the wacky and wild times of the '78 A's

At first glance there isn’t anything abnormal about the A’s final standing of the 1978 season, sandwiched as it is between two similar second-division finishes for this once-proud franchise.  But what that team had over its odd-year counterparts was this thing called hope; hope that the glory days weren’t as over as they seemed, even as their mustachioed heroes of yesterday had been unceremoniously dispersed to foreign lands.  Hope that this odd collection of has-beens, never-were’s, and never-gonna-be’s, could, well, be something…special.  But in the end, a shocking late-season slide (sound familiar?) sent the A’s spiraling back to where they were supposed to be all along.  Or so said the so-called experts.

And I guess there was really no reason to expect a Miracle Met-like performance from the ’78 A’s, but for an eleven-year old still accustomed to World Series parades, I was in denial that my baseball team had suddenly entered Suckdom.  Manager Bobby Winkles and his roster of no-names seemed to be unaware of- or at least unfazed by- the gloomy prognostications that had been cast upon them by baseball’s fortune-tellers.  Surprising as it was that the A’s were still in Oakland (sound familiar?) and not in Denver (as was rumored), the team’s early on-field performance was even more astonishing.  

After a hard-fought series in Anaheim to start the season (the Angels took two of three), the A’s went 5-1 in their opening homestand, their lone loss an extra-inning affair.  Back on the road for five games, Oakland swept Minnesota and Seattle to move to an eye-popping 11-3.  They returned home for a twi-night doubleheader with the Twins, and won both games, the second one in 14 innings.  It was that night- if memory serves me well- that I made my first TV appearance.  My brother John had made me a shirt with the word "AmaA’sing" on the front, and the cameraman in the centerfield bleachers (at the urging of my family) put the bright lights on me.

These A’s were surely astounding; in their first sixteen games they had given up more than three runs only once, and that was during a 6-5 victory.  In the other fifteen contests, they had tossed four shutouts, allowed one run three times, two runs on three other occasions, and three runs five times. AmaA’sing, indeed.  Even when the Twins touched them for eight runs in Game 17, Oakland scored nine, including three in the 12th inning to cap a wild comeback, the club’s eighth win in a row, and 13th in 14 games.  

Me (left) and brother Abel during happier times, 1978

A season-high two-game losing streak only served to annoy the A’s who won the next five while allowing a total of seven runs.  There seemed to be no stopping Oakland, which now stood at a major-league best 19-5.  But the bats went into snooze mode during a four-game skid that saw the A’s score just a single run during that span (including three straight shutouts).  Once again Oakland bounced back, winning three of its next four to improve to 22-10 on May 15, 2.5 games in front of California.

The next day Billy North went 0-for-4 during a 3-2 loss at Cleveland, his last game in an A’s uniform.  Charlie Finley traded the disgruntled center-fielder to Los Angeles, the final piece of glory years gone by.  As a permanent resident of the center field bleachers I always liked North, who swiped his way to two stolen base crowns with the A’s.  I will always remember fondly the one game during the 1977 season when the team bumbled its way to another defeat when North could be heard to mutter "fucking rookies" from his spot in center field.  When there are no fans in the stands, chatter matters, Billy.  But you had to feel for a guy who Finley kept on strictly for his own amusement.  Without North, the A’s play went south, as they dropped their first three games after the trade.  Which, all things considered, seemed to be the least of Oakland’s concerns. 

This from Sports Illustrated:

Last week the A's mimeograph machine broke and members of the press had to forage for statistics. Bob Hofman, the traveling secretary who also serves as team statistician, simply gave up when the A's acquired Glenn Burke from the Dodgers. The Oakland press release was a photostated bio of Burke from the Dodger media guide without updated averages.

Burke, of course, brought his own baggage.  His homosexuality already public knowledge, he challenged a taunting fan to a fight after a game in Oakland.  My brother John was one of the fans who intervened in the parking lot, noting that "Burke would have killed him" had no one stepped in.  The Oakland-born played 101 games for the A’s during the 1978-79 seasons, his last as a big-leaguer.  He died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1995 at Fairmont Hospital in San Leandro.

