The Oakland Athletics Three-Peat of 1972 to 1974
How Charlie Finley's mustached, quarrelsome Oakland Athletics won three straight World Series from 1972 to 1974, with the season records, the series scores and the personalities that defined the club.
From 1972 through 1974 the Oakland Athletics won three consecutive World Series, beating Cincinnati in seven games, the New York Mets in seven games and the Los Angeles Dodgers in five. Through the 2025 season, the only franchises with three or more straight championships in the historical record are the New York Yankees, who did it in 1936 to 1939, 1949 to 1953 and 1998 to 2000, and these Athletics. No other club has done it.
They did it while fighting with each other, with their owner and with the commissioner. The team wore green and gold uniforms and white shoes, grew mustaches on an owner's dime, drew crowds of fewer than a million fans in two of the three title seasons, and began to come apart within a year of the last parade. This article tells the story through the records, the series scores and the people. It uses the historical record for every number, and it limits the stories to what is well documented.
The owner: Charlie Finley and the move to Oakland
The man behind the club was Charles O. Finley, an insurance millionaire who bought the Kansas City Athletics in 1960. The historical record shows the franchise in Kansas City from 1955 to 1967, and then in Oakland from 1968. Finley moved the team to the Bay Area after the 1967 season, and with it he took a collection of young players who would form the core of the three-time champions.
Finley was a promoter first. He put his players in uniforms of kelly green, gold and white, with white shoes, at a time when most teams wore gray and white, and he gave out bonuses for facial hair, which is how the Athletics of the early 1970s came to be remembered as the mustache club. He gave his players nicknames, including Catfish for James Hunter, and he hired a sprinter named Herb Washington in 1974 for a role built around him: a full-time pinch runner. Washington appeared in 92 games in 1974 without a single at-bat, scoring 33 runs for his career and stealing 31 bases. He was not a baseball player, and the experiment lasted a season and a bit.
He was also a famously tight-fisted employer who fought with his players, his managers and the commissioner's office, and that fight shaped the end of the dynasty as much as the on-field talent shaped its start. Players who won three World Series in a row were still arguing about money.
The roster Finley built
The core of the team came through the draft and trades, and many of them were still in their twenties when they won. The table shows the central figures, with their 1972, 1973 and 1974 statistics from the historical record.
| Player | Role | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reggie Jackson | Right field | 25 HR, .265 | 32 HR, 117 RBI, .293 (MVP) | 29 HR, .289 |
| Sal Bando | Third base | 15 HR, .236 | 29 HR, 98 RBI, .287 | 22 HR, 103 RBI |
| Joe Rudi | Left field | 19 HR, .305 | 12 HR, .270 | 22 HR, 99 RBI, .293 |
| Gene Tenace | Catcher | 5 HR in 82 games | 24 HR, 84 RBI | 26 HR, .211 |
| Bert Campaneris | Shortstop | 8 HR, .240 | 4 HR, .250 | 2 HR, .290 |
| Catfish Hunter | Starter | 21-7, 2.04 | 21-5, 3.34 | 25-12, 2.49 (Cy Young) |
| Ken Holtzman | Starter | 19-11, 2.51 | 21-13, 2.97 | 19-17, 3.07 |
| Rollie Fingers | Reliever | 11-9, 2.51 | 7-8, 1.92 | 9-5, 2.65 |
Three of these players reached the Hall of Fame: Hunter in 1987, Fingers in 1992 and Jackson in 1993. Vida Blue, who had won both the Cy Young Award and the Most Valuable Player award in 1971 with a 24-8 record and a 1.82 earned run average, was a fourth star, though he went 6-10 in 1972 and 20-9 and 17-15 in the next two seasons. Bando was the third baseman who captained the club, and Tenace was a part-time catcher until 1973 who became one of the most improbable October heroes in the sport's history.
