This day in baseball history: Oakland repeats as champion
Yogi criticized for starting pitcher decisions
Following that wild Game Two, the 1973 World Series moved to New York with the As and the Mets knotted at one game apiece. The next three games were played at Shea Stadium.
Game Three was a matchup of future Hall of Famers, Catfish Hunter and Tom Seaver. As befitted such a clash, the game was a pitchers’ duel. And like Game Two, it went to extra innings.
The Mets took a 2-0 lead in the first inning. The first batter Hunter faced, Wayne Garrett, hit a home run. The next two batters, Felix Millan and Rusty Staub, hit singles. After 10 pitches, Hunter was in big trouble.
After a visit to the mound by Oakland skipper Dick Williams, things got even worse. A wild pitch by Hunter brought home the Mets’ second run. One out later, Hunter, an excellent fielding pitcher, muffed a comebacker by John Milner to put runners on first and second.
Was Mike Andrews still on Hunter’s mind? If so, Hunter put that fiasco aside. He pitched out of the jam and was almost flawless thereafter.
So was Seaver. He struck out five of the first six batters he faced including Reggie Jackson who quipped, “blind people come to the park to hear Seaver pitch.”
Through five innings, Seaver had given up no runs and just two hits, while striking out nine. But in the sixth, doubles by Sal Bando and Gene Tenace pulled the As to within one run of the Mets.
And in the eighth, a single and a stolen base by Bert Campanaris, plus a single by Joe Rudi leveled the score at 2-2.
There was no more scoring until the eleventh. By that time, both Hunter and Seaver had been lifted for pinch hitters. Harry Parker was on for the Mets; Paul Lindblad for the As.
Parker retired the first two Mets in the top of the eleventh, but he walked Ted Kubiak who advanced to second on a passed ball by the normally reliable Jerry Grote. Campanaris, on his way to a great World Series, singled home the go-ahead run.
Lindblad and Rollie Fingers kept the Mets off the board in the bottom of the inning, and the As prevailed 3-2 to take a 2-1 Series lead.
Game Four was a dull affair. The Mets knocked Ken Holtzman (winner of Game 1) out of the game in the first inning with three runs — all scored on a home run by Staub — and coasted to a 6-1 victory behind Jon Matlack (hard-luck loser of Game 1).
Game Five was a rematch of Game Two starters Vida Blue and Jerry Koosman. Blue finally delivered a strong post-season start, but Koosman was better. He gave up no runs and three hits in 6.1 innings. Tug McGraw sealed a 2-0 victory with 2.2 innings of hitless relief.
Thus, the Series headed back to Oakland with the Mets leading three games to two. This left Yogi Berra with a difficult decision. Should he start Seaver in Game 6 and Matlack in Game 7 — both on three days rest — or should he use George Stone — a much less gifted pitcher who nonetheless had been excellent in the NLCS — in Game 6 and a more rested Seaver in Game 7 (if the Series got that far).
Berra wanted Seaver for Game 6, but he also wanted to make sure his ace was on board with the idea. Seaver and Berra did not have a great relationship, but now they were on the same page. Seaver wanted the ball.
He made good use of it, too, holding Oakland to two runs in seven innings of work. But he left the game for a pinch hitter trailing 2-0 to Hunter. (There was no question of saving Catfish for a Game 7 because there would be no such game unless the As won Game 6).
Things got tense in the top of the eighth. Ken Boswell singled with one out. Williams pulled Hunter and called on Darold Knowles to get a lefty-lefty matchup against Garrett. However, Garrett singled, as did Millan. That made the score 2-1 and put the tying run on third base.
Knowles made the lefty-lefty thing work by striking out Staub. Williams then brought on Fingers to face the right-handed hitting Jones.
Fingers retired Jones on a fly ball and then set the Mets down 1-2-3 in the ninth. The Series was tied. There would be a Game 7.
The second-guessing of Yogi began as soon as the final Game 6 out was recorded. Reggie Jackson, always ready with quotable quote, said “he was Tom Seaver today only in heart and fortitude.” That was easy for Reg to say. He had gone 2-3 against Seaver with a pair of doubles. The rest of the Oakland lineup managed only four hits off of Seaver, all of them singles.
Yet Bando and Rudi (who both had one hit off of Seavar) also said he wasn’t the same pitcher they faced in Game Three. Bando thought Seaver threw less hard. Rudi didn’t think the ace’s curve ball was up to par.
