Total Baseball (1994 Edition)/Total_Baseball_1994_Edition_Creative_Multimedia_1994.iso/dp/0001/00011.txt

Text File | 1994-02-14 | 88KB | 1,251 lines

$Unique_ID{BAS00011}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Team Histories:  Part 3}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Ivor-Campbell, Frederick}
$Subject{Team Histories History teams Milwaukee Brewers Minnesota Twins
Montreal Expos New York Mets New York Yankees Oakland Athletics Philadelphia
Phillies}
$Log{
1906 Chicago White Sox*0000901.scf
1906-08 Cubs (A Yard of the National Game)*0001001.scf
1918 Boston Red Sox*0001401.scf
1931 Philadelphia A's*0001601.scf
1942 Detroit Tigers*0001801.scf
1950 New York Yankees*0001901.scf
1954 Cleveland Indians*0002001.scf
1977 Baltimore Orioles*0002201.scf
1980 Pittsburgh Pirates*0002301.scf
1983 Los Angeles Dodgers*0002401.scf
St. Louis Browns*0003301.scf}

Total Baseball:  The History


Team Histories:  Part 3

Frederick Ivor-Campbell


Milwaukee Brewers

     When in 1969 the new Seattle Pilots played their home opener in the
refurbished minor league Sick's Stadium, 7,000 seats and the left field fence
were still unfinished. The Pilots may not have needed the seats. Fewer than
700,000 fans came to see them play--the third worst attendance in the
league--as they drifted into the cellar of the American League West with 98
losses. That winter the Pilots--renamed the Brewers--moved to Milwaukee,
where a genuine big league stadium (vacated by the Braves five years earlier)
awaited them.
     Attendance improved nearly 38 percent in Milwaukee, although the Brewers
of 1970 won only one game more than the Pilots had in Seattle. It would be
eight more years before they experienced their first winning season.
Meanwhile, in 1972, they switched divisions from West to East, trading places
with the Washington Senators, who moved West to become the Texas Rangers.
     At last--and with power--the Brewers broke their losing pattern in 1978.
One key front-office move leading to the turnaround, the signing of free agent
Larry Hisle (who the previous year with Minnesota had led the league in RBIs),
was also a giant step in the escalation of major league player compensation.
With a signing bonus and deferred payments on top of salary, Hisle's six-year
contract averaged out to eleven times what he was paid in Minnesota, an annual
average figure that would have paid almost 40 percent of the Brewers' player
payroll the previous year.
     Hisle proved his worth in 1978, leading an offense that sprang to life
under rookie manager George Bamberger to top the league in hitting, slugging,
homers, and runs scored. On the mound Mike Caldwell won 22 games in the best
season of his career. Although the Brewers never threatened the Boston Red
Sox or the New York Yankees for the lead, they did rise from below .500 in
early June to finish a solid third, 24 games above .500.
     A shoulder injury the next April marked the beginning of the end of
Hisle's career and perhaps cost Milwaukee the division title. Even without
Hisle the team compiled what is still their best winning percentage (.590), as
outfielder Gorman Thomas (45 home runs, 123 RBIs) and several other Brewer
hitters attained new career peaks of productivity. While they never seriously
threatened front-running Baltimore, they rose past Boston in late August to
finish second.
     Most of the Milwaukee bats remained hot in 1980, but injuries, ragged
pitching, and Bamberger's heart attack (which caused him to miss the first
part of the season and retire in early September) contributed to a distant
third-place finish. In strike-divided 1981, league-leading performances by
two newly acquired pitchers--starter Pete Vuckovich (14-4) and reliever Rollie
Fingers (28 saves)--helped give the Brewers the best overall record in the AL
East, and the second-half championship. But in the special intradivisional
playoffs with first-half winner New York, the Yankees captured the division
crown three games to two.
     The Brewers started slowly in 1982; at the end of May they were two games
below .500, near the bottom of the division. A day later Buck Rodgers, the
Milwaukee coach who had replaced Bamberger as manager two years earlier, was
himself replaced by coach Harvey Kuenn. By mid-July the team had risen to
first place, and they led the West by more than six games as September neared.
But Baltimore had cut the lead to three games by the time Milwaukee arrived
for the season's final four games. One win would give the Brewers their first
division championship, but they lost the first three games by five, six, and
eight runs. Don Sutton, who had been acquired from Houston a month earlier,
faced Oriole Jim Palmer in the season finale: the Brewers made Sutton's job
easy, scoring ten runs to Baltimore's two.
     Milwaukee's offense--"Harvey's Wallbangers"--had been awesome, scoring
more than a run per game above the league average. Just about every offensive
category featured one or two Brewers among the league's top three: in hits
they took all three top spots. Shortstop Robin Yount, who finished first in
slugging, hits, total bases, and doubles, was named major league player of the
year.
     In postseason play California took a 2-1 lead in the League Championship
Series, but Milwaukee came back to take the final two games and the pennant.
In the World Series against St. Louis, the Brewers twice took the lead in
games, but a Cardinal come-from-behind win in Game Seven ended Brewer hopes.
     Milwaukee dropped to fifth in 1983, then to a last-place seventh the next
year, 36 1/2 games back--their most distant finish ever. It was not until
1987 that they returned to the winning track, finishing third with 91
victories. Had they remained in the AL West where they started, they would
have won the division championship by 6 games.
     As veterans Robin Yount and Paul Molitor continued to spark the team's
offense, and starter Ted Higuera and reliever Dan Plesac headlined the AL
East's best pitching staff, the Brewers in 1988 rose above .500 to stay at the
end of August, and finished in a tie for third, just two games behind champion
Boston. With Yount and Molitor enjoying even more productive seasons in 1989,
and reliever Plesac on a club-record pace for saves, the Brewers drew within
half a game of first place in August. But injuries and league-worst fielding
took their toll, and the club finished fourth, right at .500. In 1990, as
poor fielding led to more than 100 unearned runs, the Brewers dropped to
sixth.
     Paul Molitor enjoyed a banner season in 1991, and from the first week in
August to the finish the Brewers played at a torrid .750 clip. But they had
begun their comeback 15 games behind, and too late to raise themselves more
than one place in the standings, to fourth, 8 games out. With another
sterling season from Molitor in 1992, and another strong finish (after a
better first half), Milwaukee drew within 2 games of ultimately victorious
Toronto in the season's final week. Still, the Brewers' 92-70 record and
second-place finish were their best since their pennant-winning season a
decade earlier. In 1993, though, free agent Molitor departed for Toronto,
sparking the Blue Jays' run for a second straight world championship as the
Brewers fell into the AL East cellar, 26 games behind the Jays.


