A Hairy Situation

With the 2024 World Series in the books and its immediate highs and lows receding into the past, it’s time for all of us to take a collective breath and remember some of the non-baseball activities we may have overlooked since the postseason began.

Just kidding! After all, we never shift the attention away from baseball here at Coffee & Box Scores, and the end of the day-to-day updating of stats and standings simply means more time to look backward and explore some of the great games and moments that preceded the 2024 season.

So let’s kick off the offseason edition of Recollections with a look at another World Series, one that was among the most compelling of any since the start of the divisional era but tends to get eclipsed by the more famous duels of 1969, 1975, 1986 and 1993. 

One can draw some broad similarities between the 1972 Fall Classic and the just-completed Series. Both featured two of the prominent franchises of their eras: The A’s or Reds would win the World Series every year from 1972-76, while the Dodgers have won two of the past five and the Yankees, even with their Evil Empire aura diminished, are expected to be in the mix on an annual basis.

Additionally, the winners of both Series were powered by the historic output of a standout slugger: Freddie Freeman batted .300 with four homers and a Series record-tying 12 RBI, while Gene Tenace of the ’72 A’s hit .348 with a then-Series-tying four blasts and nine RBI.

On paper, the biggest difference between the two Series is that ’72’s went the distance while the just-completed installment lasted a mere five games. But the ’72 Series also arrived on a cultural current that has largely been forgotten but left a clear imprint.

You know how facial hair abounds in baseball, from the “I swear I’m old enough to drink” goatee of Bobby Witt Jr. to the bushy beard of Justin Turner? This trend can be traced back to the ’72 A’s. As one version of the origin story goes, Reggie Jackson showed up to Spring Training with a mustache, prompting a few teammates to follow suit, until maverick owner Charlie O. Finley offered $300 to any of his players who grew out their whiskers. 

The Reds, on the other hand, retained the clean-cut look that had held sway throughout baseball since the early 20th century, producing a stark difference in the appearances between the World Series opponents: Hairs vs. Squares.

Despite the seeming lack of mojo implied by that comparison, the Reds were considered the superior team at the time. They had Johnny Bench, the rifle-armed catcher who also led all of baseball with 40 dingers and 125 RBI; on-base machine Joe Morgan, who paced everyone with 115 walks and 122 runs scored; and firecracker Pete Rose, who topped the field with 198 hits.

Sure, the A’s had their share of household names as well, including Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue and Rollie Fingers. But their one guy capable of matching Bench for pure power, Reggie Jackson, was sidelined with a severely injured hamstring.

Into that slugging void stepped Tenace, who hit all of five home runs during the regular season but went deep in each of his first two World Series at-bats. Fireman Fingers took over for Ken Holzman in the sixth, and Vida Blue stranded the tying run on third in the ninth to seal a tense 3-2 Game 1 victory for the A’s.

Game 2 featured another taut pitchers’ duel, although it took a couple of outstanding defensive plays to keep the Reds from busting loose off a tiring Hunter in the ninth. First, Joe Rudi, who’d homered earlier in the game, made a leaping catch at the left field wall to rob Denis Menke of an extra-base hit and potentially save a run. First baseman Mike Hegan then dove to his right to knock down a low drive headed for the outfield, before diving back toward first for the second out. Hal McRae kept the pressure on with a pinch-hit RBI single, before Fingers entered and doused the fire with a one-out save.

With the series shifting to the West Coast for Game 3, the two offenses continued to sputter in the Oakland twilight. The lone run came in the seventh, when Tony Perez scored from second on a Cesar Gerónimo single despite stumbling after rounding third and looking like a dead duck as he scrambled to the plate.

But the most talked-about play of the game came the following inning. With Morgan on third and Bench at the plate, Bobby Tolan stole second as Fingers delivered ball three. A mound meeting ensued, and with manager Dick Williams gesturing toward first, the A’s obviously intended to walk the dangerous Bench to set up the force play.

Or so 99.99 percent of the baseball-watching world thought, except the A’s were apparently storing some secret strategies behind all that hair. Tenace stuck his arm out to call for the intentional walk, before ducking back behind the plate as Fingers snuck in a slider on the corner. Imagine the reaction that ol’ switcheroo would ignite on X nowadays.

With offense still at a premium in Game 4, the A’s got on the board first with a fifth-inning home run from Tenace, before the Reds struck back with a two-run double from Tolan in the eighth. However, the A’s collected a whopping three pinch-hit singles off Reds relievers Pedro Borbón and Clay Carroll in the bottom of the ninth, the final one from Angel Mangual scoring Tenace for the game-winning run.

After Rose went deep off Hunter on the first pitch of Game 5, Tenace again stung the Big Red Machine with a three-run blast in the second. But the Reds kept pecking away with runs in the fourth, fifth and eighth before pulling ahead on a Rose RBI single in the ninth. In the bottom of the inning, pinch-runner Blue Moon Odom inexplicably attempted to tag up on a pop-up behind first base, only to be gunned out at home by Morgan to end the game. Imagine the reaction that baserunning snafu would whip up on X!

Game 6 was the outlier of the Series – after starting out as the typical low-scoring affair, the Reds blew the game open with five runs in the seventh and cruised to an 8-1 win.

Thankfully, Game 7 was back to being the sort of white-knuckle affair that had defined the rest of the Series. Oakland scored in the first on a bad-hop single off the bat of Tenace. McRae’s deep sacrifice fly tied the game in the fifth. Tenace and Sal Bando then delivered RBI doubles in the sixth. Perez brought the Reds within one with a sac fly in the eighth, before Fingers, the Hall of Fame reliever with the Hall of Fame handlebar mustache, retired Rose for the final out of the epic and exhausting Series.

By certain measures, it was the closest World Series in history. Six of the seven games were decided by one run, while both teams compiled exactly 46 hits in 220 at-bats for an identical .209 batting average.

But there are no ties in baseball, outside of the occasional All-Star Game and long-ago World Series contest that had to be called off because of darkness, and in this case, the Hairs made a statement as the kings of baseball and tablesetters of the sport’s changing culture.

Afterward, a giddy Blue led the celebration in the victors’ clubhouse by singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in his birthday suit. Imagine the reaction THAT would generate on X … or on second thought, maybe don’t.

Thanks to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Eric Enders’ “100 Years of the World Series,” Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.