The right field bleachers at the Oakland Coliseum have always been a hot spot for fun and frivolity. It’s been one of the few constants over the nearly 60 years the A’s called Oakland home.
It’s where working class rowdies line up behind banner-covered railings while transforming themselves into percussionists, flag wavers and yell leaders.
It’s where Baltimore Orioles Hall of Fame pitcher and underwear model Jim Palmer once spent a sunny July afternoon during a game to spice up his non-pitching day. First, Palmer successfully baited an umpire to eject him at the start of the game, as he promised teammates he would do. Then he snuck out to the bleachers in right, stripped down to his Speedo, stretched out and managed to spend the rest of the game sunbathing without anyone recognizing him.
And that right field area is where then-Angels first baseman J.T. Snow buried a keepsake almost 30 years ago that he believed would remain there in perpetuity.
The popular former San Francisco Giant still remembers shagging balls in right field with the Angels during early batting practice as construction workers were pouring concrete while building what became the obtrusive Mt. Davis in 1995. Some of those workers began yelling in unison at Snow.
“They said, ‘Hey, throw us a ball,’ ” Snow recalled during a recent phone conversation. “So I said, ‘OK, I’ll give you guys a ball if you put my bat in the concrete.’ ”
After giving the workers a couple baseballs, Snow handed over his bat and watched as the concrete pump buried his lumber into the foundation of Mt. Davis.
“They were super cool guys. They put it in the walkway in the first couple of rows. It’s still out there,” said Snow. “Every time I’d come back to Oakland with the Angels or the Giants, I’d always tell the guys, ‘Hey, my bat’s out there!’ ”
Angels first baseman J.T. Snow using one of his bats that may or may not have wound up getting buried in the concrete during construction at the Oakland Coliseum. (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)
Snow also convinced a couple of his Angels teammates to sacrifice their bats that day as part of an everlasting deal. Rex Hudler, who gave up one of his bats, was swayed by Snow’s overexuberance.
“He said, ‘Hud, we can put our bats out there in the cement and they’ll be there forever!’”
Sadly, forever is time limited these days at the Coliseum.
With the A’s leaving Oakland behind and moving to Sacramento, before making their way to Las Vegas, the clock’s officially ticking on the aging, gray monstrosity and its buried treasures.
The 56-year-old Snow may be more focused on the foundation he’s helping build across town for another Oakland baseball team as a coach for the Ballers, but he realizes the Coliseum and Mt. Davis will likely be demolished at some point.
“If it gets torn down, someone’s gonna find a black Louisville Slugger with my name on it after they clean it off,” Snow said.
In time, a 34-inch, 32-ounce wooden artifact, entombed in a makeshift time capsule, could be one of the last tangible clues that baseball was once played there.
* * *
If A’s fans ever need a reminder of the crazy times off 66th Ave. in Oakland, we’re here for you. Here’s four more peculiar, once-in-a-lifetime events at the Coliseum:
1. When a home run isn’t a home run
Carlos May of the Chicago White Sox was a unique ballplayer. If only for the fact he’s the lone player in major league history to have his birthday on the back of his jersey – May was born on May 17, 1948 and wore No. 17 (hence, “May 17”). He also played without a right thumb after losing it in a mortar accident while serving with the Marine Reserves at Camp Pendleton during the 1969 season.
May makes our list of peculiar Coliseum feats because he committed baseball’s cardinal sin – he forgot to touch home plate.
This happened in 1971, in the second game of what’s now MLB’s only regularly scheduled Opening Day doubleheader in more than 75 years. May, whose devastating thumb injury robbed him of much of his power, hit a would-be three-run home run off A’s starter Rollie Fingers – yes, the Hall of Fame reliever was once a starter. While rounding third base at the Coliseum, May noticed every one of his teammates had left the dugout to gather around home plate to greet him. In his excitement to celebrate with them, May somehow missed the plate.
May was in the dugout when A’s catcher Gene Tenace grabbed a new ball from the home plate umpire, jogged toward the dugout, found May and tagged him. May was called out on appeal.
According to Retrosheet.org, there have been nearly 400 times in baseball history when a home run was taken away for one reason or another – mostly weather-related, missed bases or misjudgment calls on where balls actually landed. What stands out about what happened to May is that it’s the only documented case in MLB history when a player who hit a ball over the fence was called out for not touching home plate.
2. The Oakland ‘Black Sox’?
As Rickey Henderson neared the single-season major league record for stolen bases in 1982, A’s manager Billy Martin wanted the speedster from Oakland to set the record at the Coliseum in the worst way. Mission accomplished, if you asked the Detroit Tigers, the A’s opponent on that late August afternoon.
Instead of watching history, the 17,098 in attendance bore witness to perhaps the most loathsome on-field moment at the Coliseum. Some intimated Oakland hadn’t been shamed like this on a ball field since former Oakland High star Chick Gandil was the White Sox players’ ringleader during the infamous 1919 “Black Sox” scandal.
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On the last day before leaving on a 10-game road trip, Henderson came up for his final at-bat in the bottom of the eighth inning needing one stolen base to tie Lou Brock’s record of 118 steals. Henderson singled but stealing was out of the question with slow-footed Fred Stanley now on second base after drawing a leadoff walk.
Stanley fixed that when he was “picked off” second base – eventually – to clear a path for Henderson to steal. After taking the pickoff throw at second base, Alan Trammell immediately realized what appeared to be a desperate ploy to help Rickey when Stanley, who had taken an unusually large lead, walked toward him while inviting the Tigers shortstop to tag him out. Trammell, though, stayed a couple steps away from Stanley, refusing to tag him out. Finally, Stanley jogged toward third and was eventually tagged.
With no one but Henderson left on base, Rickey took off for second base to steal on the next pitch. He appeared to steal the base but second base umpire Durwood Merrill called him out, perhaps on principle.
Afterward, Tigers manager Sparky Anderson said “the integrity of the game has been tainted” by what he and many others saw as Stanley getting picked off on purpose. Hyperbole be damned, Anderson said of the A’s actions: “This was worse than the Black Sox scandal.”
Martin, Stanley and Anderson were all fined because they “created public suspicion of their play,” A.L. President Lee MacPhail said.
3. A World Series first … and last
In Game 5 of the 1972 World Series, Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan denied his hometown A’s a chance to clinch their first World Series title at the Coliseum. (They settled for becoming champions two days later in Cincinnati).
Morgan, the former Castlemont High star, made a tremendous play in the bottom of the ninth inning, racing into foul territory to grab a pop fly, slipping on the grass before firing a strike to the plate to throw out pinch-runner John “Blue Moon” Odom, who was trying to score the tying run.
Morgan’s iconic play gave the Reds a 5-4 win and marked the first and only time in the 120-year history of the World Series that a game ended on a fly-ball double play.
4. Extra runs in extra innings
A’s fans watched on July 3, 1983 as their team was again on the wrong end of major league history.
Oakland rallied to tie the game at 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth and, two hours later, lost 16-4 when the Rangers scored an MLB-record 12 runs in the top of the 15th inning.
Texas sent 16 hitters to the plate, getting eight hits and four walks while the A’s committed an error and a wild pitch in the 15th causing the game to last 5 hours, 19 minutes.
The 12 runs scored by Texas is still the most runs any team in MLB history has scored in any extra inning.
The Rangers’ outburst was a notch above a Ruthian feat – it was one more run than The Babe and the rest of the 1928 Yankees’ lineup scored while setting the old extra-inning record with 11 runs in the top of the 12th inning in a 12-1 win over Detroit.
