Trusting Eddie Murray
The American League in the early 1970s was absolutely dominated by two franchises, the Oakland A’s and the Baltimore Orioles.
Through 1975, Oakland won five straight AL West division titles and three consecutive World Series in the first half of the decade, while Baltimore won four AL East division titles and one World Series. The faced each other in the ALCS three times, with the two teams each winning six of the dozen combined games in those series. In every season from 1970 to 1976 both teams finished in the top three in the league in pitching, finishing one-two in four of those years. The All-Star team was generally dominated by the two franchises, the peak being 1972 when they combined to have 11 members of the American League team.
But neither team was financially sound. They each played in smaller markets, and had difficulty drawing well despite their remarkable on-field play. In 1970, for instance, the Orioles were the best team in baseball but they were just 15th in attendance, while the A’s won 89 games and should have still been experiencing the bump that comes from relocating to a new city only a couple of years earlier, yet they were 18th in ticket sales among baseball’s 24 teams.
That mediocre attendance trend held throughout these dominant seasons.
1971: Baltimore 14th, Oakland 18th
1972: Oakland 14th, Baltimore 15th
1973: Oakland 17th, Baltimore 18th
1974: Baltimore 19th, Oakland 22nd
1975: Oakland 13th, Baltimore 17th
1976: Baltimore 12th, Oakland 21st
Team payrolls weren’t publicly reported in the early 1970s, so it’s hard to track down where each franchise stood compared to their peers, but both A’s owner Charlie Finley and Orioles owner Jerry Hoffberger had reputations for not paying well. In Finley’s case, while he developed an early reputation for paying big signing bonuses and rewarding players with unexpected year-end awards as well, that shifted to simply being cheap the longer he owned the team. He didn’t pay well and cut corners in often counterproductive ways, until eventually most of his players despised him.
