That said, my entire book is making a case against the historical record. This team deserved the accolades. Read more

That’s a great question. As best I can figure, it’s all on Charlie Finley. On one hand, he was an iconoclast who made few friends in the ownership ranks. They were not inclined to prop him up any more than was neccesary. Read more

Hmmm. Based on the fact that Reggie, for all his brashness, tended to get his head handed to him in all his fights of this era, it might be the latter. Then again, Rollie’d be apt to forget his assignment and try to strike me out with an outside cutter on the black. Toss-up. Read more

That book is flippin’ fantastic, man. Bergman was the beat writer for the Oakland Tribune, and the cornerstone of my research. I quote him constantly. If you can find that book, it’s well worth a read. Read more

Having spoken to many, many players, I confirm the latter portion of that thesis. Read more

Is there any more pure enactment of one athlete pitting his skill against another than the pitcher-batter confrontation? Sure, there are lots of ancillary factors (defense, park size, weather conditions, the ump’s strike zone), but short of indvidual one-on-one sports like tennis, this is as pure as it gets. Read more

It’s also worth pointing out that Reggie grew up in Wyncotte, PA, a largely Jewish community. I’ve heard from Jewish players on the team that he understood much about where they came from. The no-Jews-in-Texas thing was a wise-ass statement, but I don’t think there was any genuine anti-Semitism behind it. Read more

The guys actually managed to get along for much of the time. In fact, Reggie enjoyed guns, and Epstein told me that he later sold him one of his rifles — a 240 magnum. As far as I know, Reggie never used it on anybody in the clubhouse. They figured out how to get along. Read more

Lots of stories. Lots of fights. Lots of confrontation over those championship years. Thing is, it was all integral to the success of the team — the only reason guys brawled so relentlessly is that they pushed each other to the brink via nonstop verbal needling. Mutual accountability was pervasive on this roster,… Read more

Actually, he wanted to take things even further. He pressed MLB to use orange baseball and change the rules so that players could walk after three balls, not four. (He even got approval to enact both ideas in various spring training games. Things didn’t turn out so well.) Read more

It was grand, man. Charlie Finley was hardly the only one responsible for it, but the guy should get credit for dragging the sport as we know it in the late-1950s, right up into the sport as we know it in the late-’70s. Wild colors, facial hair, outlaw images, the DH. The only thing he didn’t do was layer his home… Read more

The guy was strong and he was fast, but to judge by the outcome of his fights with various members of the A’s (Epstein and Billy North, primarily), he wasn’t a particularly effective pugilist. Read more

Fingers actually had a $300 stipend written into one of his contracts to account for mustache wax. That it was a prop placed there by Charlie Finley makes it no less endearing. Read more

Kinky aside, Sherman Berman lived in Texas and I’m guessing he wasn’t the only member of his synagogue. Read more

And how. Overlooked facet of this team — for about two weeks in 1972 the A’s had 60 percent of all Jewish big leaguers on their roster. Then they released Art Shamsky and dropped back down to 40 percent. Read more

Howie’s dad. Just a guess. Read more

I’ll counter your argument with the notion that these A’s only won after Dick Williams turned them from a collection of parts into a unified whole. He drilled them relentlessly on teamwork stuff — bunt drills, outfield relays, etc. — until they had them down cold. It’s easy to overlook over the course of a long… Read more

Strongly seconded. Come again? Read more

You’re right on all counts. Guy knew how to bring it on both ends. Read more