error in 13 chances. A switch hitter, he batted .207 in 29 career major-league at-bats before being sent outright to Tucson in the winter of ’74 (never to play professional baseball again). In summary, Allen Lewis wasn’t good, but he was at least a legitimate ballplayer.

Herb Washington played no position. In fact, he hadn’t played on a baseball team since the sophomore year of high school. He never appeared in the minors, but Washington became the first – and only – player to ever have a baseball card that designated his position as “pinch runner.” Finley hired Maury Wills as Washington’s personal instructor and they worked for a week in Arizona – with Wills wearing a Dodgers jersey during the sessions.14  In the spring of 1974 Wills still was the record holder for steals in a season with 104 in 1962 for the Dodgers. He might have had more had the dirt around first base at Candlestick Park for a crucial August series not been a quagmire due to an infamous “busted hose.” Then-Giants manager Alvin Dark, who always denied any part in a ’62 plot, earned the name Swamp Fox for that bit of gamesmanship.

A dozen years later, the religious-minded Dark paid for his sins by dealing with Finley’s latest pet project. Dark would use Washington 92 times. He never batted or played the field and is probably best remembered for getting picked off in the one World Series game the A’s lost in 1974. During the season Washington scored 29 runs, stole 29 bases, and was caught 16 times. Teammate Bill North led the American League in steals (54) and times caught stealing (26), while Reggie Jackson had the league’s best steal percentage (83.3 percent, 25 of 30 attempts). Though the A’s led the American League in stolen bases (164) and times caught stealing (93), Lou Brock stole the show, literally. He swiped 118 bases for the ’74 Cardinals to break the 1962 mark set by Herb Washington’s baseball mentor, Maury Wills.

March 1974 marked the start of divorce proceedings by Shirley Finley, Charlie’s wife of 32 years.15  It was a long, acrimonious, and costly process that strained Finley’s finances and made him ever moodier, something those close to Finley had noticed since his 1973 heart attack and especially in the wake of the “Andrews Affair” in the ’73 World Series. Fortunately for his players, the arbitration process changed the way many of them did business with the owner. The new system was employed for the first time in 1974, a resolution from the brief spring-training lockout in 1973. While in the 21st century players and management have come to avoid an actual hearing, in the 1970s it was preferable to most A’s players’ experiences of sitting down with the A’s owner – or arguing over the phone or through the newspapers. Arbitration helped prevent long holdouts like the 1972 impasse that kept Vida Blue from starting a game until almost Memorial Day, but it did little to keep player salaries under control.

Charlie Finley had warned his fellow owners about allowing an independent arbitrator to decide salaries: that they would creep up and up, even for players who lost their hearings. As usual, the other owners did not listen to Finley and agreed to arbitration. Nine of the 48 cases in the inaugural arbitration class of 1974 were Oakland A’s. That represented 19 percent of the total arbitration cases and 36 percent of Oakland’s 25-man roster.16

Finley was right: Arbitration did indeed drive up salaries. For an owner to have a chance at winning, the salary submitted should not be a lowball offer because that knocks down the odds that the lower salary will be chosen by the arbitrator. Though only five of nine A’s won their 1974 hearings, every player except minor leaguer Jack Heidemann saw a salary increase. Arbitration pushed two A’s stars past the $100,000 threshold: American League and World Series MVP Reggie Jackson received a $60,000 boost (to $135,000) and captain Sal Bando got a $40,000 increase to join baseball’s previously exclusive $100,000 club – of which Catfish Hunter had been heretofore the lone Oakland member.17  Seven of the arbitration-eligible A’s received salaries that pushed past the $40,000 average major-league salary. Even rookie pinch-runner Herb Washington was making above-average money – though that didn’t make him any more popular in the A’s clubhouse.18

Yet even with the added salaries, the A’s weren’t any more popular in their home ballpark. They would draw 845,693 for 1974, third-lowest attendance in the major leagues. That number, plus the trickle over 1 million fans in 1973, and 921,323 in 1972, all marked the lowest attendance by a world champion since World War II.

Costs were up, revenue down, and Finley dithered in even getting the A’s on the air. He hired recent college grad Jon Miller to work the radio booth. The inexperienced Bay Area native was dismissed after one season, but he later spent four-plus decades at the microphone and received the Ford C. Frick Award, annually given by the Hall of Fame for “major contributions to baseball.” Oakland did not have a TV contract until weeks after the 1974 season started, and then to save money Finley teamed broadcaster Monte Moore with off-duty A’s starting pitchers as color men in the booth – for no extra pay.19

Finley was feeling the pinch from both a slowing insurance business and a costlier baseball team. With a $1,135,400 payroll, the 1974 A’s were the second-highest-paid club to the Yankees, a team Finley disliked so much he preferred to pay Dick Williams not to manage them. (Finley would permit Williams to manage the middling Angels halfway through the 1974 season.)20  So, as much as Finley tried to prevent it, the A’s were being paid like the baseball big shots they had become. It was almost enough to make an owner want to sell.

In January, shortly after the American League upheld Finley in the Dick Williams contract dispute, the owner stated that his doctors advised him to divest himself of his sports holdings because of the stress. Besides the A’s, Finley also owned the National Hockey League California Golden Seals and the American Basketball Association’s Memphis Tams. Both teams were as inadequate as the A’s were successful, so it came as little surprise that Finley would want to get rid of them. His baseball team was a different matter.

