The time of the Oakland Athletics has ended. Starting this season, the Athletics will play their home games in Sacramento while waiting to officially move to Vegas. While they plan on playing without a city affiliation, you're 100% justified in calling them the California or Sacramento Athletics, like you could call the Blue Jays the Buffalo Blue Jays during the 2020 and 2021 seasons when they weren't allowed in Canada, but that's a different can of worms...Or better yet, do what the Boston Patriots of the NFL did when the city kicked them out and called themselves the New England Patriots so that they could be vague about where exactly they call home; how do the Golden State Athletics sound?
With the Athletics latest move pending, it's worth noting that this isn't the first time the team has abandoned a city. The franchise started in Philadelphia, moved to Kansas City, and ultimately went to Oakland. They found initial success in Philly, failure in KC and then knocked out 3 straight titles while in Oakland in addition to an additional title against their Bay Area rivals in San Francisco. So while the mailman delivers the Athletics' change-of-address notices, let's look back at the first season in Oakland.
1968 was another failure of a season for the Athletics, but it represented a new beginning for the franchise and laid the groundwork for a future dynasty that was only a few years away. All 13 previous seasons in Kansas City saw the A's finish in the cellar of the league and be a hopeless mess. Charlie O. Finley bought the team while in KC and ultimately brought them over to California, hiring Bob Kennedy to manage the new west coast version of the classic team.
The team featured many future stars of the 70s championship run like Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter, while also featuring many of players so bad that they'd be featured the following season on the woefully bad Seattle Pilots. But not all teams are meant to challenge for the World Series, and what you're looking for sometimes is a sign of improvement so you can build towards a better future. The 1968 Athletics succeeded in that regard, swinging an 82-80 record (their first winning season since they called Philadelphia home), good for 6th place in the American League, a mere 21 games behind the pennant winning Detroit Tigers.
So while the season showed promise for the future, it was ultimately a wash...but one can not bring up the '68 season without mentioning the unquestionable bright spot for the team (and all of baseball) that was Catfish Hunters perfect game. And as for the future, 1969 saw the Athletics add more wins and continue that slow march to a 3-pete that would begin in 1972.
The star on offense for the initial Oakland team was arguably Bert Campaneris. In addition to the all star nod, Bert led the league with 177 Hits and a mind blowing (by todays standards) 62 Stolen Bases.
Representing the Oakland area at the all star game, Rick Monday was still 8 years away from having one of the most
patriotic on-field moments in sports history.
Reggie Jackson was entering his 2nd season in baseball in 1968, but you can tell by his chart that the power was there...as were the strikeouts. He led the league with 171 Ks, the first sign that he was on his way to set the all time record. The 29 Home Runs were also a sign of the 563 he'd awe the world with in his career.
The other regulars of the Athletics. All pretty ok, but none very good. Pretty much what you'd expect from a team that was essentially .500 when all was said and done. Might as well take a moment to talk about how annoying this set was to make because 1968 was a one off season for a very VERY specific uniform style, and since 1968 was really nothing special for the A's, there aren't a whole lot of pictures to choose from with the correct uniforms. Hope you like a lot of Spring Training and Yankee Stadium backgrounds or repurposed images from baseball cards with unique cropping.
Oakland's bench in 1968 isn't half bad compared to the starters. Pagliaroni was the man behind the dish for the perfect game, hence the rare action shot of a '68 Athletics player. Some of these guys wouldn't be out of place in the starting lineup from time to time on this team.
Oakland's rotation. Odom led the team with an all star nomination and 16 Wins, while Hunter pitched a perfect game and led the A's with 172 Strikeouts. Jim Nash contributed with a team low 2.28 ERA.
Aker was one of baseballs prolific Closers before it became such a regular thing. His 32 Saves in 1966 was still a record going into '68, but he would only muster 12 in this season. When the Seattle Pilots were drafting their expansion team, Jack was their choice for the 9th inning and they selected him away (disagreement with Finley made him available in the expansion draft). He retired with an impressive (for the time) 100+ Saves.
The bridge between the Starters and Aker were these men. Let's take a moment to talk about how hard it was to find a decent picture of Ed Sprague that wasn't: a) the wrong team/season or b) his son, Ed Sprague Jr. Not fun.
Remind me to limit how many old school teams I do that aren't world champions.
WHERE IS HIS MUSTACHE?!?! Clearly it was the source of his Hall of Fame powers since clean shaven Rollie Fingers has such a putrid chart like that. Seriously, I originally thought that was a hitters chart.
Special bonus is Catfish Hunter as a hitter. Usually I avoid hitter cards for pitchers (soooooo much extra work) but I included Catfish's hitter card in his perfect game post because of how good he swung the bat that day, and since he happened to be one of the best hitting pitchers of that time (and since the card was already made) I figured I'd include it with the team set.