Minnesota Twins

     The Twins' beginnings as the Washington Senators were inauspicious. When
American League president Ban Johnson established the Senators as part of his
move in 1901 to raise the league to major league status, he staffed it with
the manager and many of the players from his disbanded Kansas City franchise.
Within a decade, four of the eight teams in the new major league had won two
or more pennants, and three others had enjoyed at least one season in second
place. But the Senators, after sixth-place finishes in their first two
seasons, spent the next nine years in seventh or eighth. In 1904, their
fourth season, they lost 113 games--still the team worst.
     Even the arrival of promising young fireballer Walter Johnson didn't seem
to help. By 1909 he was the league's second-best strikeout artist, but he
lost 25 games and the Senators finished farther back than ever--56 games from
the top. Johnson turned his record around the next two years, winning 25
games in 1910 and in 1911, but the team rose only to seventh.
     When Clark Griffith--a forty-two-year-old former pitching great and one
of the founders of the American League--was hired to manage the Senators after
the 1911 season, the club's fortunes took an immediate turn for the better.
Griffith revamped the lineup--most strikingly in the acquisition of first
baseman Chick Gandil from minor league Montreal. The Senators in 1912 won
seventeen straight games after Gandil was put into the lineup, and found
themselves in the midst of a pennant race. Boston's Red Sox eventually ran
away from the field, but the Senators held off Philadelphia for second place.
Johnson won 33 games, and his 1.39 ERA led the league.
     The next season was Johnson's finest. His league-leading 36 wins, 11
shutouts, and 1.14 ERA were also career bests and enabled Washington to
overtake Cleveland late in the season for another second-place finish. But
while Johnson continued to top 20 wins per season for several years before
beginning to fade, his team was unable to stay competitive, only once in the
next decade making a serious run at the pennant (in war-shortened 1918, when
they finished 4 games back, in third).
     Griffith wanted the Senators to spend more to attract good players; when
his demands were rejected, he bought into a controlling interest in the club
and named himself president. A year later, in 1921, he retired as field
manager. Under a succession of veteran player-managers the team showed some
improvement over the next three years, but Griffith's surprise appointment of
twenty-seven-year-old second baseman Bucky Harris to manage the team in 1924
worked wonders. Left fielder Goose Goslin drove in more runs than Babe Ruth,
and Walter Johnson put together his best season in years to head the league's
best pitching staff. A hot streak in June shot the team from fifth to first,
and a strong stretch drive in August and September brought them to the finish
2 games ahead of the Yankees. In the World Series a ground ball's lucky
bounce over the head of the Giants' third baseman brought the Senators victory
in the last of the twelfth inning of the seventh game.
     Though the Senators, aided by the acquisition of veteran pitcher Stan
Coveleski from Cleveland, fought off the A's to repeat as pennant winners in
1925, they were less successful in postseason play. Once again the Series
went the full seven games, but this time Pittsburgh won the world title.
     The Senators enjoyed winning seasons in five of the next seven years, as
Johnson retired from the mound and replaced Harris as manager. But it was not
until 1933, when Johnson was replaced by twenty-six-year-old shortstop Joe
Cronin, that the team again pursued the pennant beyond midseason. Two veteran
pitchers at the top of their form--Alvin "General" Crowder and Earl
Whitehill--and a balanced offense led by Cronin and first baseman Joe Kuhel
kept the Senators close to New York through July, and then, as the Yankees
leveled off in August, shot the team up out of reach. Although they tailed
off a bit at the end, the Senators won the pennant handily, compiling a .651
winning percentage that is still the club record. The New York Giants,
though, took Washington's measure in the World Series and overcame them in
five games.
     The following October, after a drop from third place in June to a distant
seventh at season's end had plunged home attendance nearly 25 percent below
the previous year, Griffith--always close to the edge financially--traded Joe
Cronin, his manager, star shortstop, and (since September) son-in-law, to the
Boston Red Sox for a lesser shortstop and $225,000.
     Only twice in their remaining quarter century in Washington did the
Senators rise higher than fourth or finish closer than 17 games from the top.
In 1943 they placed second, 13 1/2 games behind the runaway Yankees. And two
years later, after a poor start, they caught up with frontrunner Detroit in
September, only to stall and finish 1 1/2 games out. In their final six
Washington seasons, they wound up in the cellar four times.
     Calvin Griffith, Clark's adopted son, assumed the club presidency when
his father died in 1955. Within three years he was making plans to move the
club to Minneapolis. There were threats from Congress and a plea from
President Eisenhower not to move the Senators--and at first the league itself
opposed the move. But Washington was not a good baseball town even when the
Senators were playing well, and in October 1960 a solution was reached. The
league would let Griffith move his club to Minnesota, and Washington would be
granted a new expansion team.
     Players like outfielders Bob Allison and Harmon Killebrew, and pitcher
Camilo Pascual, who had enjoyed productive seasons before the move, were even
more productive in Minnesota. Other standouts became regulars or joined the
club after the move--Zoilo Versalles at shortstop, Rich Rollins at third, Jim
Kaat on the mound, and (arriving in 1964) outfielder Tony Oliva and pitcher
Jim "Mudcat" Grant. Infielder Rod Carew began his twelve-year stint with the
Twins in 1967.
     Former outfielder Sam Mele made his major league managerial debut during
1961, and in 1962 saw his Twins come close to catching the Yankees in
mid-September, finishing second. The next year they didn't catch fire until
August and wound up third. In 1964 they dropped below .500 into a tie for
sixth. But after the end of June 1965 no one challenged them as they breezed
to their first Minnesota pennant. Oliva led the league in batting for the
second straight year, and Versalles (in what was far and away his finest
season) led the league in total bases and runs scored. Mudcat Grant led the
league with 21 victories (his only 20-win season) and 6 shutouts, and Kaat's
18 wins were the league's third best. In the World Series it took a
three-hitter by Los Angeles' Sandy Koufax to stop the Twins in the seventh
game.
     After a poor start in 1966 that saw them enter July deep in fifth place,
the Twins played better than anyone else the rest of the season to sneak ahead
of Detroit into second. Killebrew, who had been injured much of the previous
year, returned with his old power in '66, and Kaat enjoyed a career-high
season with 25 wins.
     The Twins began 1967 with another poor start. With the team in disarray
and in sixth place, the easygoing Mele was replaced in June by hard-driving
Cal Ermer, a longtime minor league manager. By mid-July the team had risen to
second, and a month later (after dropping back to fourth) moved to the top in
one of the greatest pennant races ever. Four clubs battled for the title,
with three still in the running on the final day. But Boston defeated
Minnesota to win the pennant, and Detroit split a doubleheader to tie the
Twins for second. The next year Minnesota finished seventh.
     Fiery rookie manager Billy Martin replaced Ermer in 1969 and, in this
first season of divisional play, piloted the Twins to the championship of the
West by a convincing 9 games. Killebrew exploded for the best season of his
career (49 home runs, 140 runs driven in), and Carew won the first of his
seven batting titles. The first League Championship Series, though, was a
disaster for the Twins as Baltimore swept to the pennant in three games.
Veteran manager Bill Rigney replaced the difficult Martin at the helm, and
piloted Minnesota to an almost identical division crown in 1970, 9 games ahead
of Oakland. Pitcher Jim Perry, with 24 victories, enjoyed his second straight
20-win season, and the best of his career. The LCS, though, was another
repeat performance--a Baltimore sweep.
     For the next thirteen years the Twins remained out of contention,
although only in 1981 and '82 did they drop to the bottom of the division.
Twice (in 1974 and '76) they recovered from poor starts to make a decent
showing, and once (1979) they pushed into first in July before nosediving out
of the race. But it was not until the flowering of a new generation of young
players in 1984 that a Minnesota title threat could be taken seriously.
     The Twins' decline on the field was matched by a decline in attendance,
which even their move indoors in 1982 did not significantly redress. The
Griffith family, unwilling to risk the high cost of luring proven talent,
decided to give up the club after more than sixty years of family ownership.
Early in 1984 a buyer was found in Carl Pohlad, a wealthy Minneapolis banker.
By the time Pohlad's purchase was completed at the end of July, the Twins'
young team had blossomed into the West's front-runner, paced by pitcher Frank
Viola's sudden development into a winner, and by the arrival in May of rookie
centerfield sparkplug Kirby Puckett. Although the Twins leveled off in August
and lost their final six games, to fall to .500 and a tie for second, they had
brought the crowds back to the ballpark. The team in 1984 for the first time
ever drew more than 1.5 million fans to their home games, and remained well
above a million the next two years despite a pair of losing seasons.
     In 1987 the Minnesota fans were rewarded for their faithfulness.
Although the Twins lost their last five games to finish only eight above .500
(and two ahead of surging Kansas City), their winning record at home was the
best in the league, and their title in the West was never in doubt. More
surprising was their decisive triumph over favored Detroit in the LCS, four
games to one. In the first World Series to feature indoor play, the Twins won
the four games played in their Metrodome to capture Minnesota's first world
baseball championship in seven games.
     Although the Twins in 1988 improved on their 1987 won-lost record--and
Frank Viola, Kirby Puckett, and relief ace Jeff Reardon enjoyed career
peaks--they finished well back of Oakland in the race for the division crown.
But their home attendance, which had jumped 66 percent in 1987 to top 2
million for the first time, bounded another 45 percent in 1988 to make the
Twins the first AL club ever to attract more than 3 million fans in a season.
     As the team suffered a general decline in pitching and hitting in 1989,
Viola--in the middle of a disappointing season--was traded to the Mets; the
Twins finished fifth. Reardon, a free agent, left for Boston after the
season. The Twins continued their downhill slide in 1990, slipping from fifth
place at midseason to their first cellar finish in eight years.
     On May 27, 1991, the Twins stood sixth in the AL West. Three weeks
later, after winning eighteen of nineteen games, they were first. There they
finished, becoming (like Atlanta in the NL) the first AL team to rise from
last place to first in successive seasons. Minnesota's attack featured a
balanced offense in which seven players drove in 50 runs or more, and a
pitching revival that starred veteran free agent Jack Morris and a pair of
young hurlers with their first big seasons, Scott Erickson (who won twelve in
a row before the end of June) and Kevin Tapani. In the ALCS, the Twins
overcame Toronto in five games, then came back from a 2-3 World Series deficit
to defeat Atlanta with a pair of extra-inning victories.
     After his single starring season in Minnesota, pitcher Morris moved on to
Toronto to hurl the Blue Jays into the championship. The Twins, meanwhile,
arrived at midseason-1992 first in the AL West, where they remained into early
August before drifting back into a second-place finish behind Oakland. Veteran
superstar Dave Winfield left Toronto for Minnesota in 1993, where in September
he passed the 3,000 hit mark. But the Twins slid out of contention early, and
finished tied for fifth.