If Seaver was less effective than normal, it would make sense. All season, he had pitched on four days rest. This time, he only had three.
But in this era of baseball, it was normal for managers to have their aces work on three days rest in the post-season regardless of their regular season practice. (Hunter was also on three days rest, but he often pitched on that schedule during the regular season.) Sometimes starting pitchers succeeded on only two days rest in the World Series (e.g. Lew Burdette in 1957 and Mickey Lolich in 1968)
For me, the bottom line is that Seaver pitched well enough to win Game 6. He pitched about as well as Hunter did against an Oakland lineup that was superior to that of the Mets. He pitched about as effectively as he had on plenty of rest in Game 3 and as he had in the deciding game of the NLCS, which he pitched on three days rest.
Giving up two runs in seven innings while striking out five was very much in line with what Tom Seaver did throughout a Hall of Fame career in which, of course, he normally faced lineups considerably less formidable than Oakland’s. Looking at the question purely in terms of Game 6, I don’t think Yogi erred by selecting Seaver to start.
But using Seaver in Game 6 meant that Matlack would start Game 7 on three days rest. His counterpart, Holtzman, would also be on the three days. However, unlike Matlack, he hadn’t lasted long enough in Game 4 to break much of a sweat.
Still, Matlack had yet to give up an earned run in three post-season starts. And he had been great on three days rest in Game 4. Yogi had reason to believe the young southpaw would give him one more solid outing.
Matlack was fine through the first two innings. However, the As had a big third. With one out, Holtzman doubled (his second of the Series). Campanaris followed with a home run.
Rudi then singled, but Matlack got Bando on an infield pop-up.
That brought Jackson to the plate, and Jackson effectively brought the Series to a close. His blast gave Holtzman a 4-0 lead.
Seaver hadn’t been in a position to blame Berra for starting him in Game 6. He asked for the assignment. But young Matlack had no qualms about second-guessing his manager. After the game he would ask out loud how anyone could expect his fastball to have the same zip pitching on three days rest.
The lack of rest hadn’t bothered in Matlack in Game 4, but maybe appearing on short rest two consecutive times affected him. Or maybe, as a law school classmate who attended the game with me said, uncharitably: “They sent a boy out to do a man’s job.” Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.
Oakland added a run in the fifth. The Mets made it 5-1 in the sixth on back-to-back doubles by Millan and Staub.
Williams was taking no chances. That mini-rally prompted him to bring on Fingers to try and get the final 11 outs.
Fingers got ten of them. He finally ran into trouble in the ninth when he walked Milner, gave up a single to Don Hahn, and another to Ed Kranepool.
The score was now 5-2 and the tying run was at the plate in the person of Garrett. There were two out.
Williams had brought on Knowles to face Garrett the day before and the matchup hadn’t worked. But Williams went back to his southpaw, making Knowles the first pitcher ever to appear in seven World Series games. (Ironically, Knowles hadn’t appeared in any of the five ALCS games.)
This time the lefty-lefty matchup went Oakland’s way. Garrett popped out to Campanaris. The As were champions for the second season in a row.
After the game, the As, with Mike Andrews’ mistreatment still on their minds, were relatively subdued. When Berra, who knew a thing or two about championship celebrations, entered the As locker room to offer congratulations, he observed, “this doesn’t look like a winning dressing room to me.”
Williams used the occasion to make his resignation official. Charlie Finley’s handling of Mike Andrews affair had prompted it, but the manager was careful not to says so or, indeed, to do anything other than praise the owner.
Williams was under contract to manage the As for two more years and he didn’t want Finley to obstruct his ability to manage elsewhere during that time. (Finley obstructed Williams anyway, blocking his hiring by the New York Yankees. Williams ended up managing the lowly California Angels.)
The drama of the 1973 As did not end with the World Series victory and post-game celebration (such as it was). That night the players held a more robust celebration at a good Oakland restaurant.
It was a fine affair until Campanaris grabbed a knife and went after Jackson. Maybe Campy was upset because Jackson had been named MVP of the World Series, notwithstanding the shortstop’s excellent play. Maybe it was something else — general principles, perhaps.
Fortunately, Bando (good old Captain Sal) grabbed Campanaris and no blood was shed. But what a fitting coda to this championship season!