Tonight will mark the first of ten meetings between the Yankees and A's this year. Thanks to the unbalanced schedule, it'll be the first time since 1999 the two clubs meet more than nine times in the regular season.
Despite the lack of meetings in the past decade there is plenty of history between these clubs. As two of the charter members of the American League, it's inevitable that they'd have some shared history over the past hundred years. But it seems that the Yankees and A's have had more than their share of common moments in that time.
Billy Beane was not the first man to build the A's into a contender on a shoestring budget. Hall of Famer Connie Mack owned the Athletics from their inception until shortly before his death in 1956. He served as their manager from their inaugural season of 1901 through 1950, retiring at 87 years old. In his half century at the helm of the Athletics, Mack built up,
tore down, sold off, and rebuilt his team several times over, repeating the cycle as his talent outgrew his budget.
The Yankees were the beneficiaries in one of Mack's earliest sell offs. From 1910 through 1914, the Athletics won four American League pennants, winning the World Series in '10, '11, and '13. The backbone of those clubs was Mack's famed "$100,000 Infield", and the crown jewel of that infield was third baseman Frank "Home Run" Baker. Baker earned his nickname with two momentous home runs against the Giants in the 1911 World Series.
Baker led the American League in home runs four straight years from 1911 through 1914. While his yearly totals of 11, 10, 12, and 9 are laughable by today's standards, they were quite prodigious in the dead ball era. Baker and Mack engaged in a salary dispute prior to the 1915 season, and the slugger held out for the entire year rather than accept Mack's offer. With no end to the dispute in sight after a full year, Mack sold Baker to the Yankees for the princely sum of $37,500.
While Baker didn't quite match his Athletics production with the Yanks, he was a valuable player for them, quite possibly their best in the early and unsuccessful years of the team. After retiring for the 1920 season, Baker was coaxed back to play on the Yankees first two pennant winning clubs in 1921 and '22. By that time the game had changed dramatically from Baker's heyday, and teammate Babe Ruth had long since replaced Baker as the preeminent slugger in the league.
After losing in their first two World Series appearances, Ruth and the Yankees finally captured a championship in 1923. They won three more pennants from 1926 through 1928, winning the World Series in '27 and '28. After dominating the American League for the better part of eight seasons, Ruth's Yankees were displaced by Mack's retooled Athletics atop the American League. Mack's squad won the AL flag in '29, '30, and '31, taking the World Series the first two years, before the Yankees returned to the top in '32. Unfortunately for Mack, it would be the last real success he would attain at the helm of his club. As his team sunk in the standings, Mack sold off his greatest assets, just as he had done nearly twenty years earlier. This time the Red Sox were the primary beneficiary, hauling in Hall of Famers Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx.
Following a history of financial struggle, the 91 year old Mack sold his club to Arnold Johnson in 1954. Johnson had entered baseball circles the previous year, when he purchased both Yankee Stadium and Blues Stadium in Kansas City, home to the Yankees' top farm team. Though he divested himself of those interests upon his purchase of the Athletics, he still had strong connections to Yankee ownership, and
perhaps some other business dealings with them as well. Johnson moved the Athletics to Kansas City after the 1954 season, pushing the Yankees' top affiliate to Denver, but in some ways, Kansas City never stopped functioning as a Yankee farm club.
In the five seasons from 1955 until Johnson's untimely death during spring training in 1960, the Yankees and Athletics executed seventeen trades and purchases. The Yankees acquired the likes of
Roger Maris, Ralph Terry, Ryne Duren, Hector Lopez, Clete Boyer, Bob Cerv,
Virgil Trucks, Enos Slaughter, Art Ditmar, and Bobby Shantz through these deals, all of whom made contributions to the Yankees' dynastic run from the mid fifties through the early sixties.
Following Johnson's death the club was sold to Charlie Finley. The franchise languished through the sixties, with former Yankees
Joe Gordon, Hank Bauer, and Eddie Lopat managing the team from 1961 through mid '64. While the club was bottoming out with three 10th place finishes in four years, the inventive Finley was rebuilding the farm system and plotting a move to Oakland. There, the A's ran off five consecutive AL West titles from 1971 through 1975, and three consecutive World Series championships from 1972 through '74. In doing so, the A's became the first, and thus far only, non-Yankee team to take three straight championships.