Montreal Expos

     In the spring of 1969, in an unfinished "temporary" ballpark that would
be the Expos' home for eight years, major league baseball came to Canada. One
of two clubs added to the National League in this first year of divisional
play--Montreal in the East and San Diego in the West--the Expos finished 48
games out of first. But although they matched San Diego's 52-110 record and
last-place divisional finish, they outdrew the Padres by better than two to
one, with a home attendance of more than 1.2 million fans.
     After a second last-place (but much improved at 73-89) season in 1970,
the Expos moved a notch out of the cellar to fifth in 1971 and '72, and into
pennant contention in 1973. Outfielder Ken Singleton became the first Expo to
drive in 100 or more runs, rookie pitcher Steve Rogers compiled a sparkling
1.54 ERA (and a 10-5 won-lost record), and reliever Mike Marshall set a new
major-league record with 92 pitching appearances (winning 14 games and saving
a league-high 31). In the tightest race of the century, all six clubs
remained in contention into September, when Philadelphia dropped away. In
mid-September Montreal won six straight to catch front-running Pittsburgh,
only to lose nine of the next ten and drop back to fifth. Three wins in the
final four games lifted them to fourth place, just 3 1/2 games behind the
champion New York Mets.
     Center fielder Willie Davis (acquired from Los Angeles in a trade for
Mike Marshall) led the Expos' offense in another fourth-place season in 1974,
but the club sank back to a tie for last in 1975 and sole possession of the
cellar a year later, with a 55-107 record nearly as bad as their first season
(and a home attendance little more than half that of 1969).
     But with the acquisition of heavy-hitting Tony Perez from Cincinnati, a
new manager--the controversial Dick Williams--and strong seasons from catcher
Gary Carter, sophomore outfielder Ellis Valentine, and rookie Andre Dawson,
the club snapped back in 1977 to win 20 more games than the previous year and
rise to fifth. And with their move into the new Olympic Stadium (built for
the 1976 Olympics), Expo attendance rebounded from a club low to a new high.
     After climbing another notch to fourth in 1978 (as the newly acquired
Ross Grimsley became their first--and, to date, only--20-game winner), the
Expos put on a run for the title that drove attendance in 1979 to over two
million. Third baseman Larry Parrish, with a career-high season, led the club
in batting and home runs in a balanced attack that saw five players drive in
more than 70 runs. The pitching too was balanced, with six pitchers winning
10 games or more on a staff that compiled the league's lowest ERA. With a
fast start in April, the Expos led the East through much of June and into
July, when a surging Pittsburgh caught up with them. Both clubs climbed away
from the pack to the end of the season. Montreal fell back a bit in August
but caught up with the Pirates in September and carried the race to the final
day before dropping off to second. The Expos' 95 victories remain the club
record to date.
     The 1980 race was just as exciting. A three-way struggle with
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh through most of the summer narrowed to two teams
in September as the Pirates fell away. In a crucial late-September series,
the Expos beat the Phillies two games of three to take a half-game lead, but
in the final series a week later Philadelphia won two games to clinch the
crown.
     In a 1981 season divided by a players' strike, Montreal finished the
first part of the season in third place, but held off St. Louis to win the
second part by half a game. The Expos then won the division championship in a
special playoff with first-half winner Philadelphia--their first title--but
lost the League Championship Series to Los Angeles.
     As the Expos declined gradually over the next five years, most of the
regulars left through trade, free agency, or retirement. But in 1987, two
1981 rookies who had remained in Montreal--outfielder Tim Raines and third
baseman Tim Wallach--stood out in an Expo comeback that left them in third
place, just four games back, with 91 wins and the second-best record in their
history.
     Strong midsummer surges in 1988 and 1989 propelled the Expos into the
thick of the race in the NL East, in 1989 lifting them into the lead for six
straight weeks following the acquisition from Seattle of mound ace Mark
Langston. But in both years, late-season slumps dropped the club to identical
81-81 finishes. In 1990 strong pitching (despite the loss of free-agents
Langston, Bryn Smith, and Pascual Perez) kept the Expos competitive well into
September before they fell out of the race.
     The collapse of a huge cement beam at Olympic Stadium in September
1991--which forced the Expos to play all their remaining games on the
road--was emblematic of the team's collapse into the cellar with their worst
record in fifteen years. But the club revived in 1992 under new manager Felipe
Alou (who was promoted from coach in late May), rising from fifth place to
second behind the pitching of Ken Hill and veteran ace Dennis Martinez, and
the offensive leadership of right fielder Larry Walker. The Expos finished an
even closer second in 1993, just three games behind Philadelphia, with a
record of 94-68, their second best ever.


New York Mets

     Branch Rickey's projected Continental League never materialized, but its
New York and Houston franchises were admitted to the National League,
expanding the league to ten clubs in 1962. Few major league teams have been
as inept as the New York Mets were in their first season. Despite the
presence on the club of such New York favorites as manager Casey Stengel,
pitcher Roger Craig, and first baseman Gil Hodges, and of players like
outfielders Richie Ashburn and Frank Thomas who were still near peak form, the
Mets finished at the bottom of the league in batting, fielding, and pitching.
They won only one game in four and suffered a twentieth-century record 120
losses. But New York fans--deprived of National League baseball since the
defection of the Dodgers and Giants to the West Coast four years
earlier--found their ineptitude lovable. By their third season, having moved
out of the old Polo Grounds into brand-new Shea Stadium, the last-place Mets
were regularly outdrawing the pennant-bound Yankees.
     Former New York Giants catcher Wes Westrum replaced the aging Stengel as
manager part way through the 1965 season, and the next year saw the club rise
out of the cellar for the first time. But they fell back to tenth in 1967
(despite rookie Tom Seaver's 16 wins--a club record), and Westrum was replaced
at the helm by Gil Hodges (who had retired from playing after a few games in
1963). With Jerry Koosman joining Seaver in the starting rotation and setting
a new club record with 19 victories, Hodges led the Mets in 1968 back up to
ninth place with their first season of more than 70 victories.
     In 1969 the majors inaugurated divisional play, but the Mets got off to
their usual indifferent start. At the end of May, however, they began to win
consistently. By early June they were second in the NL East, though well back
of the explosive Chicago Cubs. By September, though, the Cubs were faltering.
The "Miracle Mets" caught and passed them with a ten-game winning streak and
continued on to take the division title by eight games. Among the many Met
heroes, Tom Seaver stands out. He won his last ten starts, sparking the
team's final push to triumph and finishing with a league-high 25 wins that
still stands as the club record. After a three-game sweep of West champion
Atlanta in the league's first Championship Series, the Mets faced the mighty
Baltimore Orioles--regarded by many as one of baseball's all-time greatest
teams--for the world championship. The Met miracle continued as, after an
opening game loss, the New Yorkers humbled the Orioles with four straight
wins.
     The Mets of 1970 remained competitive into mid-September as they sought
to repeat their '69 triumph. But they fell back at the end while Pittsburgh
spurted, and finished third. Two more third-place finishes followed in 1971
and '72. Just before the start of the 1972 season, Met coach Yogi Berra moved
up to manage the club after Hodges suffered a fatal heart attack two days
before his forty-eighth birthday.
     In 1973 the NL East experienced the tightest major league race of the
century. Chicago moved out in front of the pack early in the season, but
folded in July and August. So did the Mets, who fell from third to a
last-place sixth. But although they were last late in August, they were less
than seven games out of first. A series of bursts in September, culminating
in a seven-game winning streak, shot the Mets through the division into first
place by September 21. Although they finished the season only three games
above .500, they topped the division by 1 1/2 games. In the LCS they held off
the favored Cincinnati Reds to take the pennant in the maximum five games, but
lost the World Series when Oakland overcame a 2-3 deficit to win the final two
contests.
     The Mets then entered a decade-long decline. Though they won as often in
1975 and '76 as they had in 1973, they didn't come close to winning the East,
and dropped into a seven-year trough in 1977 which included five seasons in
last place. Seaver was traded to Cincinnati in 1977, and Koosman (after two
disastrous seasons) was sent to Minnesota in the fall of 1978 (where he won 20
the next year). The heirs of original owner Joan Whitney Payson (who had died
in 1975) sold the club to Nelson Doubleday (of the publishing company) and
Fred Wilpon in January 1980. In February the new owners hired Frank Cashen as
general manager, hoping he could rebuild the Mets as he had the Baltimore
Orioles in the late 1960s.
     It took a few years to achieve the right blend, but when outfielder
Darryl Strawberry was brought up from the minors early in 1983 and first
baseman Keith Hernandez was acquired from St. Louis in June, the mix had
nearly all the needed ingredients. In 1984, under new manager Davey Johnson,
and with rookie pitchers Dwight Gooden and Ron Darling combining for 29 wins,
the Mets rebounded to second place with their second-best season record up
till then.
     The rise continued in 1985. With catcher Gary Carter (newly acquired
from Montreal) leading the club in homers and RBIs, and Gooden cementing his
superstardom at age twenty with a phenomenal 24-4, 1.53 ERA season, the Mets
won 98 games--eight more than the year before--and came within a game of tying
St. Louis late in September before slipping 3 games back at the finish.
     When the Mets acquired pitcher Bob Ojeda from the Boston Red Sox after
the season, many predicted an easy division title for them in 1986. For once,
the pundits were right. With Carter, Strawberry, and Hernandez powering the
offense, and Ojeda, Darling, and Gooden all placing among the league's top
five pitchers in ERA, the Mets won two of every three games (108 in all) to
capture the division title by 21 1/2 games.
     The postseason battles were tougher. The Mets won the pennant from
Houston with a 16-inning victory in Game Six of the LCS, but came within a
strike of elimination by the Red Sox in Game Six of the World Series before
rallying to take that game and the next for their second world crown.
     Strawberry enjoyed his finest season yet in 1987, and pitchers Terry
Leach and Rick Aguilera put together a combined won-lost record of 22-4. But
Ojeda was lost to injury early in the season, and the Mets, though they hung
close and posted 92 wins, lost out--as in 1985--to St. Louis by 3 games.
     David Cone (20-3, 2.22 ERA) emerged in 1988 as the ace of the league's
best pitching staff, which, with the power of Darryl Strawberry and Kevin
McReynolds behind it, carried the Mets back to the top of the NL East, 15
games ahead of runner-up Pittsburgh. But after taking a 3-2 lead in the LCS,
they lost the pennant to underdog Los Angeles in seven games.
     With co-captains Carter and Hernandez injured and in decline, the Mets
floundered through 1989, salvaging a narrow second-place finish over St. Louis
with four wins in the season's final three days. The two captains were
released after the season. Next May, with the Mets mired 9 1/2 games out,
manager Davey Johnson was replaced by coach Bud Harrelson. In June the
team--ignited by Strawberry's suddenly hot bat--took off: with a flight that
included a club-record eleven-game win streak, the Mets propelled themselves
into first place before the end of the month. Through July and August the
Mets and Pittsburgh lobbed the division lead back and forth, until the Pirates
consigned the New Yorkers to second place for good with a three-game sweep in
early September.
     Free agent Strawberry signed with Los Angeles for 1991, but the Mets
competed strongly into July before tumbling to fifth place with their first
losing season in eight years. Manager Harrelson was replaced by Jeff Torborg
for 1992, and ex-Pirate star Bobby Bonilla signed with the Mets as a free
agent. But injuries plagued the team throughout the season, and the finish
found them once again a distant fifth.
     Things only got worse in 1993, and even a six-game win streak at the end
of the season couldn't keep them from the worst record in the majors and, with
103 losses, the club's worst season in twenty-eight years.

