A’s Cast Off a Slugger, Not a Slug

How would you feel if you joined a baseball team that hadn’t had a winning season in five years, that was more or less accustomed to finishing 16 to 25 games out, and suddenly, with you aboard, they began winning pennants, World Series or both nearly every year?

What if you became the first member of that club to post three consecutive seasons of 100 runs batted in? What if you put up a season in which you hit 40 home runs and stole 40 bases? What if you drove in more runs, 124, that year than any other player that club ever had? What if you won the league MVP award unanimously, only the seventh player in history to do that?

What if your team won 104 games that year and the division title by 13?

What if you hit the home run with the bases loaded that broke a camera in dead center field and might have really won the World Series that year if Kirk Gibson’s dramatic ninth-inning shot hadn’t?

What if you hit more home runs in your first six years, 209, than either Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron did in his first six? What if you had been rookie of the year?

What if you hit .357 in a World Series only to have it unnoticed because that Series is remembered for something far more important than a game, an earthquake?

What if your team won three pennants and a World Series since you joined it, and won more than 100 games twice and 99 another year?

What if they were leading both leagues in games won this year and you had hit 22 home runs and driven in 72 runs so far, in spite of a stay on the disabled list?

How would you feel if, after all this, you were about to go to bat against the Baltimore Orioles, against whom you batted .319 with nine runs batted in last year, and the manager called you back and sent a lifetime .208 hitter up in your place?

Then, supposing he told you that you had been traded to the Texas Rangers for an outfielder and two pitchers?

Well, that dubious scenario was played out this week when the Oakland Athletics, for reasons best known to themselves, traded away the most colorful and effective slugger the game has seen since Reggie Jackson hung them up.

You wonder what the A’s wanted out of him. They were leading the world comfortably, on their way, probably, to their fourth World Series in the six full seasons Jose Canseco played for them.

It’s a funny thing: Baseball managers, to a man, love pitchers. They tell you pitching is 75% of the game.

Maybe it is. But did you ever notice the really wildly successful teams--in the American League in particular--have always been signalized by outstanding sluggers?

Take the Yankees, for example. The most dominant franchise in the history of any sport, and whom do you think of when you hark back to their golden era? Pitchers? Name two.

No, you think back on Ruth and Gehrig. Then, on DiMaggio. Then, on Mantle and Maris. Then, on Reggie Jackson and his Ruthian performance of three homers in a Series game.

Everyone says the Yankees had great defense--but childhood memories are of them winning World Series games, 18-4, and regular-season games, 22-1, and, 19-10. They outscored football teams of the era.

I guess Jose Canseco was an off-the-field liability at times. Hey! Babe Ruth wasn’t? Since when did that deter a manager who would suit up Jack the Ripper if he would have a 40-40 season?

Canseco is important to the game for another telling reason--he sells tickets. If you don’t think that’s important, you don’t know baseball.

They didn’t exactly get Mr. October for him, either. Ruben Sierra is the greatest thing to come out of Puerto Rico since Roberto Clemente but good copy, he’s not. And, after all, baseball is show business. Any sport is. The Dream Team proved that in Barcelona. Hype is more important than hits.

But to call Jose Canseco out of a lineup and send up Lance Blankenship, who drove in 21 runs last year--or 101 fewer than Jose Canseco--in his place borders on the insulting.

Whose idea was that?

You know, in 1920, Harry Frazee, the Boston Red Sox owner, needed money for a Broadway musical--”No, No, Nanette!” So, he sold Babe Ruth, is all.

An interesting footnote is that the Red Sox went into a 25-year slump after that. They didn’t emerge to win a pennant till 1946, by which time they had--a little trumpet fanfare, professor!--Ted Williams in the lineup.

It’s interesting to note that the Yankee hegemony dated from the acquisition of Ruth. It’s a sluggers’ game. Like, how many pennants did Ty Cobb win? Not many.

A player like Ruth never moved through franchises the way players do in today’s free agentry.

You track a player like Jackson and you can’t help noticing that, when he was with Oakland, the A’s won pennants and World Series; and when he moved to the Yankees, they won pennants and World Series; and when he moved to the Angels, they promptly won their division title.

Coincidence? I hardly think so.

Like a lot of reporters, I’ve been the butt of the abusive arrogance Jose Canseco can bring to his persona. But he’s a mega-star. There aren’t too many of those around. Ruben Sierra? He ain’t.

My guess is that Oakland will rue the day--and the way--they cut Jose Canseco adrift.

If the demeaning, tactless, insensitive way it was done doesn’t shock Jose into becoming a better person--and a better ballplayer--I have misjudged him.

I don’t know what Oakland wanted out of him. In his last five full seasons he had 117, 113, 124, 101 and 122 runs batted in.

Maybe the A’s are just tired of getting into the World Series.