Strike One: 1972 Spring Training

The Oakland A’s were the pride of the American League West as winter turned to spring in 1972. The 1971 A’s had become just the second team to win the Western title, after the Minnesota Twins claimed the honor in the first two seasons following the adoption of divisional play in 1969. But the A’s didn’t just win the AL West in 1971, they ran away with it – claiming the division by 16 games. They never led by fewer than 13 games after beginning August with seven straight wins, the first of two streaks of that length during the month.

But October 1971 arrived with a thud. The 101 wins were the same number as the AL East champion Baltimore Orioles, yet the A’s were no match for the O’s in the League Championship Series. Oakland allowed five runs per game; Baltimore surrendered half that many. It was clear to A’s owner and general manager Charles O. Finley that if Oakland wanted to compete with Baltimore – the class of the American League after appearing in three straight World Series – the A’s needed an upgrade. But not even the self-assured A’s owner could have imagined his team would appear in the next three World Series, and win them all.

The new Athletics, the Swinging A’s, the only team besides the New York Yankees to win three straight world championships, came together in spring training 1972, clean-shaven and raring to go. Well, clean-shaven except for one slugger with something to prove.

No major-league player had worn a mustache in the regular season since World War I. Now, in the wind-down of the divisive Vietnam War, with so many other weighty issues going on in the country and the world, finally came a breakthrough on the hirsute baseball front: Reggie Jackson wasn’t shaving.

Iconoclast slugger Dick Allen, then of the Cardinals, had arrived in Florida with a mustache and muttonchops for spring training in 1970, but he shaved before departing St. Petersburg for St. Louis.1 Now, two years later, Jackson, never at a loss for words, was at a loss for putting his razor to use.

No player had donned a mustache past spring training since another A’s regular on a pennant-winning team: Wally Schang, catcher for Connie Mack’s 1914 American League champions. Facial hair was out of fashion in the 1910s and Schang – and the rest of the major leagues – remained clean-shaven through two World Wars and then two wars in Asia. But by the 1970s, hair was in again. Even Broadway was in on it, with the musical Hair in the midst of a four-year run while simultaneously running in nine US cities as well as London.2  So it only made sense that the counterculture enclave of Oakland, home of the Black Panthers, Cal Berkeley, Hell’s Angels, and John Madden’s Raiders, would be the launching pad for hair on big-league faces.

When Jackson showed up to spring training in Mesa, Arizona, sporting a ’stache, Finley did not like the idea initially. He wanted Reggie to shave before the season started, just as Dick Allen had – not to mention Frenchy Bordagaray, whose mustache lasted only through Brooklyn’s spring training in 1936.3 Oakland’s owner, famous for getting under the skin of his players, took a new tack during spring training, however. Finley fashioned himself quite the showman, having introducing everything from the mule press conference (no comment from Charlie O the mascot, but plenty of words from Charlie O. the owner) to ballgirls (enjoyed by players and fans alike in Oakland). So why not bring the mustache back to baseball?

Accounts differ whether Finley first encouraged players to grow mustaches as reverse psychology to get Jackson to shave, or if the players came up with the plan on their own.4 What is beyond dispute is that the A’s broke the 58-year-old facial-hair barrier as a team. The Mustache Gang was led by a furry trio who eventually made the Hall of Fame and had their numbers retired in Oakland: Rollie Fingers and his legendary handlebar mustache; Catfish Hunter, who sported a debonair farmer’s mustache; and Jackson, of course, in beard, mustache, and machismo. Like his three star players, manager Dick Williams, who joined the mustachioed masses on his ’72 team, even sported a ’stache on his Hall of Fame plaque in Cooperstown.

Nearly every A’s player who could physically grow facial hair did so in the spring of ’72 in order to extract a bonus from the notoriously tight-fisted Finley. The $300 bonus went to any player who grew the mustaches by Father’s Day, or Mustache Day, as Finley rechristened June 18. And those mustaches looked great with the new uniforms.     

