You may or may not realize that the Oakland A’s have already played a 60-game season. If you’re younger than 39 it happened before you were born, in the days when starting pitchers threw 14 inning complete games and you pulled off triple-steals to offset the reality that your infield and bullpen were terrible.
These were the magical days of “Billy Ball” when in 1981, the A’s were coming off of a fantastical 83-79 season in which the baseball world was introduced to a young speedster by the name of Rickey Henderson.
The A’s had suffered through a woeful 54-108 campaign in 1979, so even though they barely won half their games in 1980 it was an impressive leap of 29 games in the win column under the leadership of the polarizing and audacious Billy Martin.