After years of losing seasons, sparse attendance, and even reprieves of moves to New Orleans in 1979 and Denver in 1980, the 1981 Oakland Athletics brought baseball enthusiasm back to the East Bay with “Billy Ball,” a winning team, and new ownership committed to staying in Oakland.
After a disastrous 54-108 1979 season that saw only 306,763 paying customers and the team nearly moving to New Orleans that year, owner Charlie Finley hired fireball Billy Martin to manage a young team rich with starting pitchers that included Mike Norris, Matt Keough, and Rick Langford, along with the brilliant play of rookie Rickey Henderson.