The Swingin' A's

As readers know, I grew up a baseball nut. And a dedicated, homery fan of the local Milwaukee Brewers.

It's been pointed out here on Last Will than when my teams fail, be it the Brew Crew or the Packers, I was self-allowed to pick up a team outside their conferences, (The Cubs for the former, the Chargers for the latter) to root for. 

For some reason I was also interested in the Oakland A's as far as baseball was concerned. I'm pretty sure it began in my card collecting days as I was fond the of the coloration and design of the 1980 Topps Baseball Oakland A's set. See Above, the 1980 players I selected for the photo were Tony Armas, Mitchell Page, and Dwayne Murphy.  (There's a Green Bay Packers aesthetic there as well).  I loved the history of the A's 70's dynasty as depicted in Jason Turow's book, and even more recently with Billy Beane's dip into building teams with analytics as described in the book and even more interesting film Moneyball.

Besides their colors, the 70's A's always had cool uniforms, renegade players (first team to have ownership demand facial hair) and eventually hugely public wage battles.  The best and worst of that team came from it's ownership, Charles Finley.  It all fell apart sooner that it had to, as that team was stacked with the likes of Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, "Catfish" Hunter, Rollie Fingers and on and on.  They could have won more than 3 World Series, in my opinion.

But Finley was cheap.  And it all dissolved.  Dynamic, Bombastic, Fantastic is a great documenting of the rise and fall of the 70's Oakland A's.  

Why does everything have to have a rise and a fall anyways?

The A's had a connection with my Brewers too, as Sal Bando went on to play third base for the Brewers for several seasons and became a controversial and unsuccessful GM for the team.  Rollie Fingers became a hero relief pitcher for the World Series team of 1982, Cy Young Winner, as well as MVP, and the locals loved him and his handlebar moustache.  I became fascinated with a future A's power hitter named Dave Kingman as you can see here.  (I'm uncertain of why that is, despite my written self-exploration).

The first and last Milwaukee Brewers games I saw at old County Stadium were against the Oakland A's.  I got to see Reggie on his farewell tour when my brother took me to see a game in the final year of his career. 

But I still think it came down to the color and design of those 1980 Topps cards.  I'd go out of my way in the 6th grade to trade for their players from my classmates (most of them, commons, in the nomenclature of card collecting) and that would draw weird looks from my friends and co-traders who were more than glad to trade these no-names for better players from me. 

1980 Topps is my favorite card year design-wise, in general anyway.  I often told my friends (and still tell people) that the 1980 Topps Sixto Lezcano, due to the photo selection and the colors is my favorite card of all time.  The "flag" portions containing the team name and player position as well as the simple border just cry out to me: baseball imagery.  Add those Green Bay Packer colors in regards to the A's, and I was just drawn to the damn things.

1980 was also the year of the Rickey Henderson rookie.  A card craved by all card collectors in my childhood.  I had one once, but it would have been worth nothing in terms of cash values as the corners were rounded like wheels and there was a staticky wear to the colors that made the photograph look like a fading television image.  This was Mostly from being carried around in my back pocket, held together with other cards by a rubber band.  We were kids, not prospectors.  We loved the game and the cards before prospecting adults came along to ruin the hobby like they would eventually also do with record collecting. 

So did I ever actually root for the A's?  No, not really. Until recently when I see how hard Beane has to work to build playoff teams with no money.  But not even Oakland seems to root for them, as evidenced by the fact that their attendance has never been fantastic, even in those glory years.  And now, circa 2023, it looks like they may soon be removed from their home city due to that attendance fact.  It's probably long overdue, as they've been saying for years that Oakland isn't a baseball city. 

But in today's sports economics, which may soon apply to my Brewers, being a "baseball city" may not even matter.