This day in baseball history: The 1971 ALCS

1971 was the third year of expanded, four-team MLB playoffs. The American matchup between the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland A’s was the first league championship series that offered a match-up of two great teams.

The Orioles were the defending champions of baseball and winners of two consecutive American League pennants. Their ALCS record was 6-0. They had won 101 games during the 1971 regular season.

The A’s, also winners of 101 games, were the team most observers felt would assume the mantle of baseball’s best. Eventually.

That future didn’t appear likely to be “now.” Although they won as many games as Baltimore in 1971, Baltimore outscored Oakland by 51 runs and gave up 34 fewer than the A’s.

Baltimore’s biggest advantage for playoff purposes was the depth of the team’s starting pitching. The Orioles featured four 20-game winners in 1971 — Dave McNally (21) and Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Pat Dobson (20) each.

Oakland had two aces — Vida Blue (24 wins and MLB’s lowest ERA among starters) and Jim “Catfish” Hunter (21 wins). But with no day off for travel, as it turned out, Blue and Hunter would probably have been able to start only three out of five games. The Orioles had all five games well covered.

There was also the fact that the Vida Blue of September hadn’t been the Vida Blue of the previous months. Overworked due to owner Charlie Finley’s desire to maximize gate, the young lefty, in his first full big league season, had started 39 games and pitched 312 innings.

In September, his record was 1-2. His last double-digit strikeout game was on September 3. After that, he totaled only 15 in five starts. Going into September, he had fanned 10 or more ten times.

Manager Dick Williams had continued to use Blue in a four-man rotation all the way to the season’s end. His only concession to his ace’s fatigue was to limit his outings to seven innings. Oakland fans were heartened when, in Blue’s last regular season start, he pitched seven shutout innings against Milwaukee, allowing just three hits (but striking out only four).

Catfish Hunter, pitching in the same four-man rotation as Blue, had also logged plenty of innings — 273 of them in 37 starts. However, this was appreciably fewer than Blue, and Hunter, a veteran, was used to this kind of load.

So were Cuellar, Palmer, and Dobson, all of whom were around the 38 start, 285 innings mark. Dave McNally, who missed six weeks during the summer, started 30 games and pitched 224 innings in 1971. Yet, as noted, he led the Orioles’ formidable staff in wins.

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Game One took place on October 3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. It pitted Blue against McNally.

The A’s started fast. Sal Bando led off the second inning with a double. Angel Mangual followed with a triple. The next batter, Dave Duncan, doubled home Mangual to give Oakland a 2-0.

Then came the first of several questionable decision by Oakland’s outstanding manager, Dick Williams. He elected to have Dick Green, batting eighth, bunt Duncan to third base.

Playing for one run in the second inning is always a dubious strategy, as Earl Weaver, Baltimore’s great manager, could have told Williams. In the abstract, though, the move was defensible because Williams had reason to believe Blue could make a three-run lead hold up.

The problem was that Blue was the next batter, but Williams had taken that into account. He asked his pitcher to execute a suicide squeeze. Blue didn’t hit well, but was a terrific bunter.

The move was too obvious, though. Weaver saw it coming. The Orioles pitched out and Duncan was nailed coming home. Blue struck out to end the inning.

In the top of the fourth, Oakland scored again. Tommy Davis singled and Mangual drove him home with a double.

Blue had his three-run lead. Could he make it hold up? He had done so plenty of times in 1971, and was pitching like his pre-September self in this one. In the first three innings, he allowed no hits and struck out four.

In the fourth inning, Baltimore broke through. Back to back doubles by Dave Johnson and Merv Rettenmund made the score 2-1 Oakland with no outs. Blue struck out the great Frank Robinson but Boog Powell singled Rettenmund to third with one out.

Blue escaped when Brooks Robinson grounded into a double play.

Blue gave up nothing (no hits, no walks) in the fifth and sixth innings. McNally had settled down. Entering the bottom of the seventh, Oakland still led 3-1.

Frank Robinson led off that frame with a walk. Blue struck out Powell, but Brooks Robinson singled Frank to second.

Andy Etchebarren was next up. He flied out to right field. Frank took third on the out, as he would famously do again a little later in the month.

Now, it was up to Mark Belanger. Normally a light hitter, the Baltimore shortstop had batted .266 in 1971. He singled off of Blue to make the score 3-2.

It was McNally’s turn, so Weaver called on Curt Motton, his best available right-handed pinch-hitter, to bat against the Blue.

The southpaw clearly was struggling and Williams had an excellent bullpen. His options were Rollie Fingers, Bobby Locker, Mudcat Grant (all right-handers) and Darold Knowles, a lefty. Each had been an effective closer in his recent career.

