Category: Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic

Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic, Superstition

It’s Mustache Time In Oakland Again

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In 2018, the Oakland A’s introduced a Kelly green alternate jersey that is an unmistakable throwback to their look from the Swingin’ A’s days of the early 1970s.

Last week, A’s first baseman Matt Olson introduced a hairy upper lip that is similarly reminiscent.

Taking a page from the team that inspired the Hairs vs. the Squares moniker against the Reds in the 1972 World Series, Olson sought a way to bust out of an early-season slump. Sometimes totems can be just the thing.

“I didn’t do it to look good,” Olson said Thursday in a San Francisco Chronicle report. “You know what they say, it’s never too early to hit the panic button.”

Olson had started the season 5-for-36, but after debuting his lip sweater on Wednesday homered twice, and then again on Thursday. After the latter, his teammates held index fingers horizontally atop their lips as he rounded the bases. “I think it has to [stay] now,” Olson said of his ’stache. “Not even by choice.”

Back in 1972, of course, the lip hair came courtesy of owner Charlie Finley’s offer to pay $300 to every player who grew out his own mustache in advance of the team photo on June 18. I wrote about it in Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic:

Baseball was a clean-cut sport in the early 1970s, and had been for the better part of a century. While ballplayers were known to grow mustaches over the winter months, they’d invariably shave them prior to the season, frequently as a rite of spring training. In 1972, however, Reggie Jackson did no such thing. When his lip hair remained in place through the duration of the Arizona exhibition schedule, his teammates took notice.

Whisker prohibition hadn’t always been enforced. Abner Doubleday himself wore a mustache in the 1830s. A photographic portrait of the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869, depicts eight of nine members sporting facial hair. But ballplayers of the early 1900s were seen as ruffians, low-ranking members of society whose reputations hindered the marketing of the sport; clean-shaved faces were part of reversing that image. In 1914, A’s catcher Wally Schang became the last major league regular to wear a mustache. Until Reggie.

“Reggie was being his basic hot dog self, wanting to do whatever he wanted to do, and no one was going to tell Reggie what to do,” said Rollie Fingers, who, along with most of his teammates, was appalled by Jackson’s new look. Understanding their inability to sway the superstar, Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Darold Knowles, and Bob Locker took a different tack, theorizing that growing their own mustaches would draw a blanket rebuke from Finley, who would in turn command every player, including Jackson, to shave.

The Owner learned about it on the team plane. There was Jackson, mustache in place, and the quartet of pitchers, similarly adorned. Instead of getting angry, however, Finley was thunderstruck. Always on the make for unique promotional opportunities, he let it be known: any player or staff member who grew a mustache by June 18, the date of the team photo, would receive a $300 bonus. He decreed it Mustache Day, with mustachioed fans admitted to the game free of charge. Most players jumped right on board. “For $300,” said Ken Holtzman, “I would grow hair on my feet.” Only three players—Sal Bando, Mike Hegan, and Larry Brown—remained reticent and clean-faced. During an ensuing conversation with the Owner, Bando soon found out exactly where he stood on the subject. “Mr. Bando,” Finley said to him, “I would like you to grow your mustache. We want to do it as a team, and we all are the same.” With that, the holdout players acceded. (Finley himself did not grow one, of course. He never for a moment viewed himself as being on the same level as his players.)

By June 18, not only was Finley’s own squad fully ’stached, but six members of the visiting Cleveland Indians grew out mustaches of their own, despite threats of fines from manager Ken Aspromonte if they didn’t shave after the series finale. Finley presented gold mustache spoons, with attached covers for eating soup, to players, staff, and the participating members of the Indians. At the Coliseum, 7,607 men got in free with the promotion. Plate umpire Marty Springstead took one look at third-base coach Irv Noren before the game and said, “Jesus, Irv, when are you going to shave that off?” Noren didn’t hesitate. “As soon as the goddamn check clears,” he said.

Current A’s third baseman Matt Chapman has been known to grow his own slump-buster mustache from time to time, though manager Bob Melvin took care to distinguish it from his teammate’s. “Olson’s got a little more growth going on than Chapman,” he said. “I think Chapman, it would take him a couple of years to get a mustache that actually looks like a mustache.”

Meanwhile, Olson is styling and raking in equal measures. Who knows—maybe he’ll start another trend.

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Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic

Recalling the First Guy to Play All Nine

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Campy-Campaneris-Night

In the wake of Detroit’s Andrew Romine playing all nine positions during a game against the Twins, it seems pertinent to call up a shard that was trimmed from an early version of “Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic,” concerning the early years of Charlie Finley’s Kansas City Athletics.

