The Oakland A’s hosted a Hot Pants day at the Oakland Coliseum on Jun 27, 1971 when they hosted the Kansas City Royals. Such promotions today would not be approved in baseball. (photo from Amazin A’s Craze on X)

2024: Final season of the A’s at the Coliseum (Part III) -Pioneers in Promotions

That’s Amaury News and Commentary

By Amaury Pi-González

The Oakland A’s, under owner Charlie O Finley, were pioneers in promotions like very few teams in Major League Baseball during the decade of the 1970’s. Innovation in uniform colors and marketing as they had promotions that today would be considered “prohibited.”

During the 1970s, among what became popular were Disco music and Hot Pants (initially started by a women’s magazine). The Oakland A’s marketing was limited to very few popular promotions, like “ladies wearing hot pants to a game come in for free,” which was popular at the Oakland Coliseum. No team will dare to do such promotions today for obvious reasons.

During the next decade, the 1980s, the Oakland A’s continued their promotions tradition and became much more dynamic under the ownership of Walter Haas and with the great marketing guru Andy Dolich, who changed the face of sports team advertising through the Clio Award-winning “Billy Ball” campaign, which increases the A’s attendance from 800,000 to 2.9 million.

Dolich also created the business and marketing efforts in three consecutive World Series, 1988-89-90. The season attendance was also improved, and the season ticket base increased from 326 to 16,000.

Although Charlie O Finley was the first A’s owner with many innovations and promotions, not only the “Hot Pants Day at the Coliseum” but all his ideas to transform the game, the Finley front office was small. It was constrained, and attendance was challenging, even when the A’s won championships.

When 1980 came around, Walter Haas of Levi Strauss, one of the great American corporations founded in San Francisco in 1853, promoted the game and any team in Major League Baseball with a marketing strategy from Andy Dolich that made history in the Bay Area.

Promotions have always been in the DNA of the Oakland A’s, especially from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. Since then, and with various others, it has become much more like a “survival in Oakland thing” to keep fans coming to the park.

We who have lived during these few decades, the story of the Oakland A’s, from the 1970s until today, understand much better. In my book I believe the #1 promotion is winning, that will always bring people to the park, however, you also need a new facility in the case of the A’s and owners who understand and care about the Bay Area market.

Historical Note: The St Louis Browns (today the Cardinals) were among the first teams with “Ladies Days” promotions. As early as 1883, the team designated games where women were allowed to attend for free with a male escort. That was 36 years before June 4, 1919, when Congress passed the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Even though in 1883, women did not have the right to vote in the United States, the St Louis Browns did have a special day for ladies at the park.

Amaury Pi Gonzalez is the lead play by play announcer on the Oakland A’s Spanish radio network at 1010 KIQI San Francisco and 990 KATD Pittsburg and does News and Commentary at http://www.sportsradioservice.com