Williams stayed with Blue, however. Perhaps he feared that if he brought in a right-hander, Weaver would counter with Don Buford, a better hitter than Motton, who had batted only .189 during the regular season (.222 against lefties).

In this at-bat, Motton doubled off of Blue, scoring Brooks. Belanger stopped at third.

Inexplicably, Williams left Blue in to face Paul Blair. The centerfielder doubled to drive home Belanger and Jim Palmer, pinch running for Motton.

The Orioles led 5-3. Williams had never even visited the mound during the disastrous bottom of the seventh.

Reliever Eddie Watt shut down the A’s in the eighth and ninth. Baltimore had a win that probably felt like two.

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The next day, October 4, Catfish Hunter and Mike Cuellar faced off in Game Two. Unlike Blue, Hunter had pitched exceptionally well in September. In just under 45 innings, he allowed only nine earned runs, just four in his last five outings.

Hunter must have had good stuff on this day. Baltimore reached him for only seven hits in eight innings, and Hunter struck out six O’s — a good strikeout to innings ratio for him against a team of this caliber.

The problem was that four of the seven hits Hunter allowed were home runs — solo homers by Brooks Robinson (second inning), Boog Powell (third), and Elrod Hendricks (seventh), plus a two-run shot by Powell in the eighth.

These home runs accounted for all five Baltimore runs. Oakland countered with only one run, scored in the fourth inning.

Williams made two interesting decisions in this game. In the seventh inning, he allowed Hunter to bat with two out, trailing 2-1. Normally, Hunter was a good hitter for a pitcher, but not a good hitter. However, in 1971, he batted .350 in 103 at-bats. Williams must have figured that with Tommy Davis playing, he had no clearly better option than Hunter at the plate. And Catfish had been pitching very well up to that point.

The decision backfired, though — not because Hunter made an out, but because he yielded that home run to Hendricks in the bottom of the inning.

Williams’ next decision seems hard to defend. He allowed Hunter to pitch the bottom of the eighth, and to pitch to Powell after Hunter had walked Johnson. The right move would have been to have Knowles, a lefty, face Powell and then switch to Fingers or Locker to face Frank Robinson and Rettenmund.

Powell’s two-run homer put the game out of reach. Baltimore won it, 5-1.

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Game Three in Oakland (with no day off for travel) was anti-climatic. Baltimore sent Jim Palmer to the mound. If one goes by ERA and sheer ability to dominate a baseball game, Palmer was probably the best pitcher the Orioles had.

Oakland’s third starter, Chuck Dobson, was nowhere near as good, his 15-5 record notwithstanding. Moreover, he had pitched with a bad arm all year, and by September was really ailing. He hadn’t won a game since September 1 (and wouldn’t win again until 1974).

Williams bypassed Dobson as well as his fourth starter, John “Blue Moon” Odom, who had suffered through a poor season. The A’s skipper turned, instead, to veteran Diego Segui, a capable spot starter/reliever.

Segui pitched so-so, which wasn’t going to be good enough to beat Palmer. Baltimore chased Segui in the fifth inning with two runs that made the score 3-1. Brooks Robinson drove in both runs after Williams had ordered an intentional walk to Elrod Hendricks.

The A’s skipper thought he was better off with Segui facing the right-handed hitting Brooks than the left-handed stick of Hendricks. But Hendricks was only a .260 hitter against righties. Brooksie hit .280 against them and was usually reliable in the clutch, as he proved to be on this occasion.

When the O’s added two more in the seventh, against Fingers, Knowles and Locker, they led 5-2. Palmer closed the deal, taking the Orioles to their third straight pennant with a 5-3 victory.

To the credit of both of these extraordinary teams, they had committed only one error, combined, in the three games. Davey Johnson was the culprit in Game One.

If Game Three is to be remembered at all, it should be remembered as Reggie Jackson’s first successful post-season game (and maybe for Mudcat Grant singing the National Anthem). Limited to 1 for 8 in the first two games, the future Mr. October had two home runs and a single in Game Three — and against the great Jim Palmer.

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Baltimore was now set to defend its crown against the winners of the NLCS. The next day, Pittsburgh defeated San Francisco to claim the National League pennant in four games.

Oakland could, and did, view the 1971 ALCS as a learning experience. Team captain Sal Bando would say:

Now we understood. We understood that every pitch was an important pitch, every play was an important play, every at-bat was an important at-bat in the playoffs. And we took that with us.

They also took home, courtesy of Charlie Finley, a tie tack, a tie clasp, a cigarette lighter, cuff links, and a charm — all in gold. Each was engraved, counter-factually, with the phrase “A’s 1971, World Series.”