After six years in which no team even reached the postseason in consecutive years, baseball finally found a recurring power. The Oakland A’s emerged as the game’s dominant force at the end of the 1980s. The A’s were powered by the muscle of Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire—the “Bash Brothers”. Rickey Henderson returned to Oakland during the 1989 season, adding his all-around brilliance atop the lineup.
Manager Tony LaRussa handled a pitching staff that had a workhorse ace in Dave Stewart and a Hall of Fame closer with Dennis Eckersley.
Oakland became a constant in the postseason. Over a five-year stretch, they won four AL West crowns. They won the American League pennant each year from 1988 through 1990. What’s more, they did it in dominant fashion, rarely challenged in either the division race or the ALCS. All three years they entered the World Series as heavy favorites.
But the Fall Classic itself had its challenges. In 1988, the A’s were on the wrong side of Kirk Gibson’s legendary walkoff home run in Los Angeles, and the Dodgers stunned Oakland in five games. In 1990, a decided underdog in the Cincinnati Reds shocked the sports world when they swept the A’s out in four straight.
Even Oakland’s crowning moment in 1989 was overshadowed. They beat their Bay Area rival, the San Francisco Giants in four straight. But an earthquake that began right as Game 3 was about to begin and had tragic consequences cast a pall over the moment.
The A’s were a great baseball team who cast a long shadow for five years. But without multiple championships, they fell short of true dynasty status. In later years, the controversies surrounding performance-enhancing drugs would further complicate how this era of Oakland baseball is remembered.
In the meantime, MLB was still looking for a true dynasty. And they would find one north of the border.
BLUE JAY BREAKTHROUGH
The Toronto Blue Jays had experienced as much frustration as any contender in sports in their pursuit of a breakthrough championship. They lost the ALCS in 1985, 1989 and 1991. The Jays lost crushing pennant races in 1987 and 1990. The “can’t win the big one” tag loomed over them.
But the 1992 ALCS was a crossing point. They had a lineup led by Roberto Alomar and Dave Winfield, and a rotation anchored by Juan Guzman. Facing the A’s in the ALCS, Alomar stunned Eckersley with a late home run that swung the series and led to Toronto’s long-sought pennant.
In the World Series, Winfield delivered a clutch extra-inning hit in Game 6 that vaulted the Blue Jays past the Atlanta Braves and brought the championship trophy north of the border
Toronto bolstered their lineup for 1993 by adding another Hall of Famer in Paul Molitor. They strengthened the rotation by signing Stewart away from Oakland. And the Blue Jays won another division crown and another pennant.
A rematch with Atlanta seemed likely, but the Braves stumbled against the upstart Philadelphia Phillies, a colorful fun-loving group led by John Kruk and Curt Schilling. The Jays-Phils World Series still produced plenty of drama. Toronto won a wild 15-14 game in Game 4 that gave them control. And in Game 6 came the coup de grace—a ninth-inning rally punctuated when Joe Carter hit a walkoff blast that sent Toronto into a frenzy and gave MLB its first repeat champion in fifteen years.
The Blue Jays would fade after the magic of 1992-93. The Braves kept rising. With a rotation built around Tom Glavine and John Smoltz—and strengthened by the 1993 arrival of Greg Maddux—Atlanta had reached the postseason three straight years.
In 1993, the final year before a wild-card was added to the playoffs, the Braves outlasted the San Francisco Giants in baseball’s last great pennant race—104 wins for Atlanta and 103 for San Francisco.
Atlanta was still searching for its breakthrough as baseball moved toward a new era—one shaped by expansion, realignment, and looming labor conflict. The Braves were leading the way into that future. But the game’s most tradition-rich franchise was rising again, and would soon reclaim the spotlight.