From Publishers Weekly
Markusen justifies use of the term dynasty as "an attempt to describe teams that have won a number of championships and place those teams in proper historical context." Free agency now allows players to move freely from team to team and practically guarantees that his subject, the Oakland Athletics, will indeed be the last long championship reign. Markusen's heavily detailed account of Oakland's success in the early 1970s describes a team that won five consecutive division titles, three American League pennants and three world series between 1971 and 1975. The A's are a potentially appealing subject: Owned by Charlie Finley and starring Reggie Jackson on field it was led by two of baseball's most compelling personalities. They played across the bay from San Francisco and integrated some of the persona of flower children, wearing outlandish green and yellow uniforms and sporting mustaches and sideburns. The author has brought research that enlivens almost every page, interviewing many of the team's central figures to supplement library sources and an almost week-by-week account of the A's long run. What the book lacks is a historical or biographical thread that would turn this into a compelling narrative rather than five years of baseball statistics and a blizzard of detail. Only fans who see the national pastime as the core of history and all else peripheral will celebrate this degree of baseball purity, but there are more than a few of those around.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The dominant team in the early 1970s, the Oakland Athletics, won five division titles and three consecutive pennants and World Series, finally losing out to the Red Sox in 1975. Unlike Tom Clark in Champagne and Baloney (1976), Markusen, senior researcher at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, centers more on the exploits of "Catfish" Hunter, Reggie Jackson, and the other As, and on owner Charlie Finley's trades and quirks, and less on Finley's actual biography. Using recent memories of players and press accounts about this last baseball club to win three straight World Series, Markusen tells an engaging tale that should attract Bay Area libraries and active sports collections elsewhere.AMorey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tucson, AZ
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The Oakland A's won five division titles, three American League pennants, and three World Series from 1971 through 1975--a run unequaled in baseball since. Markusen, a senior researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, presents a compelling case for classifying the A's of the '70s as a sports dynasty. The A's were also controversial, starting with renegade owner Charlie Finley, who scoffed at baseball tradition and chafed at its clubby attitudes. Markusen explains how the foundation of the team was created, the subtle midseason trades Finley made to cover weaknesses, and the clubhouse controversies that often detracted from the team's on-field success. This is a carefully researched study of the team that was built in the old baseball world of the reserve clause and was disbanded with the onset of free agency, effectively bridging the game's two key eras. Baseball fans will also enjoy the legendary antics of an iconoclastic owner and his collection of talented, outrageous personalities. Wes Lukowsky
