My first baseball memories are centered around Jose Canseco swatting home runs out of the Oakland Coliseum as if he were a wind-up toy. When he hit 33 homers and won Rookie of the Year in 1986, I was 6 years old. It was easy to fall in love with the A’s, and thus, baseball.
Next came Mark McGwire and all those homers. For a young kid living a few BART stops away from the stadium, watching the A’s back then was a treat. Beyond the Bash Brothers and their homers, the cast of characters was fantastic. There was Carney Lansford and that odd batting stance, Dave Stewart and his death stare and Dennis Eckersley and, well, everything about him.
Those A’s, I always thought, were a great introduction into baseball. But after watching MLB Network’s new documentary “The Swingin’ A’s” — which is narrated by MC Hammer and premieres Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET — I sort of wish I had been born 15 years earlier, so I could have watched Oakland’s dysfunctional dynasty with my own eyes. Because the Bash Brothers have nothing on the Swingin’ A’s.
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The documentary shows us both sides of those early ’70s A’s clubs — the talent that led to three straight World Series titles (1972-1974) and the drama that led to clubhouse fistfights, ongoing wars with ownership and almost led to a clubhouse strike over the antics of their colorful owner Charlie O. Finley.
It’s Finley, more than the individual A’s players, who is at the center of the film. Mainly because he’s both the architect and the antagonist of “The Swingin’ A’s.” To this day, players such as Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Ken Holtzman and Sal Bando (all of whom are featured in the documentary) have a lot to say about Finley.
Most of the resentment was about money. Finley didn’t want to pay his stars, even after they started to win World Series. Or when they fought back against him, like during the 1973 World Series, he gave them cheap championship rings. Or when he tried to sell off stars Blue, Fingers and Joe Rudi as the dynasty started to crumble.
But as Bando says in the film, maybe Finley’s villainy actually helped the A’s:
“In retrospect, it brought us together because we had one common enemy.”
Holtzman, who won 19, 21 and 19 games in those three championship years, was one of the players who sparred most bitterly with Finley during salary arbitration. Now that more than 40 years have passed, though, he has something of a different take on Oakland’s divisive owner:
“Players are gonna remember the fights, obviously, and the miserable way he used to talk to us [and] treat us like crap. Then on the other hand, you say, ‘You know what? He’s the guy that put together this crazy bunch, maybe he wasn’t that crazy. Maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe he deserves some credit for doing it.’”
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One other thing that makes the documentary cool is that it’s narrated by former A’s employee-turned-rapper MC Hammer. Hammer, back when he was just a young Stanley Burrell, was spotted dancing outside the stadium and given a job by Finley. Eventually, even though he was just a kid, he became Finley’s eyes and ears in the clubhouse. Players nicknamed him “Pipeline,” because he would report everything back to Finley.
Having Hammer on board gives “The Swingin A’s” a more authentic touch, since he was around the team in all those years and, at one point later, was one of Oakland’s most famous celebrities.
You don’t need to have a sentimental attachment to the A’s, Oakland or even Hammer Pants to appreciate this latest offering from MLB Network. Whether you lived this era of baseball or you were born decades later, it’s a fascinating peek back to the past, when one outrageous owner created a dynasty that stood despite its dysfunction.
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<p type="text" content="Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz” class=”canvas-atom canvas-text Mb(1.0em) Mb(0)–sm Mt(0.8em)–sm” data-type=”text” data-reactid=”36″>Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
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