New York Yankees

     In its first twenty seasons, the club that became the New York Yankees
won no league championship, and finished second only twice. But for the next
forty-four years the Yankees dominated the American League, winning nearly two
of every three pennants and twenty World Series. After another pennant
drought of twelve years, the club in six years won five division titles, four
pennants, and their twenty-first and twenty-second World Series. Their
current pennant drought, which has lasted nine years so far, is tied for the
second longest in their history.
     The Yankees began as the Baltimore Orioles in 1901. But AL president Ban
Johnson really wanted a club in New York and, after outmaneuvering the
politically influential Giants (who didn't want a competing big league team in
their city), Johnson moved the Orioles to the northern end of Manhattan in
1903.
     In 1904 the Highlanders (as they were known during their first years in
New York because of the high land on which their park was built) chased the
Boston Pilgrims through midsummer, catching them in August and trading first
place back and forth into October. But after Jack Chesbro defeated Boston 3-2
on October 7 to give New York a half-game lead (it was his forty-first win, a
twentieth-century major league record), the Pilgrims came back to win the next
two. In the fourth game of the series, with Chesbro again pitching and the
score tied 2-2 in the top of the ninth, a wild pitch over the New York
catcher's head let in Boston's pennant-clinching run.
     The Highlanders again led the league in late September two years later,
before tailing off to finish 3 games behind Chicago. But that was the last
time they contended seriously for the title for fourteen years. Meanwhile
they finished last twice, in 1908 losing a club-worst 103 games, and in 1912
suffering their most distant finish ever--55 games behind pennant-winning
Boston.
     In 1914 Colonel Jake Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston bought the Yankees,
and the next year they purchased pitcher Bob Shawkey from the Philadelphia
A's. Shawkey's 24 victories in 1916 led the Yankees to their first winning
season in six years, and in 1919, on returning from military service, his 20
wins (plus the 9 of Carl Mays, who came to the club in a controversial
midseason deal with the Red Sox) brought the Yankees to third--at 7 1/2 games
out, their closest finish in thirteen years.
     That winter, on the recommendation of manager Miller Huggins, the Yankees
paid a then-record $125,000 (plus a $300,000 loan) to the Red Sox for Babe
Ruth. Ruth, with 54 home runs in 1920, obliterated the record of 29 he had
set the year before, and Mays and Shawkey together won 46 games in a three-way
pennant race that ended with New York a close third.
     At season's end Ruppert hired Ed Barrow as Yankee general manager. While
managing the Red Sox, Barrow had converted Ruth from a pitcher to outfielder.
His December trade with Boston that gave the Yankees pitcher Waite Hoyt and
catcher Wally Schang was just the improvement needed to bring the Yankees
their first pennant in 1921. Ruth's 59 homers and his career-high 171 RBIs
didn't hurt, either.
     The prickly Carl Mays, staff ace in 1921 with a 27-9 record, slipped to
13-14 the next year. But the Yankees continued to decimate the Red Sox roster
with trades that brought them pitchers "Bullet Joe" Bush and "Sad Sam" Jones,
and infielders Everett Scott and Joe Dugan. Bush's 26 wins in 1922 made up
for Mays' decline, and the Yankees captured their second straight league
championship.
     Both races had been tight two-way struggles--with Cleveland in 1921 and
the St. Louis Browns in 1922--and both pennants had been followed by a World
Series loss to the Giants. But in 1923 the Yankees at last put everything
together. After sharing the Giants' Polo Grounds since 1913, they were at
home in brand-new Yankee Stadium just across the Harlem River in the Bronx.
With the addition of yet another pitcher from the Red Sox--Herb Pennock--and a
.393 year from Ruth, they took the lead from the start and built it over the
summer to a 16-game margin by the end. For the third time the Yankees faced
the Giants in the World Series; this time they beat them, in six games, for
their first world championship.
     The Yankees lost a close race to Washington in 1924 and collapsed into
seventh place in 1925--a year in which Ruth was lost much of the season to
surgery and suspension. There were bright spots, though: center fielder
Earle Combs, in his first full season, hit .342 to lead Yankee regulars, left
fielder Bob Meusel filled Ruth's shoes as AL home run and RBI leader, and
first baseman Lou Gehrig arrived to stay. With Ruth's return to full strength
in 1926 and the establishment of a new middle infield of Tony Lazzeri and Mark
Koenig, the Yankees took their fourth pennant in a race that was not as close
as their 3-game winning margin would suggest. They lost a close World Series
to the Cardinals.
     Many observers rank the 1927 Yankees as baseball's greatest team ever.
Certainly it was the Yankees' greatest team. They won more games (110) than
any Yankee team before or since. Ruth hit his 60 home runs, and Gehrig drove
in 175. Waite Hoyt led the league in ERA and rookie Wilcy Moore proved the
league's premier reliever. As a team the Yankees led the league in hitting
(.307) and slugging (.489, still a major league record); their pitchers
compiled a 3.20 ERA that was 3/4 of a run per game lower than the ERA of the
next best team. In the World Series they swept the Pittsburgh Pirates.
     The resurgent Athletics made the 1928 race much closer, but New York won
three in a row from the A's in mid-September to pull ahead, and held on for
their sixth pennant. Another Series sweep (this time against the Cardinals)
gave them their third world title.
     For three years the A's left the Yankees in the shade. An ill Huggins
yielded the club's reins in September 1929 and died before the season had
ended. By the time the Yankees returned to the top in 1932, their manager was
Joe McCarthy. He had led Chicago's Cubs to the NL pennant in 1929; in fifteen
seasons at New York he would lead his club to eight more pennants and seven
world championships. Only once would his Yankees finish as low as fourth.
     A Yankee pennant and World Series triumph over the Cubs in 1932 was
followed by three second-place finishes to Washington (in 1933) and Detroit
(in 1934 and 1935). Ruth had retired by the time the Bronx Bombers returned
to the top in 1936, but Gehrig was still in top form, catcher Bill Dickey and
outfielder George Selkirk developed into formidable sluggers, and Joe DiMaggio
arrived to take over center field. New York finished a club-record 19 1/2
games in front and buried the Giants in the World Series.
     Three more pennants and three more world titles followed in 1937-1939.
Lefty Gomez emerged as the league's premier pitcher in 1937, and DiMaggio
picked up the home run and slugging crowns. Again the Giants were vanquished
in the World Series. Rookie second baseman Joe Gordon and sophomore
outfielder Tommy Henrich joined Dickey, DiMaggio, and a declining Gehrig in
leading the slugging Yankees to the 1938 crown and a Series sweep of the Cubs.
A balanced attack in 1939 saw seven of the eight starters (including Babe
Dahlgren, who replaced the dying Gehrig at first) drive in 80 runs or more as
the Yankees won 106 to run away with their eleventh pennant--and eighth World
Series, another sweep, with Cincinnati the victim. For the fourth year in a
row the offense topped the league in slugging, and overshadowed the steady--if
unspectacular--Yankee pitchers, who for the sixth consecutive season compiled
the league's stingiest ERA.
     After catching the leaders with a 19-4 spurt in late summer, the 1940
Yankees fell away to finish a close third. But then came another three
convincing pennant wins and a pair of Series triumphs as the nation moved into
World War Two. Outfielders DiMaggio and Charlie Keller dominated the Yankee
offense in 1941, and rookie shortstop Phil Rizzuto hit .307. Though no Yankee
pitcher won more than 15 games, seven won 9 or more (and reliever Johnny
Murphy won 8 while saving a league-high 15). With 101 victories the team was
lost from view to the rest of a league in which six of the eight clubs failed
to break .500. In the World Series Brooklyn was the loser in five games.
     Keller, DiMaggio, and Gordon provided the power, and Tiny Bonham (with 21
wins), Spud Chandler, and rookie Hank Borowy headed the league-leading
pitching staff that propelled the Yankees to 103 wins and another easy pennant
in 1942. But after winning their previous eight World Series, the Yankees
were finally stopped, in five games, by the St. Louis Cardinals.
     By 1943 many Yankees were in military service. But pitchers Chandler,
Bonham, Borowy, and Murphy were not, and they led the charge to the team's
seventh pennant in eight years. In the Series the Yankees reversed the
results of the previous year, turning back St. Louis in five.
     When Jake Ruppert died in 1939, general manager Barrow succeeded him as
president, a position he held until January 1945, when Dan Topping and Del
Webb bought the club and installed Larry MacPhail as president, giving him a
third of the club and a ten-year contract to run it. The volatile, innovative
MacPhail had previously brought new life to Cincinnati and Brooklyn, and did
bring night ball to Yankee Stadium. But manager McCarthy, who couldn't get
along with MacPhail, quit early in the 1946 season, and the team finished a
distant third.
     DiMaggio and the others were back from the war by 1946, but it was not
until 1947--under new manager Bucky Harris, and with sparkling pitching from
Allie Reynolds (acquired from Cleveland), rookie Frank "Spec" Shea, and
reliever Joe Page--that the Yankees returned to the top of the heap with an
easy pennant win and a narrow World Series triumph over Brooklyn. On the day
the Yankees won the Series, though, president MacPhail embarrassed the club
and undid himself by brawling in public. Topping and Webb bought out his
contract and share of the ownership. Topping took over the presidency, but
promoted farm director George Weiss to run the club as general manager.
     After the Yankees dropped a pair of season-ending games to the Red Sox to
finish third in a tight 1948 race, Weiss replaced manager Harris with Casey
Stengel, who in nine years of managing the Braves and Dodgers had only twice
seen his club finish as high as fifth. But with Weiss providing a steady
stream of talented players via the farm system and canny trades, the Yankees
under Stengel proved all but invincible into the '60s.
     Stengel's Yankees began by putting together a record string of five world
championships. No major league club had ever won five pennants in a row, let
