The Giants get a lot of attention around here for winning two World Series in the past three years, and rightfully so. It’s an amazing accomplishment.
What few seem to remember is that 40 years ago another Bay Area team, the Oakland A’s or The Swingin’ A’s if you prefer, won three consecutive World Championships and five consecutive division crowns.
That team is commemorated in a recently released book, Swingin’ 73: Baseball’s Wildest Season. This is the eleventh book by noted baseball author Matthew Silverman, and his first that primarily covers a California team.
“One of the aims for this book is to shed positive light on both the A’s and the landmark season that marks its 40th anniversary this year,” said Silverman. “It was a significant year in a memorable era that also saw one of the great comebacks to that point in history by Oakland’s World Series opponent, the Mets; the end of the original Yankee Stadium after 50 years; the owner as celebrity antagonist in Charlie Finley and the new guy on the block, George Steinbrenner.”
According to Silverman, the three straight World Series championships gives the A’s a special place in baseball history. “It’s a unique number when it comes to baseball champions. No franchise other than the Yankees has ever won three straight titles, and the Yankees (1998-2000) are the only team to do so since the 1972-74 Oakland A’s.”
Silverman went on to say that it’s unfair that many people remember the A’s more for what went on around them than their unique accomplishment. “As it is, history remembers the yellow uniforms, the mustaches, and the mule more than the championship club built from scratch and kept together on the cheap.”
Finley was known for his shoestring organization. He usually had fewer then ten front-office employees; there were times when the A’s games were broadcast by the UC Berkeley campus radio station, and the World Series championship rings presented to the players in 1973 and 1974 are the only ones bereft of diamonds since the advent of such awards in 1922.
That core group of players won another division title in 1975 and then was broken up when baseball’s free agency period began and the stars who made all those titles possible left for teams willing to pay them what they were worth.
“Oakland challenged the status quo and thought outside the box with an innovative — if meddlesome—owner,” Silverman said. “They also had a manager who supported his players to the hilt but always let them know who was in charge. When (Hall of Fame manager) Dick Williams left, (after a series of events that culminated in Finley attempting to fraudulently change the A’s World Series roster) even the players he feuded with were heartbroken they couldn’t follow him.”
Swingin’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season is published by Lyons Press and is available at Amazon.com and several Bay Area outlets. At 272 pages it is a fun and engaging book that takes readers back to a time when player and fans could more easily relate to one another and before the players had all the rights they enjoy today.
Silverman has done a terrific job capturing the era and those great Oakland teams. Anyone who grew up with those A’s or enjoys reading about baseball history or the 1970s in general should buy a copy.
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