The Oakland A’s First Game

Here, from the San Francisco Chronicle, are a couple images of the A’s playing their first game, on April 10, 1968. It was in Baltimore, against the Orioles: a 3-1 defeat.

This is Joe DiMaggio, new coach and vice president for the A’s, appearing in uniform before the Baltimore crowd:

The Chronicle’s story noted that “the A’s have assigned catcher Dave Duncan, pitcher Gil Blanco and outfield Joe Rudi to Vancouver.” Sal Bando’s centerfield fly ball with the bases loaded ended the game. Catfish Hunter lost the game, pitching six innings, allowing two runs, and striking out three. He was about a month away from throwing a perfect game. Reggie Jackson, technically a rookie, hit a homer to start the eighth inning, but it was his second MLB homer, not his first. Sal Bando and Bert Campaneris are the two other A’s names that stand out in the box score. Dave Johnson, the eventual Mets manager, hit a double to score the Orioles’ second run.

And, to give a sense of the times, some lines from the Chronicle: “Don Buford, given a starting chance after Mark Brlanger was called for National Guard duty, starred at bat and in the field yesterday.. . . Tonight’s scheduled Oriole-A’s game was postponed because of the racial unrest here. (The Chronicle’s referring to rioting after Martin Luther King was killed in Memphis on April 4.)”

And for some local color from the Chronicle: the Giants started their 1968 season at Candlestick by beating Tom Seaver and the Mets, 5-4, with a three-run bottom of the ninth. Willie McCovey hit a homer, and both Seaver and Juan Marichal got no decisions. The picture you see above Joe D. is of Nate Oliver joyously sliding home in the ninth with the winning run for the Giants in their opener.

Also, a sports column by Ron Fimrite talked about S.F. raconteur Sam Cohen closing his Sam’s Lane Club:

It was Sam who . . . first launched the ‘Help Sam Stamp Out Candlestick Park’ campaign. Sam, in fact, began his siege of that beleaguered edifice while it was still under construction . . . . Sam’s objections to our ballpark are not, of course, founded on a solely altruistic base. Naturally, as a humanist, he is concerned about the frequently appalling shortage of creature comforts in the wind-swept stadium.But he equally deplores its location–on the outer edge of the city, far from such business establishments as Sam’s Lane Club.

By the way, in their sole season in an American League not split into divisions, the Oakland A’s went 82-80, good for sixth in the A.L., and drew 837,466 to the Coliseum. Many of the A’s who would take part in the ’71 to ’75 dynasty were on this team, which had no player over 32. Reggie Jackson, with his 29 homers, was the only A with more than 9 dingers. Some other players on the ’68 team: Tony La Russa, Dave Duncan, Rollie Fingers, Blue Moon Odom, Rene Lachemann, Joe Rudi, Rick Monday.

Catfish Hunter’s Perfect Game

Not long after his death in 1999, USA Today took a look back at the perfect game Catfish Hunter threw in the A’s first season in Oakland, on May 8, 1968. The newspaper wrote:
“Hunter struck out 11 batters, including [Harmon] Killebrew three times, and went 3-for-4 at the plate, with three runs batted in. He needed only one outstanding defensive play — third baseman Sal Bando’s stab of Allison’s grounder in the fifth inning. Only five balls were hit out of the infield. His closest call came in the second inning when he went 3-0 on [Tony] Oliva, then struck him out. He ended the game by striking out pinch-hitter Rich Reese, who had fouled off five consecutive pitches.”

Catfish said: “I just tried to throw strikes to everybody; control is the name of the game.”

In 1998, 30 years after the game, Lowell Cohn remembered attending it as a grad student at Stanford. He said:

I was walking to the library with a friend named John, and I said, “I just can’t do this. Let’s go to an Oakland Athletics game, instead.”

This was a radical suggestion when you consider it was the A’s first season in Oakland. In fact, it was only their 12th home game in the East Bay. Before that, they’d played in Kansas City. So they weren’t exactly a sports staple in the area- not that they are now. Only 6,280 were to show up that night, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

My friend John said, sure, he’d like to see some baseball.

So we drove to Oakland and arrived in the second or third inning. Immediately, we bought beers and we might have gotten blitzed, although I’m not sure we did. But something was definitely screwy, because I can’t really explain what happened next.

We were watching the game, and it was kind of dull. No one scored until the seventh inning when Hunter squeezed in a run on a bunt single. . . .

In the top of the ninth, everyone in the ballpark got loud and restless. People shouted and clapped their hands.

I didn’t know why.

Sure, I noticed that Hunter seemed to be striking out his share of guys — he struck out 11. But I’d seen strikeouts before and I’d seen shutouts. And what was the big deal, anyway?

When the Twins Rich Reese made the final out, hitting a foul-tip third strike into catcher Jim Pagliaroni’s glove, the crowd erupted in a loud cheer and all the A’s ran onto the field to hug Hunter as if they had just won the World Series. . . .

The next morning, of course, I looked at the newspaper and saw headlines as big as a house saying Hunter had thrown a perfect game. And I felt like a fool. So here’s what I want to know. Can I take credit for watching Hunter’s famous performance, the first American-League perfect game in 46 years?

I was definitely there. Honest, I was. But I had no idea what was going on.”

Cohn, who was a longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist, inspired me to track down the Chronicle for the day after the game. Here’s its banner headline:

And, here’s the cover of the Chronicle’s sports section, with a shot of Catfish getting surrounded by happy teammates after finishing his perfect game: