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1974 baseball

1974 Oakland A’s: New Leader; Same Championship Result

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For a two-time defending World Series champion, the 1974 Oakland A’s entered the season in a bit of flux. They had a new manager. After Dick Williams resigned immediately following the championship in 1973, Alvin Dark was the new man in charge. But the players on the field were fundamentally the same and that added up to the same result—a third straight World Series title in Oakland.

Pitching was the key and a Cy Young season from Catfish Hunter led the way. Hunter worked 318 innings, astonishing even by the workhorse standards of the day and won 25 games with a 2.49 ERA. Vida Blue and Ken Holtzman each had ERAs in the low 3s and combined for 36 more wins. Rollie Fingers, the versatile reliever who was destined for the Hall of Fame, worked 119 innings and posted a 2.65 ERA. These four arms carried the A’s to the American League’s best ERA.

The everyday lineup produced the 2-3-4 finishers in the American League MVP voting. Joe Rudi drove in 99 runs and finished second. Sal Bando drove in 103 and came in third. Reggie Jackson actually had the best year of any of them. Reggie finished with a .391 on-base percentage, slugged .574, hit 29 home runs, drove in 93 runs, scored 90 more and stole 25 bases. It was a magnificent all-around campaign and why he didn’t finish higher in the voting is subject to anyone’s speculation.

The Jackson-Bando-Rudi trio got support from Gene Tenace, who hit 26 home runs. Bert Campaneris at short and Billy North in centerfield combined to swipe 89 bases. The offense overall wasn’t as good as it had been in the championship runs of 1972 and 1973, but it was still third in the AL in runs scored.

Oakland straggled out of the gate and were 10-11 when they delivered a sweep of AL West division rival Minnesota and took two of three from another challenger in Kansas City (Prior to 1994, there was only an East & West division in each league, with the winners going directly to the LCS). By Memorial Day, the A’s record was a pedestrian 24-20, but that was enough to be on top of a balanced AL West.

They gradually picked up steam in the early part of the summer. There was a four-game sweep of the California Angels in June. Right before the All-Star break, the A’s played AL East teams in New York, Baltimore and Cleveland, the first two being leading contenders. Oakland went 7-4 in this stretch and took a five-game lead into the break.

Chicago, Texas and Kansas City were the teams hoping to make a second-half run. The A’s played steady baseball immediately out of the break and pushed their lead as high as 7 ½ games. That’s where it stood on Labor Day. The White Sox had fallen by the wayside, with the Rangers and Royals still holding out hope for a September challenge.

Oakland had the opportunity to put Texas away in a four-game series in early September. Catfish got them rolling with a 3-0 win to start the series, but the A’s lost the next three. The margin was still comfortable at 5 ½ games with three weeks to play, but it wasn’t over yet. They went to Texas for a return trip and lost the first two of a weekend series. The Rangers had the chance to close within three games in the Sunday finale.

The championship veterans answered the bell. Bando hit a two-run homer and Fingers gave 4 2/3 innings of quality relief work in a 4-1 win. That effectively ended the hopes of the challengers. With six days to go in the season, Hunter beat the Twins 2-1 to secure at least a tie. One day later, Texas blew an extra-inning lead in Kansas City and lost 5-4, ending the race.

Oakland faced a familiar foe in the 1974 ALCS. The A’s had met the Baltimore Orioles in this round in both 1971 (when the Orioles won) and in the ‘73 postseason run. Neither team was outstanding this year—the Orioles had 91 wins and the A’s had 90—but there was plenty of October experience.

Baltimore was an offensively-challenged team that thrived on great pitching. Even with an off-year by the great Jim Palmer, the Orioles had the second-best pitching in the American League behind starters Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally and Ross Grimsley. They were also hot, having barreled past the Red Sox in the late summer and nipped the Yankees in the stretch.

The ALCS was a best-of-five affair prior to 1985 and homefield was done by a rotation system that would have the first two games in Oakland and the remainder of the series in Baltimore. A 6-3 loss in Game 1 with Hunter on the mound put Oakland’s back to the wall quickly. But Holtzman came up big in Game 2. And then the pitching really took over. Blue pitched a gem and outdueled the great Jim Palmer back in Baltimore in Game 3. Hunter, with a chance at redemption, won a pitcher’s duel of his own in Game 4 and the A’s had another pennant. 

