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Bases Loaded, Part 20:
The History of the Los Angeles Kings
by Chris Oakley
Adapted from material previously posted at Othertimelines.com


Summary:

In the previous 19 chapters of this series we reviewed the history of the Los Angeles Kings baseball club from William Randolph Hearst’s creation of the franchise back in 1920 to Harry Hooper’s farewell season with the team in 1971; in this segment, we’ll recall new skipper Billy Martin’s debut season in 1972 and the Purple & Gold’s American League playoff battle that same year with the Detroit Tigers

 ******


When Billy Martin succeeded Harry Hooper as manager of the Los Angeles Kings, he brought with him to his new job his wealth of playing experience as a former second baseman for Casey Stengel’s Yankees, a knack for innovative strategic thinking, and a temper hot enough to start a forest fire. Martin had never been shy about getting in people’s faces as a player, and that tendency would only continue now that he was skipper of one of the American League’s most storied franchises. Indeed, in his first spring training game as Los Angeles skipper he managed to get ejected midway through the second inning when he got particularly vocal with the home plate umpire over a pair of strike calls he thought questionable at the very least.

      Irascible and hard to get along with as he might have been, though, even his toughest critics acknowledged he had the tools to drive the Kings to a pennant and the capability to use them to great effect. Many of the sportswriters who inhabited the press boxes at stadiums throughout the American League predicted the playoffs that year would come down to a duel between Martin’s Kings and the Detroit Tigers, who were just four years removed from their 1968 World Series triumph over the St. Louis Cardinals and still had many of the core players from that championship team on their roster. Another potential obstacle on the Kings’ path to regaining the pennant was Earl Weaver’s Baltimore Orioles, who had rebounded from the heartbreak of their 1970 ALCS defeat to win the 1971 American League pennant and stretch the Pittsburgh Pirates to the limit in the ’71 World Series before Roberto Clemente finally won the day for the Bucs with a two-out bases loaded single in Game 7.

        And of course, there were the Kings’ traditional AL West archrivals in San Francisco, who during the offseason had been busy restocking their farm system with promising talents from America’s high school and collegiate baseball leagues while at the same time aggressively pursuing free agents from other major league clubs. The Prospectors aspired to replace Los Angeles as the predominant power in the division, and Billy Martin or no Billy Martin they were highly confident 1972 would be the year they accomplished that goal....

******

    ...only to have that confidence shaken when the Purple & Gold won two of their first three games against San Francisco to open the 1972 MLB season. Doyle Alexander in particular was a big thorn in the side of the Prospectors during the three-game set; in the second game, he froze their bats colder than a Siberian winter, striking out twelve of the sixteen men he faced and retiring the remaining four on grounders to first base. In their home opener, the Kings followed up on these successes with a five-run shutout of the Houston Astros in a game that saw Kurt Bevacqua come within two inches of tying the Hearst Palladium record for longest-distance home run when he blasted a two-run shot to center field. By the time the ’72 MLB season was a month old, L.A. was a mere half-game out of first place in the AL West standings and there was a growing sense among the fans that the Kings were making a bid to start a new era of greatness.

    When Los Angeles took over sole possession of first place on May 13th with a 6-5 win over the Orioles at Hearst Palladium, expectations were ratcheted up even further. Though it was still too early to think about winning the World Series, some of the more optimistic Kings fans started having visions of another American League pennant. And general manager Fred Haney, by now as ingrained a southern California landmark as the Hollywood sign or the Ferris wheel at Santa Monica’s pier, was intent on making sure that the Purple & Gold had the greatest possible chance to attain said pennant.

    To that end he invested more heavily than ever in the Kings’ farm system in hopes of grooming the next Preston Ward or Mickey Mantle; at the same time, he cast an eagle eye about for free agents who might be helpful in enhancing Los Angeles’ championship prospects. In the case of the latter, he only had to look a short distance up the California coast-- Marco dos Santos, a reserve infielder for the Prospectors who was becoming increasingly frustrated with his lack of playing time in San Francisco, had quietly hinted to Los Angeles sportswriters during the ‘Spectors’ first visit to Hearst Palladium that season that if the Kings made him the right offer he might be willing to change clubs and come to southern California to play for the Purple & Gold.

    Not wanting to let a good thing slip through their fingers, the Kings were quick to reciprocate dos Santos’ interest in them; Haney personally visited dos Santos at his Alameda apartment to talk about how the fourth-year shortstop(who also played third base) could help Los Angeles in its quest for the pennant and how Los Angeles in turn could boost dos Santos’ career profile in the majors. Two weeks after Haney’s visit. the Kings claimed dos Santos off the waiver wire and assigned him to bat cleanup in the second game of a doubleheader with the Longhorns in Kansas City.

    Haney didn’t have to wait long for his investment in dos Santos to start paying off-- on the fourth pitch he faced in that Longhorns game the ex-Prospector belted a triple to center that scored two runs and fueled an offensive surge culminating in a 12-2 Los Angeles win. From there the Kings started to widen their division lead; by the end of June dos Santos’ new team was a full twelve games ahead of his old one in the AL West standings. An Independence Day doubleheader sweep of the Red Sox at Fenway Park stretched L.A.’s division lead further yet, and by the All-Star break the question seemed to be less if the Kings would win the division than where they would be when they clinched the divisional pennant.

