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In the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics became only the second team in major-league baseball history to win three consecutive World Series championships. But as the decade came to a close, the A's were in free fall, having lost 108 games in 1979 while drawing just 307,000 fans. Free agency had decimated the A's, and the team's colorful owner, Charlie Finley, was looking for a buyer. First, though, he had to bring fans back to the Oakland Coliseum. Enter Billy Martin, the hometown boy from West Berkeley.
In Billy Ball, sportswriter Dale Tafoya describes what, at the time, seemed like a match made in baseball heaven. The A's needed a fiery leader to re-ignite interest in the team. Martin needed a job after his second stint as manager of the New York Yankees came to an abrupt end. Based largely on interviews with former players, team executives, and journalists, Billy Ball captures Martin's homecoming to the Bay area in 1980, his immediate embrace by Oakland fans, and the A's return to playoff baseball. Tafoya describes the reputation that had preceded Martin—one that he fully lived up to—as the brawling, hard-drinking baseball savant with a knack for turning bad teams around. In Oakland, his aggressive style of play came to be known as Billy Ball. A's fans and the media loved it.
But, in life and in baseball, all good things must come to an end. Tafoya chronicles Martin's clash with the new A's management and the siren song of the Yankees that lured the manager back to New York in 1983. Still, as the book makes clear, the magical turnaround of the A's has never been forgotten in Oakland. Neither have Billy Martin and Billy Ball.
During a time of economic uncertainty and waning baseball interest in Oakland, Billy Ball filled the stands, rejuvenated fans, and saved professional baseball in the city.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 24, 2020 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781493043637
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781493043637
- File size: 523 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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April 15, 2020
Billy Martin was a dynamic presence as a player for the New York Yankees in the 1950s. As a manager, he became known as a turnaround specialist, taking mediocre or lousy teams and leading them to quick, sometimes stunning improvements. He tended to wear out his welcome, however, often through alcohol-fueled fisticuffs with players and journalists. His crowning achievement, as Bay Area journalist Tafoya recounts, was with the Oakland A's of the early 1980s. The A's and controversial team owner Charlie Finley had built a championship team in the 1970s, but the loss of the team's best players through free agency had led to hard times. Enter Martin. In 1979, the A's won 54 games. In 1980, under Martin, they won 83, an almost unheard of improvement. The next year they reached the league championship series. But, as he always did, Martin burned out. His relentless, driving style became too much, and players tuned him out. Tafoya does an excellent job of re-creating Martin's rise and fall in Oakland and his epic battles with Finley. Fine baseball history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
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