In the years following the decline of the New York Yankees dynasty that ended in 1964, three American League teams endeavored to stake their claim to the Junior Circuit’s crown. From 1965 to 1975, the Minnesota Twins, Baltimore Orioles, and Oakland Athletics emerged as the most significant AL clubs, but this trio achieved varying degrees of success.
Through the prism of these three teams, this book examines facets of their dynastic aspirations: the way in which key personnel were assembled into a cohesive roster, the glory that was won by the clubs, and the factors leading to their decline. Drawing on a rich variety of primary and secondary sources, the story is told of vital players from Latin America who made their way to Minnesota, the select few who ventured from the Orioles’ training facility in Thomasville, Georgia, to Baltimore, and the collegiate stars selected in the early years of the newly-created amateur draft who went on to help forge a winning combination in Oakland.

Paul Hensler is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and the Phi Alpha Theta National History Honor Society. The author of several essays on baseball published by SABR, he has also lectured on baseball in the 1960s. He lives in Ellington, Connecticut.

Paul Hensler
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 264
Bibliographic Info: 39 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2013
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4626-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-0017-8
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments vii

Preface 1

  1 Long Live the King 5

  2 Calvin Griffith and the Birth of the Twins 11

  3 “Sealing the Yankees’ Tomb” 33

  4 Rollercoaster: The Twins of 1966 and Beyond 61

  5 Salvaging Veeck’s Wreck 83

  6 Soaring 108

  7 Very Good, but Not the Best 136

  8 A Tale of Three Cities 154

  9 Straight A’s, Williams’s Way 175

10 Dark Days and the Diaspora 207

Chapter Notes 231

Bibliography 247

Index 251