alone five World Series, and the Yankees didn't accomplish the feat easily. In
1949, for example, they saw the Red Sox come from 12 games back in midseason
to pass them with a three-game series sweep in late September, only to rescue
the flag with two close must-win victories over the Sox in the season's final
games. In the World Series, Brooklyn was again the victim, in five games.
     After losing much of 1949 to injury, DiMaggio returned with power in
1950, shortstop Rizzuto and catcher Yogi Berra enjoyed the finest seasons of
their careers, and pitcher Whitey Ford broke into the majors, winning all nine
of his decisions as a starter (he lost one game in relief). But the Yankees
struggled even harder for the pennant than the year before, battling three
other contenders before finally pulling in front to stay with five straight
wins near to the end of the season. Though three of the games in the World
Series were decided by just one run, New York took the Phillie "Whiz Kids"
without a loss.
     No Yankee drove in as many as 90 runs in 1951, and Whitey Ford was
drafted for two years of military service. But the remaining pitchers doubled
their shutout production and lowered the team ERA by more than half a run per
game, enough to propel the club ahead of Cleveland in mid-September. In the
World Series the Yankees shook the faith of the "miracle" Giants, four games
to two. Cleveland challenged once again in 1952, and again fell just short,
as did Brooklyn in carrying the World Series to seven games.
     Finally, in 1953, Stengel's Yankees won with relative ease. Ford, back
from the Army, won 18 to lead the club to a finish 8 1/2 games up. Once again
it was Brooklyn in the World Series, and once again the Yankees beat them.
     In 1954 New York won 103 games--the most in Stengel's twelve-year tenure.
But Cleveland won an AL-record 111 to take the flag by 8 games. In 1955,
though, it was back to second place for Cleveland as New York, with Mickey
Mantle now established as one of the game's most productive hitters, settled
in for another four pennants. As August passed into September, three teams
were within a game of each other at the top. But the Chicago White Sox
faltered and fell away, leaving the Yankees and Indians to fight it out. With
two weeks left, New York won eight straight to pass Cleveland for good.
Facing the Dodgers in the World Series for the sixth time, the Yankees finally
lost, as Johnny Podres shut them out in Game Seven to give Brooklyn its first
world title since 1900.
     From 1956 through 1958 the Yankees seldom found themselves out of first
place. Only in 1957, when they leveled off in May before surging to the front
in June, were they involved in anything resembling a close race. In
postseason play, they went the full seven games all three years, winning
twice--from the Dodgers for the sixth time in 1956, and from the Milwaukee
Braves in 1958, after losing to them the year before.
     In 1959 the Yankees started poorly and never did rise much above .500,
finishing a distant third with their worst won-lost record in thirty-four
years. After the season, Al Weiss sent an aging Hank Bauer to Kansas City in
a trade that brought Roger Maris to New York. In 1960 Maris, with AL titles
in slugging and RBIs, won the MVP award. He and Mantle dominated the power
stats and led the charge back to the top as the Yankees won their final
fifteen games to bury the faltering Orioles.
     New York's 1960 pennant was the first in another five-flag streak, but it
was the last for Stengel. After Pittsburgh toppled the Yankees in the World
Series on Bill Mazeroski's famous home run, president Topping retired both the
seventy-year-old Stengel and general manager Weiss, sixty-five, who had been
with the club for twenty-eight years.
     With the season lengthened by eight games in 1961, Maris broke Ruth's
home-run record and rookie manager Ralph Houk led the club to 109 wins, just
one off the club record. Once again Maris and Mantle finished among the best
in offensive power, and once again New York took the pennant by 8 games. Ford
enjoyed a splendid 25-4 season and celebrated with two more wins in the World
Series as the Yankees humbled Cincinnati in five games.
     Pitcher Ralph Terry moved out of Ford's shadow in 1962 with 23 wins.
Though the Yankees finished just five games ahead of Minnesota, there was
little doubt about the outcome from midseason on. In a close World Series
with San Francisco, Terry won two, including the clincher with a four-hit
shutout.
     Though New York won pennants the next two years, the 1962 world title was
to be their last until the Steinbrenner era fifteen years later. Despite the
loss to injuries of Mantle and Maris for much of 1963, New York dominated the
AL, winning by 10 1/2 games with 104 wins. But in postseason play the Yankees
were themselves dominated by the Dodgers (now in Los Angeles), who held them
to just four runs in a Series sweep.
     Yogi Berra replaced Houk as manager for 1964. In a season-long three-way
race with the White Sox and Orioles that found the clubs virtually tied in
mid-September, only an eleven-game win streak gave the Yankees the space they
needed for their final one-game margin of victory. Pitcher Jim Bouton won a
pair in the World Series, but the Cardinals took the crown in seven. Berra
was fired.
     During the 1964 season Topping had sold the Yankees to CBS. The next
year the club, which had gone forty years without a losing season, dropped to
sixth place, and in 1966 fell to a last-place tenth, their first cellar finish
in more than half a century. Even Houk's return as manager in 1967--though it
led to some winning seasons--failed to restore the once-proud club to pennant
contention, except once, in 1972, when it was mid-September before they fell
out of a tight race to finish fourth.
     In January 1973 a syndicate headed by Cleveland shipping magnate George
Steinbrenner purchased the Yankees from CBS. Although he had vowed not to
take a prominent role in running the club, Steinbrenner soon emerged as one of
baseball's most active and intrusive owners. Through a series of shrewd
trades, offers of big contracts to free agents, and what became a round robin
of managerial changes, Steinbrenner's Yankees became competitive again in 1974
(finishing a close second to Baltimore after streaking from last in July to
first in September) and returned to the top with three successive pennants and
a pair of world championships.
     Billy Martin (a former Yankee second baseman) in 1976, his first full
season as manager, led the renewed club to a runaway division title. First
baseman Chris Chambliss' homer in the last of the ninth of the final game of
the League Championship Series gave the Yankees the pennant by the narrowest
of margins over the Kansas City Royals. Cincinnati swept New York in the
World Series, but the Yankees came back the next year to edge Baltimore and
Boston in a three-way race that saw the teams shift back and forth in the
standings throughout the season. Slugger Reggie Jackson, signed as a free
agent the previous autumn, turned the club's power trio of Chambliss, Graig
Nettles, and Thurman Munson into a quartet as the Yankees recorded their first
hundred-victory season in fourteen years. After another ninth-inning win over
Kansas City in the LCS finale, New York won the World Series in six games over
Los Angeles, and Jackson became "Mr. October" with five home runs--three of
them in successive at-bats in the final game.
     The 1978 season provided as exciting a race as baseball is likely to see.
In mid-July it looked like a Red Sox romp, but the fourth-place Yankees put on
a great surge, catching the faltering Sox with a four-game series sweep in
early September. Boston dropped 3 1/2 games back, but won their final eight
games to catch New York on the final day. In the one-game tiebreaker, Yankee
shortstop Bucky Dent lofted a wind-blown three-run homer over Boston's close
left field wall in the seventh, and Jackson homered an inning later for New
York's final run in the 5-4 win. Again the Royals were the victims in the
LCS, as were the Dodgers in the World Series.
     After dropping to fourth in 1979, the Yankees held off Baltimore in 1980
to win their fourth division title--but this time Kansas City swept to the
pennant in three games. In 1981 the Yankees found themselves in first place
when the players struck in June and were thus admitted to an intradivisional
playoff with the season's second-half winner, Milwaukee. Narrowly defeating
the Brewers for the division title, New York swept Oakland for the pennant in
the LCS. But after taking the first two games from Los Angeles in the World
Series, they were stopped cold as the Dodgers won the next four.
     The Yankees fell below .500 the next year, and although they revived to
win 91 games in 1983, they failed to frighten the division leaders until 1985.
First baseman Don Mattingly drove in more runs than any American leaguer since
1953 and newcomer (from Oakland) Rickey Henderson scored more often than any
major leaguer since 1949--the team remained in the running until Toronto
eliminated them with just one game to go.
     But Steinbrenner's constant roster manipulation and managerial rotation
(Billy Martin alone was hired and fired five times) at last set in motion a
steady drop in Yankee effectiveness. While the team remained in the thick of
a tight 1988 divisional race until three season-ending losses set them back
into fifth place, their won-lost record showed a third straight season of
decline. In 1989 the Yankees sank to their worst finish in twenty-two years
and in 1990 they dropped to the floor of the AL East with the club's worst
record since 1913.
     Before the 1990 season ended, though, Steinbrenner was gone. As penalty
for his dealings with gambler Howard Spira in an attempt to gain information
damaging to longtime Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield, Steinbrenner
relinquished his controlling interest in the club in August. When fans at
Yankee Stadium heard the news, they stood and applauded for ninety seconds.
     As penalty for his dealings with gambler Howard Spira in an attempt to
gain information damaging to longtime Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield,
Steinbrenner was forced to relinquish his controlling interest in the club in
August 1990. The team improved a little over the next two years to finish
fifth in 1991 and tie for fourth in 1992. But their string of consecutive
losing seasons stretched to four, something that hadn't happened to the
Yankees in seventy-six years. In 1993 the Yankees bounced back and--bolstered
by the league's best hitting and a strong season from newly acquired pitcher
Jimmy Key--contended seriously into September, finishing second to Toronto,
seven games back.


