The American League in Transition, 1965–1975: How Competition Thrived When the Yankees Didn’t by Paul Hensler (review)

After winning twenty-nine pennants in forty-four years, in 1965 the New York Yankees suddenly collapsed to sixth place, and then went pennantless for eleven years. The stated premise of Paul Hensler’s new book is that this period represented a transitory time, when other American League teams vied to take advantage of this temporary Yankee dormancy to stake their own claim to be king of the league. “The period of 1965 to 1975 was an interregnum between Yankee dynasties … [which] served as unwitting bookends in the chronology of American League history” (230).

Hensler tells the story of this period through the lenses of three teams—the Minnesota Twins, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Oakland Athletics. All three attained some success before falling back and letting someone else try to gain the throne. The Twins won one-hundred games and the pennant in 1965 and contended a few other times in these years, while the Orioles won four pennants and two World Series, and the A’s won three Series. The author has written three largely unrelated stories, each told chronologically.

First, we get the story of the Twins from their move to Minnesota in 1961 through the pennant and two division titles to the mediocrity of the 1970s. The Orioles story chronicles their 1953 move from St. Louis and their growth into the excellent organization they were throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we get the story of the A’s, beginning in Kansas City and detailing their rise to glory with lots of material about their zany owner. The stories do not interact with each other. The Orioles met the Twins twice in the postseason and the A’s three times—each of these playoff series is therefore described twice, from different perspectives. The only place in the book that attempts to buttress the point implied by the title and subtitle is the introduction—the rest of the book stays focused on these teams, one at a time.

The author does a fine job in discussing the year-to-year, often day-to-day, narratives of these clubs. If you want to learn about the late 1960s Twins, or the great 1966–71 Orioles teams, or the swinging A’s of the early 1970s, especially if you are interested in how the seasons and postseasons unfolded, the author’s well-researched prose provides the salient details.

As for the book’s stated premise, the author does not touch on this beyond the introduction. Is this period truly unusual? If one were to look at the whole of American League history—or National League history for that matter—what stands out is not the 1965–75 period, but the years of the actual Yankee dynasty from 1921–1964. The rest of baseball history is littered with teams that win or compete for a year or three or five before falling back to reload. What made the Yankees’ success so amazing is that they never went through these down periods for more than a year or two—as one group of stars was beginning to slow down, another group took the baton and kept running.

When we think of a league being competitive, we generally think about teams fighting to win the division or a pennant. In 1964, the Yankees beat the White Sox by one game and the Orioles by two games, one of the better races in league history. The next year, the Twins won rather easily, and in 1966 the Orioles also won easily. Can we really say that competition “thrived when the Yankees didn’t”? But this is not what Hensler means. He is writing not about teams fighting to win the pennant, but about teams fighting to create a dynasty—the end of the Yankees’ run meant that someone else was free to have a dynasty. But are teams run this way? Did...