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Athletics 1989 reunion as flawed as the championship itself
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Rickey Henderson was on hand for the A's 20th anniversary celebration, but more than half
of his teammates were not in what has become a pattern of poorly planned celebrations of
the past./AP file.
Call it karma, bad luck or simply a weird unyielding jinx of some sort, the hex that shrouded the Oakland Athletics 1989 World Series championship team continues to live on 20 years later.
The powerhouse team that first lost to a vastly inferior Dodgers team, came back to win the next year but had the series historically and memorably interrupted by a terrible earthquake, lost again the following year despite being heavily favored and has since seen its reputation soiled by tell-all books, rampant steroid use and deep, lasting hurts -- yes all that -- remains as scarred and unfulfilled today as it was then.
The Oakland A's invited the members of the 1989 championship team back to the stadium for anniversary festivities and on-field honors prior to the team's inter-league game with the San Francisco Giants, the team the A's swept 20 years ago. More than half the team was missing, most notably the bash brothers, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, two sluggers inexorably mired in the era's steroid scandals.
Dave Parker and Terry Steinbach couldn't make it to the event, meaning four of the team's starting nine in Game 1 were absent. Manager Tony LaRussa, of course, was managing his own team, the St. Louis Cardinals, and wasn't on hand.
The flawed ceremony, apparently was due in part to planning by the A's front office, which only cobbled together the promotion weeks ago. Invitations were sent just a month and a half ago, according to some reports.
Press Democrat columnist Lowell Cohn called it a predictably small-market reunion.
"The Oakland A’s always do things wrong," he wrote. "The Oakland A’s are cheap and amateurish, and if that seems harsh, it’s still the truth."
Cohn pointed out that the 1989 A's were a dominant team that deserved a stunning reunion. "Instead it got Amateur Hour."
And he was just getting started. Its must reading for any fan who wonders how a team that won four World Series championships, having the most dominant team of both the 1970s and 1980s, could become such a lackluster team that is simply treading water until it can flee the city for a better real estate deal.
But Cohn's observations, clear, direct and backed by decades of personal reporting on the team, were not alone. Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury News said the ceremony created a "poignant melancholy feeling Tuesday night."
Like Cohn, Purdy said the 1989 team deserved better. "The occasion should have been a grand one."
It wasn't. Not with only 12 members of the team in attendance, and those that were there having to dodge questions about the steroid stain for those that weren't. And not with a franchise that has failed so miserably in connecting its modern era to the considerable glory of its past.
How symbolic that current A's General Manager Billy Beane, "a 79-at-bat member of that team, (was) in the park but not part of the ceremony," as Ray Rotto points out. While clearly Beane wouldn't have wanted to upstage his more significant teammates of that era, he couldn't be around for the ceremony?
"I wish everyone was here," The A's 1989 shortstop Walt Weiss said wistfully. Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson said the same thing.
Only MLB.com's Michael Urban could report the puffy silver lining in the strained celebration, barely mentioning all those that weren't in attendance "For various reasons."
The 20th anniversary celebration had the chance to correct the history books. To recall as LaRussa did in passing earlier this week after posting his 2,500th win as a major league manager, that the A's teams "were obscenely good." The went the World Series three straight years, won 104, 99 and 103 games in the 1988- 1990 seasons. Barring two upset losses in the World Series, they would have won three straight titles.
How easily we forget its the Giants, not the A's, that haven't won a World Series since moving to the city more than 50 years ago.
"They drew 2,667,000, behind only the Yankees, and the Coliseum was the place to be that entire summer," Ratto reminds us.
Yet so much of that is lost behind memories of Kirk Gibson's home-run limp and Tommy Lasorda's huge belly bouncing in victory. It's lost behind terrible images of a collapsed freeway and nearly four dozen deaths. It's lost in "Juiced," where one teammate outed another for steroid use. It's lost in the current team, the definition of a "small-market team" that Cohn recalls wasn't small market back then.
The A's had their flaws off the field. They had tough breaks and stunning losses in the World Series. But unlike other franchises, like the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs and even Giants, who celebrate successes of the past, often even embracing the flaws as part of the lovable character of a team, the A's seem disinterested in their past, fail to embrace their past heroes, and seemed mostly bored with their history.
Perhaps that's the best definition of why this remains a small-market team with fans and players who have been so much more deserving over the years.
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- Time for trading as A's conclude Bay Bridge Series with Giants.
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- Holliday's decline ups pressure for a deal.
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