Kansas City baseball: Highlights, lowlights of A's, Royals and other basebal topics: Swoonin' A's, 5-4-68: 'Catfish' makes it no no-nos no more, in Oakland

Jim “Catfish” Hunter Hunter in action for the Oakland Athletics as he pitches a perfect game May 8, 1968, against the Minnesota Twins. It was the first regular-season perfect game pitched in the American League in 46 years. Hunter also drove in three runs as the A's won 4-0 in Oakland. (AP photo)

Harmon Killebrew hits a home run during the 1965 All Star Game on July 13 at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota. Killebrew wasn't connecting May 8, 1968, in Oakland, as he struck out three times in the Twins' 4-0 loss to the Athletics. The other Twins didn' t have much more luck as Jim "Catfish" Hunter pitched a perfect game with 11 strikeouts. (John Croft/Minneapolis Tribune photo)

By Phil Ellenbecker I've kept these "Swoonin' A's" accounts to stories about games involving the Kansas City Athletics because, well, it's supposed to be about the Kansas City Athletics.
But in one prior instance I ventured back into the Philadelphia existence of the A's, for their final game in Philly (https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5021738065653311661/7419902167098503987). And in this instance I'm venturing into their next existence, in Oakland, because this tale so describes their haplessness in K.C. and their change in fortunes once they left town.
No pitcher threw a no-hitter for the A's in the 13 years they were in Kansas City. But move them to Oakland, as Charlie Finley did in 1968, and sure enough, one month into their residence in the Bay Area, an A's pitcher had thrown a no-hitter.
Not only a no-hitter, but a perfect game no less, by Jim "Catfish" Hunter the Wednesday night of May 8. He sent the star-studded Minnesota lineup 27 up, 27 down before a "crowd" of 6,298 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
Hunter, improving to 3-2, threw the first no-hitter for an Athletics pitcher since rookie Bill McCahan in 1947, and the first regular-season perfect game by an American League pitcher since Chicago's Charlie Robertson in 1922.
The 1987 Hall of Fame selection was a veritable one-man show, not only on the mound but at bat, going 3-for-4 with three RBIs.
The Twins included future Hall of Famers Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew, maybe-should be-a Hall of Famer Tony Oliva and other potent hitters. In this "Year of the Pitcher" they ranked second at the end of the year in team batting in the American League at .237.
They could do nothing with Hunter this night. He struck out 11 batters and got seven apiece on fly outs and ground outs. Two went out on unassisted balls on the infield. Hunter needed 107 pitches, or four per batter, in a game that lasted 2 hours, 28 minutes.
"I just felt nobody could hit me," Hunter told A.J. Carr of The Raleigh (North Carolina) News and Observer, in an article reprinted in the September 1981 Baseball Digest. "I had all the confidence in the world I could get 'em out. I was just hitting the spots."
But it wasn't that easy. He went to a 3-2 count on six batters. Oliva had him 3-0 in the second inning, then fanned on "three straight fastballs," according to Carr.
Although not known as a power pitcher, Hunter did get those 11 Ks. Five of them were of the backward, looking, variety, indicating he was working the corners quite convincingly to home-plate umpire Jerry Neudecker. Neudecker is best remembered for being the last umpire to use a balloon (outside) chest protector.
Hunter came within one of his career high for strikeouts, pitched in 1967. Two other times he had 11 -- in 1965 and 1972.
Killebrew was a vivid example of the Twins' futility, striking out each of his three times up, twice looking. Bruce Look also fanned three times, but only once, ahem, Looking.
Hunter struck out the side in the sixth and whiffed two in the second and ninth.
Finishing with a flourish, he got Look and pinch hitter Rich Reese to watch strike three to end the game.
That last at-bat included some drama, as Reese ran the count to 2-2 and fouled off five pitches.
And it may or may not have went according to the way Hunter recalled it. Play-by-play at retrosheet.org and baseballreference.com have Reese striking out looking. Catfish ...
"He swung and missed for the third strike on a pitch that might have been a ball had he let it go," he told Carr.
Sounds good, Catfish.
Dave Boswell matched goose eggs with Hunter through six innings before the A's pitcher took matters into his own hands.
With Rick Monday on third in the bottom of the seventh, Hunter laid down a bunt that was good enough for a single and to score Monday with all he needed. Monday had doubled leading off for the game's second and last extra-base hit, Hunter getting the other with a two-bagger in the third. Monday moved up 90 feet on Boswell's second wild pitch. Joe Rudi struck out before Hunter made it 1-0.
Hunter gave himself the final 4-0 cushion with a two-run single to cap a three-run eighth. Sal Bando and Ramon Webster singled back-to-back leading off the inning. Twins catcher John Roseboro pounced on a John Donaldson bunt and threw out Bando at third, and Jim Pagliaroni kept runners at first and second by hitting into a fielder's choice.
Boswell then walked Monday and Rudi to bring in Donaldson, ending his night and bringing on Ron Perranoski. Hunter greeted him with a single that plated Pagliaroni and Monday. Leadoff batter Bert Campaneris hit into a fielder's choice, keeping it at 4-0, and Hunter then went out and kept it perfect.
Oakland's best threat to score before the seventh came in the fifth, when Campaneris singled with two out and went to third on Boswell's throwing error after the pitcher had Campy picked off. But Reggie Jackson struck out looking, and the score remained 0-0.
Jackson went 0-for-4 on the night, so between him, Killebrew and Carew, Hall of Fame hitters went 0-for-10 this night. Included in Jackson's collar were two strikeouts for the all-time leader in whiffs.
Ironically, by going 3-for-4 Hunter matched his plate performance in his previous start, when he'd driven in two runs and scored two in a 7-2 win over Boston on May 3. Hunter also had a 3-for-4 game in 1965 and had three more in 1971.
More digging into Hunter's batting record indicates a solid sender with the stick who didn't so much need the in the designated hitter the AL introduced in 1972. His three-RBI game this night was one of three he had in his career, and he drove in four in a game in 1971.
Hunter had a lifetime batting average of .226. Not too much worse than Oakland's No. 4 and No. 5 hitters this night, Webster (.244) and Donaldson (.238).
Hunter, who came to the A's straight out of high school in North Carolina as a 19-year-old, $75,000 bonus baby in 1965, went on to finish 13-13 with a 3.35 ERA in 1968, tying for his best win total in a still-fledgling career. He began to emerge with an 18-14, 3.81 season in 1970, followed by five straight 20-win seasons, a Cy Young Award in 1974 and status as the bell cow of A's teams that won the World Series each year from 1972 through '74.
Before achieving immortality this night in 1968, Hunter had become a part of history the year before in the All-Star Game. He pitched five innings and was shutting out the NL until Tony Perez homered in the 15th inning, giving the senior circuit a 2-1 win in what's tied with the 2008 game as the longest in All-Star history. Hunter's innings were the most in any All-Star Game behind Lefty Gomez's six in 1935.

