Amaury Pi Gonzalez calling the play by play of Oakland A’s baseball on Spanish flagship station KBRG 105 FM San Francisco in 1977 (photo from Amaury Pi Gonzalez)
Memories of Oakland 1977– –No. 4 in a Series–
That’s Amaury News and Commentary
By Amaury Pi-González
OAKLAND–Three years after the A’s dynasty of winning three consecutive World Series, 1972,73-74 Charlie Finley’s Oakland A’s missed the playoffs, ending with a record of 63-98 (.391) and in seventh place in the American League West.
Finley went through two managers, Jack McKeon (26-27) and Bobby Winkles (37-71) players like Dick Allen, Tony Armas. Rob Picciolo, Mitchell Page, Wayne Gross, and other characters plus a hard working starting pitching staff of Mike Norris, Rick Langford, Matt Keogh, Steve McCatty and Brian Kingman, all who would grace the cover of Sports Illustrated a few years later.
Only two Spanish speaking players, which I got to know and lots of interviews from were catcher Manny Sanguillen, born in Panamá and pitcher Pablo Torrealba, from Venezuela. Sanguillen, whom I interviewed a few years ago for an article published on this site, resides in Florida, Torrealba lives in Venezuela.
I remember when Sanguillen told me the story about his good friend Roberto Clemente, they were close teammates in Pittsburgh, and he, Sanguillen, was supposed to fly on that chartered DC 3 plane with Roberto to Nicaragua filled with help for the people of the terrible earthquake in 1972, but eventually he could not make it. As fate had it.
The first Spanish radio broadcasts were on KBRG 105.3 FM. The first Spanish FM radio station in San Francisco, with a music format. My good friend Al Dougherty was the Sales Manager and a huge baseball fan, a transplant to San Francisco from New York City.
We talked baseball a lot and as a sports reporter that is where I cut my teeth. I started broadcasting baseball games in Spanish for the Bay Area. I was located at what was then Box 19 almost aligned with the third-base side of the infield and from the press box.
It worked perfectly for me as I had a regular day job from Monday to Friday at a financial company in San Francisco. The games were mostly weekend games for Charlie Finley A’s, under the direction of Carl Finley who as I remember was in charge of just about everything that had to do with the A’s, except play on the field, however he was very gracious with me and gave me anything I needed as far as notes and team related news. The A’s front office was only a handful of people.
The studios of KBRG 105.3 FM were located at Market Square, 1355 Market Street in San Francisco. Today that is the building-headquarters for one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk’s Twitter. About Al Dougherty, I learned a lot about radio, from the sales side to what used to be called the “log” with all advertisers for each program, including baseball.
In 1977 the final tally for the Oakland A’s home attendance at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum was 495,599, an average of 6,157 per game. Across the bay in Candlestick Park, San Francisco Giants who finished in 4th place, ended with a 700,056 attendance, an average of 8,643 per game.
Although the A’s were not drawing lot of fans those years, the Giants were also drawing in the low numbers. The early success of the A’s winning three consecutive World Series did not translated to huge crowds, since by 1977 Charlie Finley let a lot of his star players become free agents and eventually signed multi-million dollar contracts with other teams.
Jim ‘Catfish’ Hunter left in 1974 after they won their third World Series and got a very lucrative contract with the New York Yankees for which he finished his great career, later elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown in 1987.
1977 was a year to remember in the history of the Oakland As and for me, one year I will never forget.
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