“Billy Ball: Billy Martin and the
Resurrection of the Oakland A’s”
The author:
Dale Tafoya
The publishing info:
Lyons Press
$24.95
264 pages
Released April 1
The links:
At the publisher’s website
At Amazon.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Powells.com
At Indiebound.org
The review in 90 feet or less
Two events early during the 1981 Major League Baseball season knocked me off my hardball moorings.
(Actually, there were far more than only two, considering the mid-season strike and all the other drama that went along with it.)
As the cultural phenomenon known as “Fernandomania” was in an upsurge in Los Angeles early in the season, an April 27 issue of Sports Illustrated landed with a cover proclaiming: “The Amazing A’s and their Five Aces.”
On this day in 1981 — April 19 — the Athletics broke the MLB record by starting the season 11-0 after the first game of a doubleheader – they had actually jumped out to an 8-0 mark after a four-game sweep of the defending AL West champion Angels in Anaheim when Mike Norris, Mike Langford and Matt Keough had back-to-back-to-back complete-game wins (against Geoff Zahn, Andy Hassler and rookie Mike Witt). So now we see those three A’s aces, plus Steve McCatty and Brian Kingman, in their yellow road jerseys — taken in the Anaheim Stadium clubhouse. Those five starters had nine complete-games in the first 10 wins.
The Ron Fimrite story had the headline: “Winning Is Such A Bore.”
(To be fair, Valenzuela was only 5-0 with five complete games and a 0.20 ERA with four shutouts at that point in the season. The SI Fernando “Unreal!” cover came on May 11 when he was 7-0 with a 0.29 ERA and five shutouts and seven straight complete games. He would soon lose his first game. SI jinx for what it’s worth).
But then in May, Time magazine decided to Billy Martin on its cover – an artistic rendition, with the headline “Baseball ’81: It’s Incredible!” and a B.J. Phillips-authored piece that included: “Oakland’s record would be impressive if it belonged to the 1927 Yankees. The astonishing truth is that it is held by virtually the same team that, two seasons ago, was the worst in baseball. But there is one huge difference, a stormy, unpredictable figure with fire in his eyes and victory on his mind, Alfred Manuel (“Billy”) Martin.”
Also that month: The cover of Sport Magazine, with “Billy Martin’s Pitching Machine.”
“That exploded the whole ‘Billy Ball’ story,” says Matt Levin on page 171 of this new Dale Tafoya book.
Levin is identified more than 100 pages earlier as a consultant contracted by the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum board to file a lawsuit against A’s owner Charles O. Finley in 1979, asked to document “what the standards of marketing were in Major League Baseball and contrasting them to the A’s practices.” They Coliseum felt Finley breached a contract to not market this franchise – which four seasons earlier completed its third straight World Series title, defeating the Dodgers, but was now decimated by the new free-agent movement – and as a result, the attendance was the most abysmal in all of the sport, and visiting teams were not getting much of a share of gate receipts, and not happy about it.
The Coliseum was also watching Al Davis’ NFL Raiders tank as well – they would move to L.A. in 1982 after years of litigation. Having the A’s tank in the same way wasn’t going to help the sterile stadium experience any more than if the Golden State Warriors – also underachieving at the time – played its games on an outdoor court at second base for the sheer gimmick of it all.
If Martin had not somehow landed in his hometown of Oakland after his latest firing by the New York Yankees following the 1979 season, none of this would have been even thought possible.
It was enough to persuade Tafoya, who watched the A’s growing up and then contributed to the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and Modesto Bee, to jump on this untapped story, the residue of once doing research on a story about how the A’s in early April, 1979 once crew 653 fans to a game.
Martin arrived 10 months later. Continue reading “Day 20 of (at least) 30 baseball book reviews for spring/summer 2020: When Billy Martin came out swingin’ for the A’s in Oakland, it was an ’80s celebration”
The author:
There’s not a lot of documentation to gather about Charleston by fellow Indiana native Beer, a 
The quick afoot outfielder and worthy slugger is someone Bill James was convinced by the data he collected to be deemed the fourth-best player of all time, behind Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner and Willie Mays.
“Easter is the only player I ever saw who can hit a baseball as far as Babe Ruth,” said then-Padres and future Angels coach Jimmie Reese. As his homers were known as “Easter Eggs,” he is said to have been the first to hit a ball into the center-field bleachers at the New York oblong Polo Grounds while with the Negro League’s Homestead Grays, a shot that was recorded at 477 feet.
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