Friday, September 27, 2024

Friday Five: My Top 5 Oakland Athletics

Yesterday, I watched the end of the Oakland A's game. It was their last home game in Oakland.


I don't want to get too bogged down in the backstory of what has happened to the A's during the past year, so I will let this Jeff Passan tweet do the talking.....



As a St. Louis native, I know the disappointment of seeing a professional sports franchise move away.  

I wanted to share my favorite 5 Oakland A's players for today's Friday Five post. 

Here is my list:

Honorable Mention: Tim Hudson 


One of my favorite non-Cardinal pitchers to watch of the past 20 years. I love the movie Moneyball, but if I had to change something about the movie, I would want more time spent on the Big 3, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson. The three made the A's rotation far above-average and allowed them to tinker with the offense by focusing on on-base percentage. Without Hudson's quality pitching, the team would not have been a contender, yet he's barely mentioned in the film. The book gives more time to the pitchers, but still probably undersells Hudson, Mulder, and Zito too. Anyway, long-time favorite player who has a Hall of Fame argument too, but I will save that for another post.  

5. Stephen Vogt 


Before Stephen Vogt was the manager of the Cleveland Guardians, he was a fan-favorite with the Oakland A's. The catcher seemingly came out of nowhere to make back-to-back All Star Games for the American League roughly a decade ago. Before he seemingly came out of nowhere, he was actually on the Durham Bulls stuck behind Jose Molina and Jose Lobaton who were catching for the Rays. Vogt was also a fan-favorite in Durham. He was a player who did a little bit of everything on the field, while his personality made it easy to like. There have been several other Durham Bulls players who have made appearances with the Oakland A's over the years, but Vogt is easily my favorite.  

4. Jose Canseco


Jose Canseco is one of my favorite baseball villains/goofballs, but before he was blacklisted from the game for ratting out all sorts of steroid users, he was a really great baseball player. We now have a 50-50 player, along with half a dozen players who have gone 40-40 in a season, but I remember when Canseco first accomplished the feat back when I was in elementary school. He was the best of the power-speed players from the late 1980s. Throw in some tape measure home runs and a hilarious Twitter account and Jose has cracked my top 5 Oakland A's players......

3. Gene Tenace 



I have learned a lot about various baseball players through my years of collecting with Tenace being at the top of the list. When I first ran into Gene Tenace, I was a little kid collecting baseball cards and he was the back-up catcher on the early 1980s Cardinals teams. Years later, I would learn about Tenace's run as the Oakland A's catcher during the early 1970s helping the team win three World Series titles. In fact, Tenace was the World Series MVP in the 1972 Fall Classic against the Reds. I love myself some Gene Tenace baseball cards and have a deep appreciation for his contributions to the A's 1970s dynasty.  

2. Mark McGwire 


I liked Mark McGwire while he was on the A's, he's not just here because he was on the Cardinals for a few years. Such a fun player to watch, who doesn't like long home runs? I will let a video clip do the talking for Big Mac.  


1. Rickey Henderson 


I am going to give you a story about one of my Rickey Henderson rookie cards rather than talk about Rickey Henderson the player. Rickey would be a little sad, but I am hoping my readers will be entertained.  As a kid, I used to love stolen bases, mainly because of Vince Coleman and Willie McGee, but Rickey Henderson was cool too. Anyway, my parents have some people over to our house for dinner. I cannot remember the reason why exactly, but the people had kids who had baseball cards in their car. It was 1985 and my best card was a Dwight Gooden rookie card. This particular evening, I am hell-bent on trading my Dwight Gooden rookie card, which my older brother thought was a terrible idea. At the time, he was right. Forty years later, I was right. The best card I could get in return for my Dwight Gooden rookie card was a Rickey Henderson rookie card. I like Rickey, I made the trade and still have the card to this day.  

Rickey was the greatest Oakland A's player. 

6 comments:

  1. A. Grew my first soul patch, because Hudson one.

    B. One of my favorite Coliseum chants will forever be... "I believe in Stephen Vogt!".

    C. Loved Canseco for his ability on the field... but hated his antics off the field.

    D. Never considered Tenace one of my favorite players, but I probably need to. The guy helped them win the World Series the year I was born.

    E. Earlier in the season, I started writing a post ranking my favorite A's. Never completed it... but McGwire made the list. He was paired up with Canseco. I know McGwire is probably more popular for his time in St. Louis and the home run race. But to me... he'll always be the other half of the Bash Brothers.

    F. Nice trade. I wonder what Beckett had Gooden and Rickey's rookies listed for back in 1985. I pulled a Topps Gooden rookie that year... and I would have easily traded it for Rickey's rookie... even though I actually hated him for being a Yankee.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A. That's awesome. I have never had a beard/mustache/soul patch/goatee. One of these days I am going to shock everyone.....

      B. Vogt got his own chant? I will have to look around on YouTube to see if someone posted a video.

      C. Canseco can be a little much away from the game, completely understand your take.

      D. The guy has one of the wildest HOF arguments out there, totally fun boat to be on. You should hop on.
      E. I would love to read your list, you should publish it.

      F. I need to find an old 1985 Beckett and look up the prices. I am sure they were lopsided, just a matter of how much.

      Delete
  2. Canseco and McGwire were all the rage when I was a young collector, but for reasons unknown to me at the time, I just couldn't ever get behind either of them. And considering what everyone would find out about them years later, I'm glad I didn't. Gene Tenace is one of my guys though. He was a solid, and respectable, player, and is cheap and fun to collect.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. It's one of my favorites of his, I own a bunch of the parallels too.

      Delete

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