It was not as if the A’s didn’t already have the most colorful uniforms in the game, but Charlie Finley outdid himself. Kelly green and Fort Knox gold had been the team colors since Finley introduced them to the stunned American League in 1963, and though garish at the time – “It makes them look like grasshoppers,” said Yankees manager Ralph Houk – the new uniforms were a step through the looking glass … and avoiding the mirror was not necessarily a bad thing.5

Gone were button-up tops. In their place: double-knit pullover shirts. “No buttons. No zippers,” Finley crowed. “Imagine – a baseball uniform without buttons.”6 The team wore white pants, home or away, along with the pullover tops in either green or gold, though the latter color seemed almost fluorescent. The team wore green undershirts with the gold jerseys and vice versa; the stirrups were green with gold socks. Striking! Long before any team thought of alternate uniforms for special days, the A’s had their Sunday whites. And not just your run-of-the-mill white every other team wore at home, but, to borrow a phrase from Procol Harum, an English rock group of the day, “a whiter shade of pale.” Finley called it “polar bear white,”7 while team captain Sal Bando later referred to them as “wedding gown whites.”8  In any event, the whites were special, reserved for Sunday games.

What was really special was the A’s pitching staff, which boasted a potential ace every day of the week. The team entered the year with two pitchers coming off 20-win seasons: Vida Blue had had a tremendous 24-win campaign, while Jim “Catfish” Hunter had enjoyed the first of five straight 20-win seasons.

John “Blue Moon” Odom, who, like Hunter, had been signed by Finley as a teenager in 1964, was no longer a sure thing in the rotation. Odom, who had started at least 25 games each of the previous four seasons, had been shot in the neck and chest in January 1972 while foiling a burglary near his mother’s home in Macon, Georgia. One might think Odom’s life – never mind his career – had been placed in serious jeopardy. But incredibly, each bullet passed through his body without doing serious damage to any organs.9 Odom would be fine and pitch five more years in the majors. He finished 1972 with a 2.50 ERA and placed second in the AL to Hunter in winning percentage (.714). But in March of 1972, Charlie Finley didn’t know that. All he knew was that right-handed starters Odom and Chuck Dobson were question marks due to health issues. (Dobson would not pitch at all in the majors in ’72 because of elbow problems.) So Finley replaced two pitchers who’d combined for 25 wins with a 30-game winner.

Denny McLain was only 28 in ’72, but he seemed a long way from 30. The first pitcher in 34 years to win 30 games, McLain had actually gone one better with a 31-6 mark for the 1968 world champion Tigers. He won the Cy Young Award in both ’68 and ’69 (sharing the award the latter year with Baltimore’s Mike Cuellar), but he subsequently dropped off a cliff – of his own making. He showed plenty of wear and tear after averaging 23 wins and 290 innings a season from 1966 to 1969, compounded by his treating his body like a rental and treating those around him like dirt. McLain could, and often did, drink a case of Pepsi per day – an endorsement deal with the bottler included delivery of ten cases to his house per week – but his cola obsession was the least of his poor habits. He invested in a Michigan bookmaking operation and was suspended for half of the 1970 season. He then drew additional suspensions for carrying a gun on a team flight and pouring buckets of water on two Detroit writers.10 Despite McLain’s tremendous success on the mound, the Tigers were willing to part with their award-winning headache. Barely a week after the 1970 season ended, Detroit traded him to the Washington Senators, where he clashed with manager and legend Ted Williams. McLain led the league in losses instead of wins. 

On March 4, 1972, with two pitchers hurt and Vida Blue holding out, McLain didn’t look so bad from where Charlie Finley sat. Still, the A’s owner wasn’t about to pay full price. Bob Short, who had relocated his team from Washington to Texas over the winter, was prepared to pay one-third of McLain’s $75,000 salary to get rid of him, but he wasn’t willing to take damaged goods in return for spoiled goods. Short passed on both the injured Odom and Dobson and insisted on pitching prospects Don Stanhouse and Jim Panther. McLain proceeded to get into a shouting match with a TV reporter the day he arrived in Arizona and then surrendered ten runs in his spring debut for the A’s.11 He would make his last major-league start that August – as an Atlanta Brave.

Finley had far better luck with Ken Holtzman. He was one of the National League’s top lefties, pitching no-hitters for the Cubs in 1969 and 1971, and slotting in behind the 1971 Cy Young winner Ferguson Jenkins in the Cubs rotation. Though he was coming off his worst year (9-15, 4,48 ERA), Holtzman, like McLain, was still in his 20s, but unlike McLain, his best years were ahead of him.