Oakland Athletics

     The history of the Athletics is a tale of three cities--a story of the
best of teams and of the worst of teams. With a thirteen-year sojourn in
Kansas City between residence in Philadelphia and Oakland, the A's are the
only club to include a stop in Middle America in their trek from the East
Coast to West. They have won fifteen American League pennants (plus three
Western Division championships that didn't lead to a pennant), second in the
AL only to the incomparable Yankees. But they have also finished last in the
league or division twenty-seven times, and in sixteen seasons have lost 100
games or more--both AL worsts, by far. A club of extremes, they have been
either at the top or at the bottom in one season out of two.
     When Ban Johnson in 1901 established four eastern clubs for his American
League, he chose Connie Mack to manage the new Philadelphia Athletics and gave
him a quarter ownership of the club. Mack, who had been managing the league's
Milwaukee franchise, settled in at Philadelphia and set a record for
managerial longevity--fifty years--that is unlikely ever to be surpassed.
     In his first fourteen years the A's dominated the league, with six
pennants and two close second-place finishes. After finishing fourth in 1901,
the club won its first pennant the next year, pulling away from the field with
spurts in August and September. Rube Waddell led the team with 24 wins, and
six regulars hit over .300. The next two years saw the A's fade in August,
but in 1905, after forging ahead in early August and hanging on to the lead
with two crucial wins over Chicago's surging White Sox in late September, the
A's opened October with a five-game winning streak to clinch their second
flag. Waddell, with 26 wins, once again led the club (followed closely by
Eddie Plank's 25) and compiled a league-leading 1.48 ERA. In the Athletics'
first World Series appearance, though, New York's Christy Mathewson provided
most of the pitching heroics, shutting out the A's three times in the Giants'
4-1 Series triumph.
     Another August decline in 1906 was followed in 1907 by a comeback
struggle from fifth place in late May to a 2 1/2-game lead in mid-September.
But the loss of a crucial game to Detroit several days later, and the failure
to make up a rainout and a tie, left the A's 1 1/2 games behind the Tigers at
the finish.
     In 1908 the A's suffered their first losing season, but they rebounded in
1909 to chase the Tigers throughout the summer before tailing off to second.
In 1910, with a pitching staff that compiled a stunning 1.79 ERA (paced by
Jack Coombs, whose 31 wins included 13 shutouts) and with league-leading
fielding and hitting, the A's pulled ahead for good in June, increasing their
lead through the rest of the season to finish 14 1/2 games in front. In the
World Series they continued to dominate, outscoring the Chicago Cubs 35-15 as
they took their first world title, in five games. The A's repeated just as
convincingly in 1911. With their "$100,000 infield" of Stuffy McInnis, Eddie
Collins, Jack Barry, and Frank "Home Run" Baker averaging .323 at the bat, and
Jack Coombs winning 28 games to again lead the club (and the league), the A's
overtook Detroit in August to win by 13 1/2 games. In the World Series, Baker
hit two important home runs against the Giants, and the A's defeated Mathewson
twice, avenging their 1905 humiliation with a victory in six games.
     A third-place finish in 1912 broke the pennant streak, but the Athletics
came back for two more in 1913 and '14, in both seasons pulling away in early
June for easy wins. In the 1913 World Series the A's again felled the Giants,
this time in just five games, but the next year they were in turn humiliated
by the upstart Boston Braves, who stunned Philadelphia with the first sweep
since the renewal of World Series play in 1903.
     That winter, Mack began to dismantle his championship club, selling
second baseman Collins to the White Sox and releasing pitchers Coombs, Eddie
Plank, and Chief Bender. (Third baseman Baker, homesick for the country life,
sat out the 1915 season before moving on to the Yankees). Though Mack
received $50,000 for Collins, his unconditional release of the three pitchers
suggests that he had another reason than financial need for purging his club.
(Suspicion of corrupt play in the 1914 World Series has been hinted.)
     Whatever Mack's reasons, the changes did not help the club. The A's sank
immediately to last place, where they remained for seven years. In 1915 they
lost 109 games and finished 58 1/2 games out. The next year they lost 117
games to set a league record for ineptitude that has never been equalled.
     It was a decade before Mack was able to restore the club to
respectability. In 1924 he brought up Al Simmons, and the next year Jimmie
Foxx and pitcher Lefty Grove. Thus renewed, the A's in 1925 battled
Washington to the end of August before backing off to second. In 1927 they
won 91 games, though their second-place finish was 19 games back of the
overwhelming Yankees. In 1928 the A's battled from well back of New York in
midseason to overtake them for a day or two in September, only to lose three
of four games in a critical Yankee series and slip back to second.
     From 1929 through 1931, though, the A's interrupted New York's domination
of the AL with three spectacular seasons. In 1929 sophomore pitcher George
Earnshaw blossomed into the league's big winner with 24 victories and Grove
led the league's stingiest staff with a league-low 2.81 ERA. Six players
drove in 79 runs or more (led by Simmons' league-high 157) in powering the A's
to 104 wins and an impressive finish 18 games ahead of the second-place
Yankees.
     After swamping the Cubs in the World Series, the A's repeated as pennant
winners in 1930. Simmons led the league in batting (.381), and Grove led its
pitchers in just about everything: wins (28), ERA, strikeouts--even saves
(9). Again the World Series was no contest as the A's downed the Cardinals in
six.
     Earnshaw won more than 20 games for his third successive season in 1931,
Simmons repeated as batting leader (.390), and Grove enjoyed what would be the
finest season of his career (31-4, 2.06 ERA) in carrying the A's to 107
wins--their best record ever. But in Game Seven of the World Series their
dominance of the baseball world ended in a Cardinal victory.
     Following a second-place finish in 1932, Mack began selling off his stars
again. This time the reason was primarily economic. Home attendance--never
robust--fell off sharply after 1931, as the Great Depression and the A's
decline made their impact felt. By 1935 the Athletics were back in the
cellar, where they finished in ten of Mack's final sixteen years as manager.
     In 1946 Mack, who since 1940 had been the A's majority stockholder,
divided his shares among his three sons, provoking a family squabble over
control of the club. In 1950 the two eldest, Roy and Earle, bought out Connie
Jr. and pressured their eighty-seven-year-old father to retire. But with
Connie Sr. gone, attendance (which had risen to new highs in the baseball boom
that followed World War Two) dropped off again. When in 1954 the A's finished
60 games behind champion Cleveland and attendance dropped to an eighteen-year
low, the Macks sold the club to Chicagoan Arnold Johnson, who moved it to
Kansas City.
     Attendance jumped more than a million the first season in Kansas City
(putting the A's over one million for the first time ever), and the team rose
a couple of places to sixth. But 1955 was the high point of their
thirteen-year stay in the Midwest; the K.C. A's never again rose above
seventh, and they finished last six times.
     Owner Johnson died in March 1960, and that December his heirs sold the
club to the enterprising but abrasive Charles O. Finley. Finley brought in a
succession of new managers over the next few years, and in 1965 outfitted his
players in new bright green-and-yellow uniforms. But with the league's
expansion to ten teams in 1961, the A's had two places lower to sink--and did.
After finishing tenth in 1967 for the third time in four years, Finley moved
the club to Oakland, California.
     Attendance was slow to improve in Oakland--unlike the team. In 1968,
their first year on the coast, they put together their first winning season in
sixteen years. The next year, with the start of divisional play, the A's took
second in the AL West. Reggie Jackson, in only his second full big league
season, enjoyed his finest year, with 47 home runs, 118 RBIs, and AL highs in
slugging (.608) and runs scored (123).
     After another second-place finish in 1970, the A's were ready for a
return to glory. In the next five years they won five division titles,
winning both the AL pennant and the World Series in the three middle years,
1972-1974. In 1971, with a new manager, Dick Williams, and three pitchers
(Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, and reliever Rollie Fingers) who reached their
prime all at once, the A's enjoyed their best season in forty years and won
the West by 16 games. Baltimore swept them away in the League Championship
Series, but they came back to take the West again the next year. Detroit took
them to the limit in the LCS, as did Cincinnati in the World Series, but in
both series the A's prevailed in the deciding game by the margin of a single
run.
     The next year, 1973, Jackson led the league in slugging, homers, and
RBIs, Ken Holtzman joined Blue and Hunter in the 20-win column, and home
attendance crept over a million (by a few hundred souls) for the first time in
Oakland as the A's ran their string of Western Division titles to three. Once
again they were pushed to the limit in the postseason--by Baltimore in the LCS
and the New York Mets in the World Series--and once again they emerged as
world champions.
     Manager Williams quit in a dispute with Finley and was replaced by Al
Dark, but the outcome in 1974 (except for a drop in attendance to under a
million) was the same. Hunter bore more of the pitching load and wound up
tied for the AL lead with 25 wins. His 2.49 ERA also led the league, as the
staff ended Baltimore's five-year hold on the ERA title. The A's toppled the
Orioles in the LCS and (in the first World Series held entirely on the West
Coast) won their third consecutive world title in five closely fought games
with Los Angeles.
     Free-agent Catfish Hunter deserted to the Yankees, and Baltimore regained
the ERA crown in 1975, but pitchers Paul Lindblad and newcomer Dick Bosman
combined for a 20-5 record to supplement the efforts of Blue, Holtzman, and
Fingers and carry Oakland to an unprecedented fifth straight division title.
But there the magic stopped, as Boston swept to the pennant in the LCS.
     In the off-season Finley, with moves reminiscent of Connie Mack, tried to
sell off his star players: Blue, Jackson, Fingers, Holtzman, and outfielder/
first baseman Joe Rudi, one of the team's steadiest hitters. The proposed
sales made some sense: the players planned to leave the club at the end of
their 1976 option year, and Finley by disposing of them before they played out
their option could at least be compensated for his loss. The Jackson and
Holtzman deals were approved, but baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn blocked the
sale of the others, citing the "best interests of baseball."
     The weakened A's came back from a poor start to close within 2 1/2 games
of the Kansas City Royals in 1976, but they dropped to last place the next
year. After another last-place finish in 1979, Finley hired fiery Billy
Martin to manage the club. Martin brought the A's in second in 1980, and
first in the first half of strike-divided 1981. They won the Western Division
championship by sweeping Kansas City in the special intradivisional playoffs,
but were in turn swept by the Yankees in the LCS.
     Finley's sale of the club in 1981 to the folks who bring us Levi's jeans
signaled a turn toward normalcy and popularity. Despite a losing season in
1982, the club set a home attendance record as over 1.7 million fans came to
watch Ricky Henderson's successful assault on the stolen-base record. In 1987
the A's finished right at .500--for the first time in their history a
perfectly average team.
     The next season they inaugurated a new multiyear reign as the league's
best. Starter Dave Stewart and closer Dennis Eckersley anchored the league's
strongest pitching staff and "bash brothers" Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire
headlined an awesome offense. In 1988-90 the A's took title to the AL West
with the majors' best won-lost record, then sailed past the East champion to
the pennant. In 1988 they built a 13-game margin of victory over runner-up
Minnesota, winning 104 games and drawing more than 2 million fans to their
home games for the first time. They swept Boston in the ALCS, but faltered in
the World Series, losing to underdog Los Angeles in five games.
     Injuries to several key players--especially Canseco, who missed the first
half of the season with a broken wrist--kept the A's from dominating AL play
through most of 1989. But the preseason signing of free agent starter Mike
Moore had strengthened the pitching, and a June trade that brought Rickey
Henderson back after more than four years with the Yankees gave the A's the
push they needed to prevail. At full strength by season's end, the A's
overwhelmed Toronto in five games for their fourteenth pennant, then swept San
Francisco for their world title.
     Only Chicago's surprising White Sox challenged Oakland in 1990, and they
too fell away in the latter half of the season as the A's walked to the
division title with 103 wins. The potent offense was made even more
formidable by the late-season acquisition of Harold Baines from Texas and
Willie McGee from St. Louis. But the key to Oakland's dominance was its
pitchers, who for the third year in a row compiled the league's lowest earned
run average. Bob Welch led the majors with 27 wins, Dave Stewart put together
his fourth straight 20-win season, and Dennis Eckersley rebounded from an
injury-hampered 1989 with his finest relief year yet. The A's swept over
Boston to their third straight pennant, but--shades of 1988!--floundered in
the World Series, succumbing in just four games to Cincinnati's aroused Reds.
     In 1991 the A's stayed at or near the top into late June before slipping
to fourth. Eckersley remained in top form, however, and in 1992 proved almost
invincible, with 7 wins and 51 saves. Jose Canseco's trade to Texas during
the season severed the bash brothers' tandem offense, but Mark McGwire enjoyed
a banner season at the bat, and despite a wave of injuries that would have
sunk most teams, the A's stayed afloat near the front through the first half
season, and held steady in the second half to win their fourth division title
in five years. In the LCS the A's fell to Toronto in six games.
     With an injury to McGwire that sidelined him more than four months, plus
a general decline on the mound and at the bat that saw the team finish with
the league's worst batting and earned run averages, Oakland in 1993 did what
only two major league clubs before them (the 1915 Athletics and 1885 St. Louis
Maroons) had ever done: tumble into the cellar after a first-place finish the
year before.