Offers for the A’s soon came in, ranging from $11.5 million to $15 million. Given that George Steinbrenner had paid $10 million the previous year for the revered New York Yankees, the two-time world-champion A’s owner purred at the offers even while playing hard to get throughout the winter. And just as quickly, fickle Finley changed his mind about selling his most valuable asset. In a letter to season-ticket holders, he dashed the hopes of prospective buyers, not to mention many players and some fans who had become disillusioned with ownership despite two world championships. Finley flatly told season-ticket holders: “The A’s will not be sold.” And they weren’t.

Showing that he hadn’t lost his persuasive touch, in a six-month span Finley got the NHL to buy back the Seals for $6.5 million and the ABA to do the same for the Tams for $1.1 million.21  He held onto his baseball jewel even as he doled out low-cost jewelry.

Finley, who a year earlier had infuriated the other owners by lavishing his players with the most expensive rings any world champion had ever seen, went the other way in 1974. Angered by the way his team banded against him for his treatment of Mike Andrews during the 1973 World Series, which directly led to the resignation of a future Hall of Fame manager, Finley took it out on the players’ hardware. A year earlier Finley made a show of coming to Mesa to personally hand out the grandiose trinkets; in March of ’74 an employee doled out the World Series rings. And then he ducked.

“These are trash rings,” exclaimed Reggie Jackson.

“The worst World Series rings in history,” opined reliever Darold Knowles.   

“These rings are horsemeat,” said Catfish Hunter, whose comments stung Finley most. “He promised us last year, standing right here at Rendezvous Park, that if we won again, he’d make the ’72 rings look like babies. But this ring isn’t even as good as a high-school ring.”22

Finley’s response? “Screw ’em.” He told Dick Young of the New York Daily News, “The next time we win I won’t give them a thing.”23  That much, at least, proved untrue.

While the rings given out in March of 1973 were valued at $1,500 and came with a full-carat diamond, plus half-carat pendants for the wives and World Series replica trophies, the new rings featured only a synthetic emerald with a value of around $400.24  The rings also said ’72 and ’73 on them, so players acquired in 1973, like Ray Fosse and Jesus Alou, owned rings for a championship they did not win – and could only gaze fondly at last year’s bling on the fingers of their teammates.

The 1974 A’s, minus their manager, were almost the same cast of characters as the ’73 version. Besides Herb Washington, the roster additions – reliever Bob Locker, backup catcher Larry Haney, and reserve infielder John Donaldson – had all been A’s previously. They were aware of both the drawbacks and rewards of playing for Finley. No matter how bizarre things got off the field, a team that had reached the deciding game of four straight postseason series and won each time knew what it took to be the best again. “Once More in ’74” wasn’t just a saying on the cover of the A’s yearbook; it was the team’s goal. No matter what else was going on behind the scenes, the A’s players would not be distracted from that objective.

“When you have that many guys living together for that amount of time, you’re going to have disagreements,” reliever Rollie Fingers reflected years later. “But once you cross that white line, if you have a different uniform on, we’re going to beat you.”25

 

Sources

Interviews
Rollie Fingers, April 21, 2012.

Books

Clark, Tom, Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finley’s A’s (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976).

Green, G. Michael, and Roger D. Launius, Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super Showman (New York: Walker & Company, 2010).

Markusen, Bruce, Baseball’s Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s (Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1998).

Newspapers and Magazines

1974 Oakland A’s Scorecard and Souvenir Yearbook

Oakland Tribune

Sports Illustrated

Websites

baseball-almanac.com

baseball-reference.com

bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=179

oakland.athletics.mlb.com/oak/downloads/y2011/2011_media_guide.pdf

oaklandfans.com

retrosheet.org

sabr.org/bioproj/person/15e701c9

 

Notes

1 Bruce Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s (Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1998), 271-72.

2 Retrosheet.org/boxesetc/B/Pbrisd801.htm

3 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 273-74.

4 Eric Aron, “Alvin Dark,” SABR BioProject, sabr.org/bioproj/person/15e701c9

5 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 279-80.

6 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 280.

7 2011 A’s Media Guide, oakland.athletics.mlb.com/oak/downloads/y2011/2011_media_guide.pdf

8 G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius, Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Super Showman (New York: Walker & Company, 2010), 96.

9 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 280.

10 Herman Weiskopf, “Highlight,” Sports Illustrated, May 26, 1969. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1082451/index.htm

11 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 280.

12  Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty,  288.

13 Bruce Markusen, Cooperstown, Confidential – Regular Season Edition, “Super Balls at the Stadium,” June 12, 2003, oaklandfans.com/columns/markusen/markusen157.html.

14 Oakland A’s 1974 Scorecard and Souvenir Yearbook, 72.

15 Tom Clark, Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finley’s A’s (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1976), 207.

16 Year in Review: 1974 American League, baseball-almanac.com/yearly/yr1974a.shtml.

17 Green and Launius, Charlie Finley, 195.

18 1974 Oakland Athletics Roster, baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=1974&t=OAK.

19 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 297.

20 MLB Salary Database, bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=179

21 Green and Launius, Charlie Finley, 202.

22 Clark, Champagne and Baloney, 203.

23 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 285-286.

24 Clark, Champagne and Baloney, 203.

25 Author interview, Rollie Fingers, April 21, 2012.