Holtzman’s biggest problem with the Cubs was his manager, Leo Durocher. Old school Leo the Lip used a motivational technique from his playing days in the 1920s and 1930s, belittling players and making them mad to get the most out of them. In the 1970s it wasn’t working, at least not with Holtzman, especially given that many of the barbs dealt with his faith. “I think Jewish athletes tend to be stared at more often because they defy a commonly held stereotype of nonphysical, academic-minded nerds who strive to become doctors, lawyers, etc.,” Holtzman reflected long after his career ended. “While some of this stereotype is perhaps justified, it never hindered my pursuit of both disciplines.”12

Holtzman asked for a trade after the 1971 season and the Cubs found a willing partner in Charlie Finley. The A’s owner/GM spent most of his time in Chicago and knew all about Holtzman’s talent. He also knew that the A’s had been caught short in the rotation in the previous year’s ALCS, facing a Baltimore rotation that included the last quartet of 20-game winners in history. With Blue, Hunter, and Holtzman, the 1973 A’s would become the last team to have three 20-game winners on one staff.

Finley had the perfect bait to procure Holtzman from the Cubs: Rick Monday, a power-hitting center fielder who could fill one of the weak links in the Cubs lineup. Monday had been the first-ever pick in the 1965 amateur draft, but A’s manager Dick Williams grew frustrated with his lack of success against lefties and had resorted to a platoon with right-handed Angel Mangual in center field late in the 1971 season.

Trading for Holtzman was arguably the best deal among the myriad moves by Charlie Finley during Oakland’s championship run. Holtzman fit in superbly with his new club, immediately buying into the winning vibe in the Oakland locker room. And he very much appreciated his new manager.  “Dick Williams had complete trust and faith in his starting pitchers and let them pitch out of trouble on occasions where Leo might have pulled them from the game,” Holtzman reflected.13 

The A’s players did not, however, have that level of trust in their owner. Especially when it came to contract negotiations. The two biggest seasons by A’s players since their 1968 move from Kansas City – and, to be honest, since their 1955 move from Philadelphia –had been achieved in the last three years by high draft picks who vaulted through the A’s farm system and became young stars on the big-league stage. In 1969 Reggie Jackson, just 23, had crushed 37 home runs by the All-Star break. He tailed off in the second half but his 47 home runs and .608 slugging hadn’t been touched by anyone in an A’s uniform since Hall of Fame slugger Jimmie Foxx for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in the 1930s. In the spring of 1970, Jackson asked for his salary to be tripled, to $60,000. The two sides finally reached an agreement of $45,000 shortly before the season began, but they continued feuding after Jackson got off to a slow start.14 The acrimonious public fight between player and owner soured their relationship for the rest of Reggie’s time in Oakland. Next up: Vida Blue.

Blue had been truly sensational in 1971. After losing on Opening Day, he won 16 of his next 17 decisions. He tossed 40 innings in a four-start span in July, including two 11-inning no-decisions, not to mention three innings pitched as the starting (and winning) pitcher in the ’71 All-Star Game that ended the AL’s eight-year losing streak. By mid-August he was 22-4 with a 1.70 ERA and 245 strikeouts. McLain’s magic number 30 was not out of the realm of possibility.

Blue tailed off down the stretch, but he still finished 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts in 312 innings. An overnight sensation at age 22, he appeared on the covers of Time and Sports Illustrated and was the youngest Cy Young Award winner in history. (New York Met Dwight Gooden later garnered that distinction, but Blue remains the youngest AL pitcher to claim the award.) Blue also captured the Most Valuable Player trophy, also becoming a trivia answer as the last switch-hitter to be named league MVP – hitting was the one area in which he did not excel in ’71 (just a .118 BA).

Blue’s lawyer, Bob Gerst, started contract negotiations the first week of January 1972. Blue had made $14,500 during his remarkable ’71 season. Gerst asked for $115,000; Finley offered $50,000. They had a long way to go.

Gerst lowered his client’s asking price to $92,000, but Finley stayed at $50,000. Spring training opened, Blue stayed home. Finley acquired McLain, a 22-game loser, and planned to pay him the same $50,000 sum (after Washington’s share) as Blue, a 24-game winner. Vida Blue announced he would quit baseball, go into acting, go to Japan, go into the steel business. None of these came to be. Even Vida had a hard time keeping a straight face. Finley dispatched players to Oakland to try to get Blue to sign. No dice. The impasse continued.15

The Major League Baseball Players Association called the first work stoppage in major-league history on April Fool’s Day, abruptly ending spring training with the A’s record at 9-11.16

The issue of the players’ pension fund delayed the regular season and seven games wound up cut from Oakland’s schedule; they were never made up because the owners refused to pay the players for the games missed. Finley was far from the only stubborn man sitting in an owner’s box.