READ THE GAME-BY-GAME NARRATIVE OF THE 1974 ALCS

The World Series would be an all-California affair, as the Los Angeles Dodgers won the National League pennant. The Dodgers had the best record in baseball at 102-60. They had the MVP award winner in Steve Garvey and the Cy Young Award winner with reliever Mike Marshall. The games in this Series would all be close, but Oakland’s championship mettle came shining through in difficult spots. 

The A’s split the first two games in Los Angeles, both by 3-2 scores. They won another 3-2 game back home in Game 3. The fourth game saw Oakland trail in the sixth inning before a four-run rally put them in command. Game 5 was tied 2-2 in the late going. Rudi homered off of Marshall in the seventh, Fingers put away the fourth 3-2 final of the Series and for the third straight year, the Oakland A’s were the champions of baseball. 

READ THE GAME-BY-GAME NARRATIVE OF THE 1974 WORLD SERIES

Oakland had one more good run left in the team, winning a fifth straight AL West title in 1975. But they lost the ALCS to Boston that year, bringing an end to the dynasty. The newly dawning era of free agency would break apart this team. Hunter left for New York after the ‘74 season. Reggie followed suit. Owner Charlie Finley dismantled the rest of the roster. 1974 was the last championship run of a great dynasty.

The Seasonal Narrative Of The 1974 Boston Red Sox

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The 1974 Boston Red Sox had the most prolific offense in the American League and they slugged their way into first place and the heart of the pennant race. But that offense went silent at the season’s crunch point and a pitching staff that lacked depth wasn’t able to make up the difference as rookie manager Darrell Johnson was unable to return the franchise to the postseason.

It was a busy offseason leading up to the ’74 season and the Red Sox made a flurry of moves, none of which were particularly enlightened. They dealt a young outfielder in Ben Ogilvie to the Detroit Tigers. That didn’t hurt them in 1974, but it didn’t help, and Ogilvie later became a star. Boston traded starting pitcher Marty Pattin to the Kansas City Royals for versatile pitcher Dick Drago. This one worked out better, but the rotation missed Pattin’s reliability in taking his turn every fourth day.

The rotation was further stripped by trading John Curtis–another steady, if unspectacular arm to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Red Sox got back starting pitcher Reggie Cleveland and reliever Diego Segui–both were regulars on the mound and both were mediocre.

But that wasn’t the biggest move Boston made with St. Louis. The Red Sox dealt outfielder Reggie Smith–who by this point had surpassed 34-year-old Carl Yastrzemski as the team’s best everyday player–to the Cards for Bernie Carbo and Rick Wise.

Carbo would become a Boston icon for his pinch-hitting skill, most memorably in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, and Wise would turn into a decent starting pitcher a year later. Neither were as good as Smith, who could hit for average, hit for power and run.

For 1974, the pitching staff was completely dependent on Luis Tiant and Bill Lee. El Tiante threw over 300 innings, won 22 games and finished with a 2.92 ERA. Lee’s ERA was higher, at 3.51, but he logged over 280 innings and won 17 games. The rest of the rotation was pieced together with a mix of Cleveland, Drago and Roger Moret. Segui was the top reliever, but that didn’t mean he was good, finishing with a 4.00 ERA.

Boston had to rely on its bats, and with Smith gone, they needed people to step up. Yaz remained ever reliable, churning out a .414 on-base percentage and a respectable .445 slugging percentage, though his power was not what it had been a few years earlier.

The Red Sox gave regular playing time to 22-year-old Dwight Evans for the first time, and Evans rewarded them with solid number of .335 OBP/.421 slugging. Tommy Harper was in decline in left field, but he still stole 28 bases. Cecil Cooper, the good young DH/1B, began to slowly emerge and he batted .275.

