This day in baseball history: The three Alou brothers shine in thriller at Yankee Stadium

The Alou brothers — Felipe, Matty, and Jesus — all had long Major League careers. Each had more than 1,000 big league hits, and Felipe topped 2,000.

Their combined total is 5,094. Only the Waner brothers — Paul and Lloyd — had more. The DiMaggio brothers — Joe, Dom, and Vince — had about 250 fewer, but would have had more than the Alou brothers if Joe and Dom hadn’t missed prime years due to World War II.

The three Alou brothers signed with the Giants and played together for them about a dozen times in 1963, Jesus’ rookie year. The Giants traded Felipe to the Braves in 1964, and that was the end of the three playing for the same club at the same time.

However, in August 1973, all three brothers appeared in the same game twice during a three-game series between the Oakland As and the New York Yankees. Felipe and Matty were with the Yankees. Jesus had just been picked up by the As.

The series itself was an important one. Oakland, the defending world champs, came into it tied for first place in the AL West with Kansas City.

The Yankees were locked in a four way battle for AL East supremacy. They trailed first-place Baltimore by one game and second-place Detroit by half a game. Boston was one game behind New York in fourth place.

All three brothers appeared in the Friday night series opener on August 10. Felipe (right field) and Matty (first base) started for the Yanks. Jesus had one at-bat as a pinch hitter for the As.

The game was a wild affair that New York won, 10-9. The two teams combined for 31 hits. The Alou brothers accounted for only two of them — a pair of singles by Matty.

Oakland defeated New York the next day, 7-3. Jesus, who was being platooned with Vic Davalillo in left field while Joe Rudi recovered from injury, didn’t play. Felipe and Matty both went 1-4 with a single each.

The rubber match was played on Sunday, August 12. All three Alou brothers were in the starting lineup. They went a collective 7-16. Matty led the way, going 4-6.

Once again, all of the brothers’ hits were singles. And as was the case throughout the three-game series, they drew no walks.

The brothers didn’t walk much. Jesus did so only 138 times in a 15-year career; Matty just 311 times in a career of the same length; and Felipe 427 times in 17 years. I guess they took to heart the old Dominican Republic baseball adage “you can’t walk your way off the island.”

The Sunday game was even wilder than the Friday slugfest. Oakland jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning on a two-run homer by Reggie Jackson (off of Sam McDowell whom I had forgotten ever pitched for Yankees). But New York took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the first. They touched up Oakland starter Ken Holtzman for four hits in the inning, one of them by Matty Alou.

The Yanks added two more runs in the bottom of the third. Jim Ray Hart tripled home Thurman Munson and Felipe Alou singled home Hart.

Oakland cut the deficit to 5-4 in the top of the fourth. Jesus Alou contributed a timely hit. But the Yankees answered with four runs in the bottom of the inning. A two-run homer by Graig Nettles was the big blow.

A Deron Johnson home run in the top of the sixth inning made the score 9-5 New York, but the Yankees added two more runs in the bottom of that frame. Matty Alou started things off with a single. Roy White and Bobby Murcer followed with singles and Munson’s double capped off the scoring.

The As now trailed 11-5. But they leveled the score in the top of the seventh. Gene Tenace drove in two of the six Oakland runs with a double. Jesus Alou drove in two more with a single.

The Yankees tried to stem the As onslaught by bringing in Sparky Lyle to replace McDowell. At the time Lyle was as good as any reliever in baseball. But on this day, he failed to retire a single batter. Lyle issued a walk to Johnson and gave up hits to Tenace, Alou, and Ray Fosse. After that, he was replaced by rookie Tom Buskey.

In the eighth, Oakland scored two runs off of Buskey, although only one them was earned. Jackson walked with one out. A Johnson single sent Reggie to third base and he scored on the play thanks to an error by Nettles. Johnson took third and then scored on a sacrifice fly by Tenace.

Oakland had now produced eight unanswered runs and led 13-11.

Reliever Darold Knowles set down the Yankees in the bottom of the eighth, but ran into trouble in the bottom of the ninth. Hart led off with a home run. Knowles got the next two batters, but walked Horace Clarke (or Hoss Clock, as stadium announcer Bob Sheppard would have pronounced it).

When Matty Alou kept hope alive with another single, Oakland manager Dick Williams called on Rollie Fingers to face Roy White. Fingers ended the saga by inducing a groundout.

With the 13-12 victory, Oakland took the series. Even so, they lost ground to Kansas City. The Royals now held a one game lead. But with Catfish Hunter (injured in the all-star game) and Joe Rudi about the rejoin the team, Oakland had no need to panic. And, in fact, they would go on to win the division by six games.

Naturally, New York lost ground in their four-team race. They dropped to fourth place, 2.5 games behind the first-place Tigers.

Later in August, the Yankees would endure an eight game losing streak and fall completely out of the race, ending up 17 games out of first place. Once the quest to win the division was over, Felipe and Matty became expendable. Both were traded to National League teams on the same day in early September.

1973 was almost the end of the line for Felipe Alou’s big league career. The following season, his last, he played only three games for Montreal. However, he would have an illustrious career as a big league manager.

Matty Alou also had just one major league season left. In 1974, he played in 48 games for San Diego. A career .307 hitter, he managed to bat only .198 for the Padres before taking his spray hitting talent to Japan.

Jesus Alou, the kid brother, got four more big league seasons in. He also appeared in eight World Series games for Oakland in 1973-74.

Matty played for the As in the 1972 World Series. Felipe also played for the As earlier in the decade, but was traded to the Yankees before Oakland matured into a pennant winner.

It’s not surprising that all three brothers played for Oakland during such a short period of time. Charlie Finley was the master of stocking his team with useful veteran players. And Jesus Alou, with his .306 batting average as a fill-in for Joe Rudi and later Bill North in 1973, certainly proved himself useful.