The 1969 World Series between the Baltimore Orioles and New York Mets was a bit ironic. Just nine months earlier, these same two cities had met in Super Bowl III, when the then-Baltimore Colts met Joe Namath’s Jets. In that Super Bowl, the heavily favored team from Baltimore was upset by New York. Now, in […]
Baseball entered a new era in 1969. For the first time, the two leagues had been split into divisions, meaning a postseason round would have to be played prior to the World Series. The first edition of the 1969 NLCS featured the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves. In a series that was then […]
The League Championship Series round was brand-new in 1969, and the first edition of the ALCS was between the Baltimore Orioles and Minnesota Twins. Two young, aggressive managers who would both become very familiar with each other and to baseball fans everywhere were in the dugouts—Earl Weaver and Billy Martin. There was some extremely tense […]
Since their founding in 1962, the Mets had done nothing but lose. In fairness to them, expansion franchises were put behind the eight-ball a lot more than they are today when it comes to building a roster. But the hard numbers told you that in New York’s first seven seasons, they lost at least 100 […]
The 1969 Baltimore Orioles came into the season just three years removed from winning the franchise’s first World Series title in 1966, but still in the midst of change. Hank Bauer had managed the ’66 champs. But after slipping under .500 in 1967, then being a middling 43-37 halfway through 1968, Bauer had been replaced […]
A Braves franchise that had been a consistent winner in Milwaukee, including a 1957 World Series title, moved to Atlanta in 1965. By 1967, the Braves were losing more than they were winning. They made a managerial change, bringing in Lum Harris. The team improved to .500 in ’68. The 1969 Atlanta Braves made an […]
The people of Minneapolis-St. Paul got major league baseball in 1960 when the first iteration of the Washington Senators moved west and renamed themselves the Twins. It only took five years to reach the World Series, in 1965. When the franchise slipped under .500 in 1968, they made a managerial change—Billy Martin got his first […]
The 1969 Boston Red Sox continued a pattern that had started the year before. They were a solid winning franchise, but replicating the out-of-nowhere pennant run of 1967 was going to require a big jump. Boston had followed up the 1967 pennant–which came after a decade of really bad teams–by winning 86 games in 1968. […]