   In August the Purple & Gold experienced a brief slump that shrank their division lead to nine games, but few fans were concerned about it; in fact, during the eighth inning of a 4-2 loss against the Astros at Hearst Palladium, Kings fans gave manager Billy Martin a standing ovation after he was ejected for arguing a strike call with the home plate umpire. Martin’s fiery determination had seemingly been absorbed by osmosis into the hearts and minds of fans and players alike, and as August morphed into September Los Angeles reasserted itself with a 10- game surge which effectively wiped away the last traces of opposition from its divisional rivals.

   The Kings officially clinched the AL West division crown with a three-run shutout of the Prospectors in San Francisco on September 13th. With the division pennant firmly in hand, they could now focus their energies on building momentum for their impending AL playoff series against wild card entry Kansas City, which during the closing weeks of the regular season had mounted a surprisingly strong final run to edge out the Red Sox for the wild card spot in the American League postseason. While the Kings and Longhorns had fought quite a few intense regular season battle, this would be the first time the two clubs had met in the playoffs, so nobody-- including the Kings and Longhorns themselves --knew quite what to expect when these two clubs squared off in the opener of their divisional series.

     Prendergast Park was jammed with spectators for Game 1 of the divisional playoff. Cesar Tovar set the tone for the game early on with a one-out triple to right field. Three pitches later, Tovar was able to score on a wild pitch to Kurt Bevacqua that ended up taking so many crazy bounces it nearly landed on the Pacific Coast Highway before Tovar crossed home plate; Longhorns third baseman Paul Schaal, then in his final year with Kansas City, slammed his glove down on the infield grass in frustration. Many a Longhorns fan shared his ire at this turn of events-- they’d been hoping to watch KC pull off an upset victory against the AL West’s resident 800-lb. gorilla and pick up a solid dose of momentum going into Game 2.

     But that hope was doomed to disappointment; following the wild pitch, Los Angeles rolled to a six-run shutout victory over the home team. The Longhorns’ troubles got even worse the next day when Doyle Alexander pitched a one-hitter against the Longhorns to plunge Kansas City into a 2 games-to-0 hole. As the rival clubs jetted back to the West Coast for Game 3, the sports sections of Kansas City’s newspapers voiced a touch of foreboding about the Longhorns’ fortunes as far as the rest of the divisional playoffs were concerned.

     That foreboding, as it turned out, was a bit premature: Kansas City rallied back from a three-run deficit to win 8-7 in ten innings over Los Angeles. The Game 3 victory enabled the Longhorns to prevent and forced the Kings to rethink their batting order for Game 4. In the face of vehement criticism from L.A. fans, Billy Martin dropped Cesar Tovar down to the number eight spot in that order-- much to the dismay of Tovar himself, who had hoped to retain his customary spot in that order batting cleanup. In the end, though, Martin was proven to have made the right call; in the #8 spot on the batting order, Tovar, hit a crucial fifth inning home run in Game 4 that enabled the Purple & Gold to lower the boom on Kansas City once and for all. Following the homer the Kings cruised to a 9-1 series-clinching demolition of Kansas City and advanced to the 1972 ALCS to face the surging AL Central champion Detroit Tigers, who had swept AL East champions Baltimore in their own divisional series.

     For the ALCS Los Angeles would have home field advantage, an edge that they would make the most of when they squared off with Detroit in the first two games of the league championship showdown. It was during the ALCS, in fact, when GM Fred Haney’s investment in Marco dos Santos would pay its greatest early dividends as he turned two crucial force plays to preserve a 4-2 extra innings Kings victory in the ALCS opener and drove in the winning run of Game 2 with a two-out RBI double. When the Kings headed east to Tiger Stadium for the next three games of the series dos Santos would prove his worth again; after a heartbreakingly close L.A. loss to Detroit in Game 3, he rallied his teammates to a 6- 5 ten inning victory in the fourth game, and when the Purple and Gold hammered the Tigers 7-1 to clinch the American League Pennant, it was dos Santos who caught the final out.

     The night of the Game 5 series-clinching victory, Billy Martin and his players went to Hollywood’s famous Brown Derby restaurant to blow off some steam before getting back to business and preparing for the first game of the 1972 World Series. It was a raucous occasion, to be sure, but would pale in comparison to the celebration Martin’s team planned to throw if they won the Series championship. Before the Kings could even think about having such a fiesta, they would first have to get past an old adversary-- the Cincinnati Reds, who were the National League champions that year....

******

     When the Reds learned they were going to be facing in the 1972 World Series, they couldn’t help feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. It would be the second time in three seasons and the fifth time in MLB history that the two franchises faced each other for the World Series championship; next to the Dodgers, the Reds had become the Kings’ most frequent Series rivals. No matter what else they might differ on, fans in Los Angeles and Cincinnati agreed on one thing: this fifth Series clash between the Big Red Machine and the Purple & Gold was bound to be an intense, bruising affair-- especially if Reds slugging sensation Pete Rose played up to his usual standards...

To be continued

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