The prelude: 1971 and a young ace
The three-peat had a trailer. In 1971 the Athletics went 101-60 and won the first of five straight American League West titles, and they did it behind a young left-hander. Vida Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 earned run average and 301 strikeouts in 312 innings, and he won both the Cy Young Award and the Most Valuable Player award.
The 1971 season ended badly, with a 0-3 sweep by Baltimore in the American League Championship Series. It also showed what the club had: a rotation with Blue, Hunter and Holtzman (once Holtzman arrived in 1972), a lineup of young hitters just reaching their prime, and a bullpen anchored by Fingers. What it lacked was postseason experience, and the next season supplied it.
The first title: 1972
The 1972 team won 93 games and lost 62, in a season shortened by a players' strike at the start of the year, and won the American League West by five and a half games over Chicago (87-67). Their pitching was the strength: the team earned run average was 2.58, and the club allowed 457 runs while scoring 604. Hunter finished third in the league in earned run average at 2.04.
The Athletics had come close the year before. In 1971 they won 101 games and then were swept in the American League Championship Series by Baltimore, 0-3. In 1972 they met Detroit instead and survived 3-2 in a five-game series. Jackson was injured in the deciding game when he tore a hamstring scoring, and he missed the World Series.
That left Tenace, a catcher who had hit five home runs in the regular season in 82 games. In the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds he hit four home runs and was named the Series MVP. Six of the seven games were decided by one run, and the Athletics won it 4-3. The Reds, the National League champions, were the same club that would later be known as the Big Red Machine; their rise is told in The Big Red Machine: The 1975 and 1976 Cincinnati Reds.
The manager was Dick Williams, who ran the club from 1971 to 1973 with a 288-190 record and had won a championship in his second season. He would not finish the job: his time in Oakland ended after the next World Series.
The second title: 1973
The 1973 Athletics went 94-68 and won the West by six games over Kansas City (88-74). Reggie Jackson was the league's Most Valuable Player, leading the league in home runs (32) and runs batted in (117), and Hunter won 21 games. Jim Palmer won the league's Cy Young Award that year, but Oakland's depth was in the batting order and the rotation together. Holtzman won 21 games and Blue 20.
The American League Championship Series against Baltimore, which had won the East at 97-65, went the full five games, and the Athletics won it 3-2. The World Series was against the New York Mets, the National League East champions at a mere 82-79. It went seven games, and the Athletics won it 4-3. Jackson was the Series MVP.
The 1973 Series is remembered as much for an owner's behavior as for its play. In the second game, which the Mets won in extra innings, second baseman Mike Andrews made two errors. Finley then pressured Andrews to sign a statement that he was injured so he could be replaced on the roster. The commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, overruled the move and reinstated Andrews. Whatever the merits, the incident showed how the Athletics could win a championship and fight their owner in the same week.
After the Series, Dick Williams announced that he would not return, after the Andrews affair and a long friction with the owner. Alvin Dark, who had managed Finley's team in Kansas City in the 1960s, took over for 1974.
The third title: 1974
The 1974 Athletics were not the best team of the three, and they won the fewest games: 90 wins and 72 losses, enough to take the West by five games over Texas (84-76). They hit fewer home runs (132) than in either of the previous years, stole 164 bases, and had Washington available as a pinch runner. Hunter went 25-12 with a 2.49 earned run average and won the Cy Young Award in his final season in Oakland. Jackson hit 29 home runs.
They beat Baltimore 3-1 in the American League Championship Series and then the Los Angeles Dodgers 4-1 in the World Series. The Dodgers had won 102 games, the most in the majors, and they were the strongest National League opponent of the three. One of their starting pitchers, Tommy John, had been injured during the season and missed the postseason; the surgery that bears his name was performed that fall, and its history is told in Tommy John Surgery: History and Recovery. Rollie Fingers, the closer with the waxed handlebar mustache, was named the Series MVP.
It was a third straight title, and it was the last for this group. The club that won it would not stay together.