Like Mack before him though, financial issues prevented Finley from keeping his dynasty intact. Finley's failure to fulfill his contractual obligation to make statutory payments to Catfish Hunter's life insurance policy after the 1974 season
led to Hunter's contract being declared void. He became the first free agent of the modern era, and signed with the Yankees. Two years later, after a one season layover in Baltimore, the Yankees signed former A's slugger Reggie Jackson. Just as they had in 1916, the Yankees had poached a colorfully nicknamed player and the League's top slugger from the A's. While the A's sunk back to the basement, the Yankees returned to prominence, capturing three straight pennants and back-to-back World Series.
Those Yankee teams may have had even more of a former A's flavor to them if not for some intervention. Following a dispute with Finley, Oakland manager Dick Williams resigned from his post after the 1973 World Series. The Yankees attempted hire Williams to replace the outgoing Ralph Houk, but Williams was still under contract with Oakland and Finley wouldn't allow it. Then in 1976, Finley attempted to further dismantle his team at the trade deadline, selling Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to the Red Sox and Vida Blue to the Yankees. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn quickly reversed all three transactions.
Instead of Dick Williams in the dugout during their late seventies run, the Yankees had Billy Martin as their manager. After winning the pennant in '76 and World Series in '77, Martin resigned in mid-1978, returned in '79 and was fired after the season, finding George Steinbrenner as difficult a boss as Hunter, Jackson, and Williams had found Finley.
Just as Martin's career as a Yankee player ended with a trade to the Athletics, his first post-Yankee managerial job came with the A's. Returning home to the Bay Area, Martin took a team that had gone 54-108 in 1979 and led them to second place 83-79 finish in 1980. The following year, he had the team in the post-season, falling to the Yankees in the ALCS.
As he did in all his managerial stints, Martin wore out both his welcome and his pitching staff in Oakland. He was gone after the '82 season, returning to New York for his third stint as Yankee manager. He was joined there by Matt Keough, one of the young pitchers whose arm he had decimated in Oakland. After getting fired again, Martin returned for a fourth managerial stint early in the 1985 season.
By then, the Yankees had stolen another superstar from the Athletics.
Rickey Henderson broke in with the A's in 1979, and under Martin's tutelage over the next three years, he became the most prolific base stealer in the history of the game. Henderson was supposed to be the piece to put the Yankees over the top when they traded for him in December of '84. Instead he became just another very good player on a series on 1980s Yankee teams that were consistently good, but never great.
While the Yankees were hitting a glass ceiling, the A's were becoming the game's most dominant club. Led by Tony LaRussa and powered by Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, the A's captured three consecutive pennants from 1988 through 1990, and won the World Series in '89. In mid-1989, the A's finally got the best of the Yankees in a swap. Unhappy in New York and with his contract expiring at the end of the year, Henderson was shipped back to Oakland for the uninspiring package of Luis Polonia, Greg Caderet, and Eric Plunk, who interestingly enough, had been part of the A's haul from the Yankees in the original deal. Henderson was instrumental in the A's success in in '89 and '90, and earned the AL MVP with an outstanding 1990 season.
The early aughts saw further chapters written between these two teams, as they met in the ALDS in both 2000 and 2001. The A's pushed the Yankees to the limit in 2000 before falling in five games. The next year they jumped out to a commanding two games to none lead. Facing elimination, Mike Mussina and Mariano Rivera combined for a Game Three 1-0 shutout, aided by a Jorge Posada home run and Derek Jeter's famous flip play. It changed the momentum of the series, which the Yankees took in five games. Adding insult to injury, that off-season the Yankees signed Jason Giambi, heart and soul of that A's team, to a lucrative free agent deal.
The last several years have been relatively quiet between the clubs. At present, the A's are managed by former Yankee Bob Geren, and coaches Curt Young and Mike Gallego also spent time in pinstripes. The A's roster features relievers Chad Gaudin and Edwar Ramirez, both of whom will receive their World Series rings from Joe Girardi this week.
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