Yawning in Oakland

The total of 6,298 who showed up in Oakland to watch Hunter's perfect game was no fluke. After threatening for years to move the A's out of Kansas City, Finley upon taking them to the West Coast was greeted with indifference even as the A's jumped from 10th and last in the AL to sixth in 1968. After drawing 50,164 for their home opener, their attendance had been mainly around 10,000 leading up to this night.
The A's drew 837,466 for the year, a bump of 110,827 over what they'd drawn the year before in Kansas City. But the next two years attendance dropped back down to 778,232 and 778,355, even as baseball began divisional play for the first time and the A's finished second two years in a row in the AL West. Those were the best finishes for an Athletics team since a fourth-place finish in the eight-team AL in Philly in 1952. Compare those crowd figures with 726,639 in 1967 and 773,629 in '66 for the franchise's last two years in Kansas City.
Now, the Kansas City Royals who Ewing Kauffman brought in to replace the A's when baseball expanded in 1969 weren't drawing that much better when they began play. They drew 902,414, 693,047 and 910,784 from '69 through '71. But they brought in 1,345,341 when they moved in 1973 from Municipal Stadium, where the A's and Royals had always played, to Royals Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium). They've drawn over a million ever since.
Meanwhile, the A's of Oakland finally passed 1 million with 1,000,763 in 1973, when they were winning the second of three straight world titles. But it would take until 1981, a year after Finley sold the team, before they passed a million again.
Now, compare the Oakland attendance and the Royals attendance with the A's attendance their first few years in Kansas City. The turnstiles tallied 1,393,054, 1,015,154 and 901,067 the team's first three years in K.C. -- better than Oakland its first three years and better than the Royals in their first two years. It took until '73 for the Royals to outdraw what the A's drew in their first years.
And it took the A's until 1987, with 1,678,921, for them to outdraw what they did in their first year in K.C.
So sorry Charlie, you really blew it when you took the team out of town. Kansas Citians grew to love the Royals, but in the meantime you denied them the chance to watch one of the best teams of the 1970s. And we can surmise there would have been a more appreciative audience than there was in Oakland.
Breaking through
To give Finley credit, even as he was preparing to leave Kansas City, while the team was still there the A's were definitely building for the future with their product on the field. It wasn't just Hunter and Campaneris who he was snapping up as the nucleus of a mini-dynasty.
As cited by Alan Hoskins in an article for the Kansas City Baseball Historical Society, Finley paid $662,000 to sign 80 players in 1964, the most spent by one team in a single season. He paid $100,00 to Monday next year when he was the first player selected overall in baseball's first-ever free agent amateur draft (K.C. benefiting from their woeful performance on the field with the first pick). Sal Bando, Gene Tenace and Rollie Fingers were other players picked and signed in 1965. Jackson came aboard in 1966, Vida Blue in 1967. All these players were fixtures on their title teams of the 1970s.

Formative stages

Even as the A's were acquiring their dynastic look of the 1970s, the team that took the field for Hunter's perfect game didn't quite resemble the one winning world titles a few years later. Manager Bob Kennedy's batting order that night reflects that.
For one thing, Jackson was batting second, and that wasn't an isolated incident. That's where he would hit more than at any other slot in 1968. Rudi, who'd just been called up from Vancouver and would be a part-time player this year, was hitting No. 8.
Reggie was entrenched at the No. 3 spot by 1969 and Rudi had assumed the No. 2 spot by 1971. Bando, No. 3 on May 8, 1968, took over No. 4 in 1969.
And as noted, Oakland's cleanup hitter for Hunter's perfecto was Webster, who was hitting in the lower reaches of the order by the end of a year in which he batted .214 with three homers and 23 RBIs. He'd "earned" that No. 4 spot by hitting .256-11-51 the year before. Such were the A's in their state of transition.

The umpire

So what was the significance of Jerry Neudecker, the last umpire to use a balloon (outside) chest protector, being behind the plate for Hunter's perfect game?
First of all, the reason he was the last is because he was allowed to keep using the balloon after the AL had decided to join the NL in requiring the inside protector. When the two leagues used different protectors, the American League umpires became known for calling more high strikes and the National League for calling more low strikes.That's because the inside protectors allowed umps to crouch down lower behind the catcher.
As Hunter was noted for having a high ratio of fly-ball outs to ground outs -- he ranked in the top 10 in the AL 10 times in homers given up, leading twice -- perhaps Neudecker was giving him some high strikes this night, helping to explain his high number of strikeouts.
Just a theory.