What the three seasons look like side by side
| Season | Record | Runs scored | Runs allowed | Team ERA | Postseason | Attendance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | 93-62 | 604 | 457 | 2.58 | Beat Detroit 3-2, Cincinnati 4-3 | 921,323 |
| 1973 | 94-68 | 758 | 615 | 3.29 | Beat Baltimore 3-2, New York Mets 4-3 | 1,000,763 |
| 1974 | 90-72 | 689 | 551 | 2.95 | Beat Baltimore 3-1, Los Angeles 4-1 | 845,693 |
The pattern in the table is that the Athletics were never a one-sided juggernaut, and they won each World Series by winning the games that mattered. Their record in the three World Series was 12 wins and 7 losses, and they had a total run differential in the regular seasons of 147, 143 and 138 runs. A good team with excellent pitching and clutch performance in October is how most championship teams look from the inside, and the Athletics were one of the best examples.
The attendance column also tells a story. A club that won three straight championships drew less than a million at home in two of the three years. The Coliseum, which the club shared with the city's football team, did not draw the crowds that a modern champion would, and the figures help explain why Finley complained about the economics of the franchise.
Why it ended
The dynasty came apart for reasons that are partly baseball and partly business. The first sign was the contract dispute of Catfish Hunter. After the 1974 season an arbitrator ruled that Finley had breached Hunter's contract, which made the pitcher a free agent. Hunter signed with the New York Yankees, and he won 23 games for them in 1975 with a 2.58 earned run average. A year later an arbitrator ruled in the case of two other pitchers that a player who plays out his option year may become a free agent, and the reserve system that had bound players to teams was effectively over.
The Athletics won 98 games and the division title in 1975, the fifth straight, but the Boston Red Sox swept them in the American League Championship Series, 3-0. After that the roster was dismantled. Jackson was traded to Baltimore before the 1976 season, and other key players left as free agents or in sales that the commissioner tried to stop. The club finished 87-74 in 1976, and the roster that won three titles was gone.
The ending is a reminder of how much of the dynasty rested on players who were underpaid by the standards of the free-agent era. Within a few years the same players would have commanded much larger contracts on the open market, and Finley, who would not pay them, was an owner whose business model had run out of time. Hunter's stat line in 1975 shows what the market took away: 23 wins and 328 innings for a rival.
How the Athletics compare with the other dynasties
Three straight is a rare feat. The Yankees' runs of 1936 to 1939, 1949 to 1953 and 1998 to 2000 are the only others, and the Yankees dynasties article covers the first two of those runs in detail. The Reds won back to back in 1975 and 1976, and the Giants won three titles in five years in 2010, 2012 and 2014, which is told in The Giants' Even-Year Titles.
What makes the Athletics' run distinctive is the contrast between its achievements and its surroundings. The Yankees played in the largest market in the game. The Athletics drew fewer than a million fans in two of their three title years, answered to an owner who fought with almost everyone, and still won three Series in a row. Their story is a fair argument that talent, depth in pitching and October luck can outweigh harmony.
Common questions
How many World Series did the Athletics win in the 1970s? Three, in 1972, 1973 and 1974, all in the Oakland era. The franchise also won in 1989 and in the earlier Philadelphia years.
Who was the manager? Dick Williams in 1972 and 1973, and Alvin Dark in 1974.
Who were the World Series MVPs? Gene Tenace in 1972, Reggie Jackson in 1973 and Rollie Fingers in 1974.
Who did they beat? The Cincinnati Reds (4-3) in 1972, the New York Mets (4-3) in 1973 and the Los Angeles Dodgers (4-1) in 1974.
Where to go next
For how a team reaches the World Series today, read How the MLB Postseason Works. The Hall of Fame cases of Hunter, Fingers and Jackson sit in the wider story told in Hall of Fame Debates. The history and Hall of Fame topic page collects more reading on the era.