By A.J. Hayes
Somewhere, maybe in a moldy gym locker or a clandestine liquor cabinet, a brilliant game plan for big league success has sat untouched for more than a quarter century.
Were talking about “Billy Ball,” the late Billy Martin’s blueprint for righting the ship of moribund baseball franchises. It was last used in Oakland in the early 1980s.
The A’s were the last team of dubious talent that Martin managed to meld into winners. He took an Oakland club that had lost 109 games in 1979 and led them to the American League Championship Series within two seasons with essentially the same personnel.
Martin may have been a kook of momentous proportions, a guy who drank and fought like a pirate – a real pirate, not the Pittsburgh variety. But he knew how to light a fire under a ball club and get it back on the winning track.
Billy took four major league clubs with losing records (Minnesota, Detroit, Texas and Oakland) and turned them instantly into winners. He also increased attendance by his presence alone – and what percentage of ticket sales do you think current A’s manager Bob Geren and Giants skipper Bruce Bochy are responsible for?
Employing a ramped up style that resembled sand-lot ball (some would prefer the term “bush league”) Martin led clubs would blitz opponents by using everything from double steals and hidden ball tricks to literally falling down on the job.
“My favorite was the ‘first and third play,” recalled Shooty Babitt, an infielder on Martin’s 1981 Oakland club. “Billy loved to steal home. So if he had runners on first and third would have a guy like Wayne Gross, who was probably the least athletic guy on the club, take a good lead off first and then suddenly fall down. Right, away and the pitcher would throw to first base and the guy at third would walk right in. We thought he was crazy when he told us to do that, but lo and behold we scored a few runs by doing that.”
Once a particular recipe for success has worked in professional sports – Bill Walsh’s West Coast offense, for example – other teams desperate for a winner will run it into the ground. So why it is that no one has adopted Martin’s strategies?
One word: fear.