Carbo didn’t officially have a regular position, but he got plenty of at-bats and finished with a .364 on-base percentage. It wasn’t a lineup that looked fierce on paper–especially when catcher Carlton Fisk missed over 100 games due to injury–but it was balanced and kept scoring runs.

The season didn’t begin well and Boston was 11-15 in early May, losing five of six at home to non-contenders in the Texas Rangers and California Angels. Tiant and Lee got it turned around, throwing consecutive shutouts at the New York Yankees and the Red Sox cleared the .500 threshold for good on May 21. They were only 23-20 going into Memorial Day, but managed to lead an AL East where all six teams were packed within three games of each other.

In early June, the two-time defending World Series champ (soon to be three-time defending) Oakland A’s came to Fenway Park. The Red Sox won three straight, and the highlight was Tiant beating A’s ace Vida Blue 4-1 in a game where Evans hit a three-run blast. When Boston made the return trip west, another Tiant-Blue battle was on tap. The game was tied 1-1 in extra innings, both aces determined to finish what they started. Boston scraped over a run in the 11th, won 2-1 and also took two of three in the series.

The Tiant-Blue battles were the highlight of a 9-3 stretch for the Red Sox that saw them pull out to a lead as much as 4 1/2 games in the AL East. But they lost six of seven at home to the Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Royals, coming back to the pack. When the All-Star break arrived, Boston was 50-45, the AL East still within five games from top to bottom, and the Red Sox in the lead.

In late July, the New York Yankees came to Fenway Park and Boston won three straight. They opened the series by beating Yankee closer Sparky Lyle on a walkoff and ended the series the same way.

Lyle was a former Red Sox and the decision to trade him in 1972 was one of the worst in franchise history, but in July 1974, the Sox got the best of their old friend. Then they swept a two-game series from the Orioles and won 15 of the first 22 games in August.

Boston’s lead soared as high as seven games, but a 2-6 stretch leading into September tightened the race back up. On Labor Day, Boston was two games up on New York, plus-five on Baltimore and were going to old Memorial Stadium to play the Orioles in a three-game set.

The Red Sox had Tiant and Lee on tap for the first two games and their best pitchers answered the bell. Both threw complete games. Combined, they only gave up nine hits and two runs…and they both lost.

It was perhaps the most infamous display of offensive failure in Red Sox history. They mustered a combined five singles in the two games and wasted Tiant and Lee’s brilliance, losing 1-0 each time. In the series finale, the Sox faced Cy Young winner Jim Palmer and got only three more singles, losing this one 6-0.

The best offense in the American League had failed to score a run in the biggest three games of the season to date. They had only eight hits and all were singles.

Boston stumbled out of Baltimore and lost nine of the next fourteen. When the Orioles made a return trip to Fenway for, the Red Sox were four games out, with the Birds and Yanks jousting at the top. This three-game set with Baltimore would be followed by a three-game series in the Bronx. It was now or never.

The offense improved against Oriole pitching in the opener, but that means merely that they got a couple extra-base hits and actually scored a run. But one run was all they got, and Drago’s strong outing was undone by solo home runs given up to Don Baylor and Boog Powell. Boston lost 2-1, and then trailed 5-1 in the ninth the next day. Finally, the bats awakened. Evans hit a three-run homer, the Red Sox tied it and they won in extra innings to keep their season alive.

But Reggie Cleveland took the mound in the finale and could only get two outs, resulting in a 7-2 loss. Boston was still five games back with a week left.

Tiant went into New York and threw a six-hit shutout to win the opener 4-0. Moret followed it up with a complete-game 4-2 win, as the Red Sox clung to their faint hopes. Lee pitched the finale and took a shutout into the ninth inning. But once again, there was no offensive support and the Yankees scraped over a run to win 1-0.

In the meantime, Baltimore just wasn’t losing. From the beginning of September to the end of the regular season, the Orioles went 25-6. By the time the final weekend arrived, the Red Sox were five games out and eliminated. Baltimore finally outlasted New York on the season’s penultimate day.

The Red Sox had stayed in contention all season long, but with a final record of 84-78, the record was actually worse than any since 1966. Fortunately, better days were ahead–in 1975, they would again grab an AL East lead in the second half and then finish the job.