Philadelphia Phillies

     It took the Phillies thirty-two years to win their first pennant, and
ninety-seven to win their first world championship. They have finished last
in their league or division twenty-eight times--more than one season in four.
In the nine years from 1975 through 1983, though, they were one of the most
formidable teams in baseball.
     Alfred J. Reach, a sporting goods entrepreneur and former player, and
Colonel John Rogers, a Philadelphia lawyer and politician, organized the
Phillies in 1883 to bring Philadelphia back into the National League after a
six-year absence. In their first season, the Phillies won only 17 of 98
decisions to finish an eighth-place last, as far out of seventh as the
seventh-place team was from first. Bad as the Phillies have sometimes been
since, their 1883 winning percentage of .173 remains their very worst.
     Reach hired the respected Harry Wright to manage the Phillies in 1884,
and while Wright failed to lead them to a pennant in his ten years at the
helm, he did make them respectable. His fourth-place 1886 team, in fact,
compiled a winning percentage of .623 that remained the club's best for ninety
years. In 1887 the Phillies, with three pitchers winning more than 20 games,
finished second, just 3 1/2 games behind Detroit--their closest finish until
their first pennant twenty-eight years later.
     The Phillies remained in the upper division twelve of the next fourteen
years. For five years--1891-1895--they fielded an outfield of Ed Delahanty,
Billy Hamilton, and Sam Thompson--Hall of Famers who rank among the top
hitters of all time. In the three heavy-hitting seasons that followed the
lengthening of the pitching distance to its present 60'6" in 1893, Delahanty,
Hamilton, and Thompson--with help from players like catcher Jack Clements
(.394 in 1895) and utility outfielder Tuck Turner (.416 in 1894)--sparked the
Phillies to three team batting titles with BAs of over .300. In 1894 the big
three joined Turner in batting over .400 and the team hit .349--still the
major league club record.
     In 1899, with Delahanty's .410 leading the way, the Phillies once again
topped .300 to lead the league. Though the team finished third, they won 94
games, a club high they would not surpass for seventy-seven years. President
Reach sold his interest in the club after a dispute with co-owner Rogers, and
Rogers lost star second baseman Larry Lajoie in a salary dispute to the
Athletics (Philadelphia's new entry in the rival American League). But the
Phillies chased front-runner Pittsburgh through much of 1901. Though they
slumped in August, they recovered to finish second.
     It was the end of an era. Delahanty deserted to the AL the next season,
and the Phillies dropped to seventh. Rogers sold the club to a syndicate. By
1904 the team was in last place, losing 100 games for the first time.
     They rose into the first division the next season, but didn't mount a
serious pennant run until 1911, when the pitching of rookie Grover Cleveland
Alexander kept them in the thick of the race into midseason. Two years later
they enjoyed first place through most of June before fading to a distant
second.
     In 1915 Alexander brought his ERA down more than a run per game to a
league- and career-best of 1.22, hurling 12 shutouts among his 31 wins. Right
fielder Gavvy Cravath and first baseman Fred Luderus finished one-two among NL
sluggers, and Cravath won home run and RBI crowns. For half a season all
eight clubs were in the thick of a tight race, with the Cubs and Phillies at
the top of the heap. But in July the Cubs folded, and in August and September
the Phillies took off to outdistance the late-surging Boston Braves by 7 games
for their first pennant.
     The World Series was a Phillies' heartbreak. Four of the five games were
decided by a single run--but the runs belonged to the Boston Red Sox, who
swept four after the Phillies had taken the opener.
     Alexander shut out a record-tying 16 opponents the following year,
winning a career-high 33, and teammate Eppa Rixey had his first big year with
22 wins. Through most of the season, the club trailed the leading Dodgers,
but caught them in September, only to fall away again in the final week.
     After Alexander's 30 wins had brought the Phillies another second-place
finish in 1917, the club dealt him to Chicago and embarked on thirty-one years
of wandering in the desert. After fourteen losing seasons (eight of them in
last place), they climbed to fourth, two games above .500, in 1932, but
dropped back the next year into the second division (including nine last-place
finishes) for sixteen more years.
     Several outstanding players spent time in Philadelphia during these
years: Dave Bancroft (a rookie in their pennant season), Cy Williams, Freddy
Leach, Chuck Klein, Lefty O'Doul, and Dick Bartell. Of these, only Williams
and Klein retired as Phillies. The financially strapped management traded
away the others at the height of their careers in deals that included cash as
well as players. Even Klein--perhaps the greatest of them all--was sold twice
before returning a third time to Philly to end his career.
     The Phillies in 1930 produced a season that ranks among the most
extraordinary of all time. With Klein and O'Doul leading the way at .386 and
.383, every regular hit at least .280, to give the Phillies a team BA of .315.
But Phillie pitchers yielded a record 1199 runs while compiling the worst big
league ERA ever--6.71. The club lost 102 games and finished last.
     The Phillies' move in 1938 out of tiny, antiquated Baker Bowl into the
Athletics' Shibe Park did nothing for attendance--or for performance, as the
team strung together a club-record five consecutive last-place finishes from
1938 to 1942, in which they averaged 107 losses per season and finished
between 43 and 62 1/2 games out of first.
     In February 1943 the league took control of the debt-ridden club and sold
it to a group headed by New York sportsman William D. Cox. Cox didn't last
long; before the year was out he was barred from baseball for betting on the
Phillies. His controlling interest was sold to Robert M. Carpenter, who
installed his son, Robert Jr., as president. The younger Carpenter hired
former pitcher Herb Pennock as general manager with instructions to build a
farm system, and a new era began in the club's history.
     Outfielder Del Ennis had come up to hit .313 in 1946, but Pennock died
(in January 1948) before he could see the full fruits of his labor. First
baseman Dick Sisler would be purchased in March; rookie outfielder Richie
Ashburn would lead Phillie batters in 1948 with a .333 BA. Willie Jones
wouldn't nail down third base for another year, and rookie pitchers Robin
Roberts and Curt Simmons wouldn't overawe the opposition for a couple of
seasons yet. But the team that would be dubbed the "Whiz Kids" was gathering.
Triple-A manager Eddie Sawyer was brought up in late July.
     In 1949, the loss of first baseman Eddie Waitkus (shot in the chest by a
crazed young woman) and midseason complacency threatened to strand the
Phillies in the second division. But Sawyer fired up his players in a special
team meeting, and the Phillies rallied to finish third with the club's best
record in thirty-two years.
     With new red-pinstripe uniforms and a recovered Eddie Waitkus, the 1950
Phillies pulled away from a tightly bunched first division in July and August,
but late in September fell to within two games of onrushing Brooklyn. The
Dodgers took the first game of a season-ending two-game series to narrow the
gap to one. But in the finale the Phillies' Sisler homered to break a
tenth-inning tie. When Brooklyn failed to score in the bottom of the tenth,
the Whiz Kids had their pennant.
     Curt Simmons, who was called up for military service in September after