Sad was the saga of Glenn Burke

A 4-3 win over the White Sox left the A’s at 23-14, still good enough for first place in the American League West.  But something was amiss.  Bobby Winkles was becoming a bit tired of his boss’ meddling (imagine that).  A Sunday double-header split with Chicago, the second game an 8-0 victory, were the last two games Winkles would manage in Oakland.

SI, again: 

As the years grind on in Oakland, Charlie Finley's reign over the A's is getting more and more like Ludwig's in Bavaria. Last week Bobby Winkles , who had managed a collection of low-salaried kids and has-beens to first place in the American League West , chucked his job because Finley had become just too much. There were reports that Finley had been considering putting earphones on Winkles so he could communicate with him directly in the dugout. Meanwhile, Finley kept calling him on the phone at home. A typical early-morning call to Winkles would command, "Get up! Only whores make their living in bed." When Winkles recently spent a day off visiting Napa Valley vineyards and was unreachable by phone, Finley raged, "If you ever do that again, you can go someplace else." After Winkles finally phoned (ah, the irony) Charlie to tell him he was quitting, Finley was moved to concede, "Maybe my telephone calls were driving him to the nut house."

(Considering Winkles’ choice where to spend one of his last off-days with the team, you can say that Finley’s calls drove him to drink, too).

Oakland didn’t have a lefthander on staff to toss batting practice nor did it have the equipment for hitters to study their stances.  Players were known to head over to Rickey’s in San Leandro, which kept videotapes of the games.  Nothing was ever normal in Finleyland, and to keep in tune with the wackiness Jack McKeon was hired back to fill the void left by Winkles.  It was just one season before that Winkles replaced McKeon.  The flip-flop of field generals was Finley’s 16th managerial maneuver in 18 years.

Never a dull moment with Finley

Amid the madness, the A’s forged on, and on June 7, were 32-22, clinging ever so carefully to their top spot in the division.  Then, as cautioned in May by the now-departed North, Oakland got a chance to measure up with the "big boys"- New York, Boston, and Baltimore- and let’s just say that in this case, size mattered.  The A’s lost eleven straight games- five of them shutouts- to the beasts from the East, and fell below .500 for the first time all season. 

Ah, but if you think our story ends here, you are sorely mistaken, my exhausted reader.  The A’s celebrated its return to AL West play by scoring a 2-1 triumph over Texas.  This started a stretch of 11 wins in 17 tries that left McKeon’s misfits in first place of a division no one seemed interested in winning, including- if you asked reliever Bob Lacey- the Oakland A’s.  The 24-year old said that Finley’s experiments with teenage pitchers Mike Morgan and Tim Conroy informed the league that "we don’t want it", "it" being the championship.  Where was ESPN during this nonsense? 

More importantly, where was the A’s offense?  No one in baseball was worse than Oakland’s .245 batting average and 532 runs scored.  Two more shutouts were the lowlights of a five-game losing streak, as the A’s went from first on July 5 to fourth on July 9, 3.5 games behind the Angels. Ever so resilient, Oakland reeled off thirteen victories in twenty games, the last two coming in Anaheim by 2-0 and 1-0 scores.  Rick Langford made like Nolan Ryan- pitching opposite Ryan- in that 1-0 game, allowing just three hits, while striking out eleven.  It was now August 1, and the A’s, 56-51, were just four games off the pace.  Ten days later Langford tossed another three-hit shutout, this time at Minnesota in the first game of a double-header, leaving Oakland at 61-56, five games behind Kansas City. 

That thud you hear is the 1978 Oakland A’s season crashing down to earth.  Their improbable start stunning, their ability to hang in as the months turned to late summer surprising, their swift fall to sixth place utterly shocking.  How hard and fast did our A’s fall?  In their last 45 games, they won eight.  Eight.  From 61-56 to 69-93.  Thirty-two times during their freefall, they scored three runs or less; including ten straight games from September 10-17 (they actually won two of those contests, 2-1 and 1-0). The collapse was completed on the first of October, a 9-0 defeat to the Milwaukee Brewers.  The A’s managed three hits.

Charlie Finley fired Jack McKeon.  In season that made little sense, while somehow managing to make perfect sense (in the eyes of the experts), that move made the most sense. 

As the losses mounted, no fan, young or old, could escape the pain.