Whereas Romine’s stunt appears to be motivated by manager Brad Ausmus’ simple appreciation of him as a player, when Campy Campaneris became the first guy ever to pull the trick in 1965, it was all about draw:

By 1965, Finley’s master plan of building from the ground up was not close to paying off. His two key pieces from baseball’s first-ever player draft, Monday and Bando, were still years away from big league playing time, and even with future stalwarts like Campy Campaneris, Dick Green and Catfish Hunter, the A’s finished 59-103—a level of futility that did little to help an apathetic fanbase overcome their dislike of the Owner. So Finley had to come up with other ways to draw a crowd.

One of them happened on Sept. 8, when he ordered manager Haywood Sullivan (who would go on to an extensive career in the front office of the Boston Red Sox) to play Campaneris at all nine positions, shifting him after every inning. It was a bald-faced promotional stunt; nothing like it had ever happened in major league baseball and for good reason—it had no on-field value. Still, with the A’s already approaching 90 losses and sitting 35.5 games out of first place, it might just get people to come out. An advertisement for that night’s game read:

“CAMPY” CAMPANERIS NIGHT
TONIGHT
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE
HISTORY OF THE MAJOR LEAGUES,
CAMPY WILL PLAY EVERY POSITION FOR ONE INNING
INCLUDING PITCHING AND CATCHING
For the most exciting and enjoyable evening of the 1965 season
* DON’T MISS THIS THRILLER *
Purchase Tickets Early—Available at all A’s Outlets

It worked. The gate of 21,576 doubled the previous night’s attendance and blew the following night’s 1,271 entirely out of the water. The only trouble was that the game went 12 innings, and the A’s might actually have won had they not been preoccupied with shuffling their Cuban missile all over the field.

In the sixth inning, Campaneris, playing right field, dropped a fly ball for an error that allowed California’s Albie Pearson to score, putting the Angels ahead, 2-1. In the eighth, with Campaneris on the mound (as promised), California scored its third run on two walks and a Joe Adcock single. Then in the ninth, the lightweight Campaneris, playing catcher for the first time in his big league career, was leveled by 200-pound Ed Kirkpatrick on a play at the plate. Campy held the ball for the final out of the inning but was carted off to the hospital with an injured shoulder. Kansas City still managed to score two in bottom of the frame to tie it, then held on for four more innings before succumbing, 5-3. Campy ended up missing four games. It was, said Sullivan after the fact, “a silly thing to do.”

 

 

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Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic, Retaliation

When Getting Knocked Down Works Out In Your Favor

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Fosse cardGoing through old A’s interviews while prepping for an upcoming presentation about my new book, Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic, I found this unwritten-rules nugget from catcher Ray Fosse, who told me about an incident on July 31, 1971, before he joined the A’s:

I’m with the Indians, playing Oakland in Cleveland. [Bert] Campaneris is at first, another runner [Dick Green] is at third, and a squeeze bunt is put on—a busted squeeze. Graig Nettles is playing third for us. I caught the ball and started running down the line to force the rundown. Out of the corner of my eye I see Campy rounding second, so I threw the ball to Nettles, then went to third and called, “Graig, Graig!” So he tagged [Green] and threw it back to me.

I crushed Campy with the tag. Crushed him. It was unintentional, but my momentum took me as he came to the bag and I went down and just fell on him. He was safe. I didn’t think anything about it, but [A’s pitcher] Chuck Dobson comes to bat the next inning and tells me, “You gotta go down.” I said, “What?” He said, “Yep, I got instructions. I got to throw at you.” Here’s the pitcher who’s actually going to be doing it, at the plate saying, “You got to go down.”

I said, “Are you kidding me? Because of what I did at third base with Campy?” He said, “Mm-hm.” So I come up to hit, Dobber threw a ball over my head and knocked me to the ground. I got up pissed off, and hit a double. When I got to second base, I looked at A’s dugout and said, “Stick that up your …” I was so pissed, I said it right to [A’s manager] Dick Williams. The last thing I ever thought was that I would be traded to Oakland.

So after I was traded, we’re sitting in Cleveland, getting ready to catch a commercial flight—to Cleveland, of all places. We’re at the airport, and Dick’s in the restaurant, by himself, and I walk up to him and say, “Skip, this has been on my mind. Do you remember the play?”

He said, “I remember it.” I said, “The last place I thought I would ever be traded was here.” He says, “I remember that play, and that’s why we want guys like you.” Because I was willing to do that to one of his players, unintentionally as it was, and then  responded by looking into the dugout after they decked me. He said, “I like that.”

After four seasons in Cleveland, of course, Fosse experienced his first-ever  winning record with the A’s, followed in short order by back-to-back championships. If you’re not already following it, check out @DynasticBook for a day-by-day account of Oakland’s 1972, 1973 and 1974 championship seasons.

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