winning 17 games, missed the World Series. As in 1915, the result for
Philadelphia was frustration and heartbreak, as the Phillies were swept by the
Yankees--in the first three games by a single run.
     Roberts' pitching kept the Phillies in the first division for four of
the next five years, but the team made no serious run at another pennant. And
when Roberts began to lose his effectiveness the team sank farther, to fifth
for two years, then to four years in the cellar, culminating in 1961 with the
longest big league losing streak of the century: 23 games.
     The club stuck with new manager Gene Mauch, and the 1962 Phillies edged
above .500 for the first time in nine years (though finishing seventh in a
league newly expanded to ten teams). In 1963 they moved up to fourth with a
strong second half. In 1964, with the acquisition of pitcher Jim Bunning from
Detroit and infielder Richie (later Dick) Allen's productive rookie season,
Mauch's Phillies moved way out in front in August. But they blew their lead
with ten straight losses in late September while Cincinnati was winning nine
and St. Louis eight in a row. Only victories in their final two games
salvaged a second-place tie.
     The Phillies produced winning seasons the next three years but never
challenged the leaders. With Mauch replaced as manager during the 1968
campaign, the team embarked on seven straight losing seasons, including three
years at the bottom of the NL East.
     Pitcher Steve Carlton, acquired from St. Louis in an off-season trade,
accounted for nearly half the Phillies' 59 wins in 1972. His 27 victories for
the league's worst team gave the club a ray of hope for the future and earned
Carlton the Cy Young Award. Carlton lost a league-high 20 games the next
year, but as he regained his form over the next three seasons, so too the
Phillies gradually rose to the top of the division.
     In 1974 sophomore third baseman Mike Schmidt burst to the forefront of
the league's power hitters. The Phillies dropped out of contention in August,
but wound up third, their best finish since the league split into divisions in
1969. The next year outfielder Greg Luzinski joined Schmidt among the
league's top sluggers, and the club rose to second, with their first winning
season since 1967.
     The Phillies had entered their golden age--nine straight winning seasons
(a club record), including five division titles, two pennants, and their
first world championship. In 1976 they enjoyed their finest regular season
ever. With Schmidt and Luzinski providing the power, Carlton returning to the
ranks of 20-game winners and Jim Lonborg climaxing a long comeback with 18
wins, the Phillies took the division lead in May and pulled away, recovering
from a late-season dive to finish well ahead of Pittsburgh. Their 101 wins,
.6235 winning percentage, and nine-game margin of victory remain club records.
     The Phillies were swept by Cincinnati in the League Championship Series,
but came back the next season to duplicate their record 101 wins for another
comfortable first-place finish. Carlton won 23 (and his second Cy Young
Award), and Luzinski enjoyed the best season of his career, driving in 130
runs. After defeating Los Angeles in the LCS opener, though, the Phillies
lost the pennant with three straight losses. In 1978, even though Schmidt and
Carlton had off-years, the Phillies led much of the season and captured the
division title a third straight time. But it was a tight race, and they
barely survived a late-season Pittsburgh surge to finish 1 1/2 games in front.
For the third time, their triumph in the East was followed by defeat in the
LCS--for the second time at the hands of Los Angeles in four games. Danny
Ozark, in his seventh year as Phillies manager, was replaced by Dallas Green
late in a disappointing 1979 season that saw the club stumble after a strong
start before rallying in September to finish fourth. But Schmidt was back in
top form, and Pete Rose had arrived via free agency to add his bat and
hustle. In a three-way race in 1980 that remained close through August, the
Phillies hung tight without being able to move into the lead. But as
Pittsburgh folded in late August and early September, the Phillies edged in
front briefly, then battled back and forth with Montreal. Tied with the
Expos as the clubs met in Montreal for the season's final three games,
Philadelphia took the first 2-1, then--in eleven innings--the second, to
clinch their fourth division title in five years. Schmidt, with perhaps his
finest season, drove in 121 runs and was named NL MVP; Carlton, with 24 wins,
won his third Cy Young Award; and veteran reliever Tug McGraw enjoyed his best
season in years. In an LCS in which four of the five games went into extra
innings, the Phillies prevailed over Houston, capturing their first pennant
since the Whiz Kids era thirty years earlier. And in the World Series,
fortune finally smiled on the team as they overcame Kansas City in six games.
The Phillies won the first half of the strike-divided 1981 season. In the
special intradivisional playoff against Montreal, Philadelphia fought back to
tie the series after losing the first two games--only to lose the finale. The
Carpenter family--citing the prohibitive cost of running a major league
club--sold the team. Manager Dallas Green also left and was replaced by Pat
Corrales, who kept the club in the thick of the 1982 race until the final
month, when the Phillies slipped 3 1/2 games back, to second. And Steve
Carlton did it again: his 23 wins earned him a record fourth Cy Young
trophy. Mike Schmidt again dominated the Phillies' offense in 1983, but
Carlton yielded to John Denny as the team's pitching ace. Newly acquired
reliever Al Holland emerged as one of the league's best. After general
manager Paul Owens took over for Corrales as manager in midseason, the
Phillies came alive and took the division title by 6 games. Carlton dominated
the LCS with an 0.66 ERA and two wins as the Phillies won their fourth
pennant. But their golden age ended in the World Series, when Baltimore
triumphed in five games. The Phillies dropped to .500 and fourth place in
1984, and suffered a losing fifth-place season in 1985. They rebounded to
second in 1986 (but 21 1/2 games behind New York), then dropped back below
.500 in 1987. Mike Schmidt continued to power the offense--the only member of
the 1980 world champions still a Phillie. Despite an impressive lineup of
everyday players in 1988, the Phils collapsed, finishing in the division
cellar for the first time in fifteen years. Unable to recover from a shoulder
injury, Mike Schmidt retired in May 1989, and despite several midseason trades
the Phillies again finished last in the NL East. In 1990, though, the flaming
start of one of the players acquired in mid-1989--outfielder Len Dykstra, who
was batting above .400 as late as June--lit the Phillies' competitive fires.
But as Dykstra cooled off to mere excellence, the Phillies fell out of
contention and finished 18 games back, tied for fourth. A thirteen-game win
streak in July-August 1991 came too late to propel the Phillies into the thick
of the race, and although they rose to third place in the season's final week,
they finished 20 games out. In 1992 they played at the bottom of the NL East
much of the season, and finished there for the third time in five years.
     Strengthened by the signing of several free agents, and sustained by
solid performances throughout the roster, the Phillies reversed course in
1993. Led by Dykstra's peak season at the plate, the team grabbed the division
lead at the start of the year and never let go, fending off Montreal's
late-season surge to take the NL East title by three games. In the LCS they
won their fifth NL pennant, defeating Atlanta in six games, but in the World
Series they blew a pair of late-inning leads and fell in six games to repeat
champion Toronto.