When it came time to cut down to a 25-man roster, the A’s released two-time batting champ Tommy Davis, a .324 hitter the previous year off the bench. Yet the more painful move was placing the previous year’s Cy Young Award winner and MVP on the restricted list.17 Ken Holtzman’s Oakland debut was as Opening Day starter. Would Blue ever don the green and gold again? Yes, but it would take pressure from both the commissioner of baseball and president of the United States for it to come to pass.

“It would be a great tragedy if a young player with all that talent stayed out too long,” stated Richard Nixon, who would find tragedy on a much grander scale following a botched break-in at the Watergate Hotel in June of 1972. As for Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, he had troubles of his own.

After enduring the game’s first strike – and the players claiming victory – Kuhn’s next move was to settle this Blue business. Both pitcher and owner were pretty bitter when summoned to the Drake Hotel in Chicago; Kuhn’s room but Finley’s turf. It turned into a 22-hour negotiating marathon. “I had never felt so much like a Louisiana bayou sheriff,” Kuhn later wrote, which may have explained why the Louisiana native Blue was so hostile toward the commissioner.18

As the sun came up, the two sides finally agreed on $63,000. It still took three days and more threats to get them in a room to sign the deal. When Finley initially refused to go to American League President Joe Cronin’s office in Boston for the May 2 meeting, Kuhn responded that if the A’s owner didn’t show, Kuhn would make his star pitcher a free agent. Both sides signed, reluctantly. As a result of the ramping up of the Finley-Kuhn feud, the A’s owner drew a $500 fine from the commissioner, the maximum fine allowed at the time.19  After Dick Williams used a three-man rotation of Holtzman-Hunter-McLain (until Blue Moon Odom replaced the demoted Denny),20 Vida Blue finally made his first start of 1972 during the final weekend of May. By then the owner was angrier at Kuhn than he was at Blue, but his team was finally whole – and dominant.

 

Sources

Interviews

Sal Bando, September 14, 2011.

Ken Holtzman, May 3, 2012.

Books

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

Kuhn, Bowie, and Marty Appel (Editorial Assistant), Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988).

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

Newspapers and Magazines

Meyers, Jeff, “Frenchy Bordagaray, an 82-Year-Old Grandfather Living in Ventura, Shocked the Baseball Establishment in the 1930s With Such Gimmicks as Racing a Horse on Foot and Growing a Mustache, But His Flair Made Him a Media Darling,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1992. articles.latimes.com/1992-12-25/sports/sp-2588_1_frenchy-bordagaray

Rushin, Steve, “The Hirsute of Happiness: How Facial Hair Brought Joy to the Red Sox,” Sports Illustrated, September 30, 2013.

“They Said It,” Sports Illustrated, April 29, 1963. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1074724/index.htm

Websites

https://baseball-almanac.com

https://baseball-reference.com

https://hairthemusical.com/history.html

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

Armour, Mark, “Denny McLain,” SABR BioProject, sabr.org/bioproj/person/6bddedd4

 

Notes

1 Steve Rushin. “The Hirsute of Happiness: How Facial Hair Brought Joy to the Red Sox.” Sports Illustrated, September 30, 2013.

2 James Rado, “Hairstory: The Story Behind the Story,” February 14, 2009. hairthemusical.com/history.html

3 Jeff Meyers, “Frenchy Bordagaray, an 82-Year-Old Grandfather Living in Ventura, Shocked the Baseball Establishment in the 1930s With Such Gimmicks as Racing a Horse on Foot and Growing a Mustache, But His Flair Made Him a Media Darling,” Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1992. articles.latimes.com/1992-12-25/sports/sp-2588_1_frenchy-bordagaray

4 Green and Launius, Charlie Finley, 159.

5 “They Said It,” Sports Illustrated, April 29, 1963. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1074724/index.htm

6 Green and Launius, Charlie Finley, 158.

7 Ibid.

8 Author interview with Sal Bando, September 14, 2011.

9 Bruce Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s (Indianapolis: Masters Press, 1998), 77-8.

10Mark Armour, “Denny McLain.” SABR BioProject. sabr.org/bioproj/person/6bddedd4

11 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 81.

12 Author interview with Ken Holtzman, May 3, 2012.

13 Ken Holtzman interview.

14 Green and Launius, Charlie Finley, 133-34.

15 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 81-84.

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

17 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 88.

18 Bowie Kuhn and Marty Appel (Editorial Assistant), Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988), 132.

19 Kuhn and Appel, Hardball, 131-133.

20 Markusen, Baseball’s Last Dynasty, 93.