When the Orioles Ruled the AL Playoffs

When baseball first began adding rounds to the postseason, the Orioles dominated the American League. They were literally perfect in the league playoffs.

Given the disappointment they’ve experienced in recent Octobers, I fear it’s almost cruel for me to revisit an era when the Orioles always prevailed in the American League playoffs. But it was an interesting time featuring grand moments and performances that tend to get overlooked simply because they didn’t take place in a World Series. I’m feeling the urge to shine a light on them.

It all started in 1969, when the Orioles won 109 regular-season games — 12 more than any other team in the American League. In every other season before that one, their preposterously good record would have automatically earned them a pennant and a place in the World Series. But after several rounds of expansion, baseball had divided each of its two leagues into East and West divisions starting in 1969. Now, to reach the World Series, a team had to win its division and a best-five series against the league’s other division winner.

The Orioles faced a new brand of intense pressure when, as champions of the American League East, they took on the Minnesota Twins, champions of the American League West, in the inaugural American League Championship Series in early October 1969. The Twins, winners of 97 games and managed by feisty Billy Martin, were hardly pushovers.

“There was more pressure on that series than the World Series that year,” catcher Elrod Hendricks said in his Bird Tapes interview. “You couldn’t win 109 games and have it all go for nothing,”

Even though it wasn’t the World Series, Baltimore fans were enthusiastic about the ALCS — known informally at first as, simply, “the playoffs.”. More than 87,000 fans attended the first two games at Memorial Stadium, a huge uptick after a regular season in which the Orioles only drew around 13,000 fans per game on average. (Aside: It’s hard to imagine a team so good playing before so many empty seats.)

Feeling the pressure in Game 1, the Orioles were down by a run going into the bottom of the ninth inning. Boog Powell met the moment, leading off with a 400-foot home run to right-center that tied the score. The rally continued, and with runners on third and second and two out, manager Earl Weaver called for a double steal to try to win the game. The Twins weren’t fooled; they cleverly threw out the runner at third, ending the threat.

After the Orioles stranded two runners in the bottom of the eleventh and reliever Dick Hall pitched out of a bases-loaded jam in the top of the twelfth, shortstop Mark Belanger led off the bottom of the twelfth with a single. He reached third base with two out, and outfielder Paul Blair stepped to the plate in the midst of a withering slump, having managed just four hits in his last 44 at-bats. The first pitch from Minnesota’s Ron Perranoski was a ball. Blair swung hard at the second pitch and missed.

One of the most overlooked great moments in Orioles history came next. Surprising just about everyone in the ballpark except Belanger, Blair squared around and dropped a perfect bunt down the third base line. Warned by third base coach Billy Hunter that a bunt was possible, Belanger got a big jump and easily crossed the plate with the winning run as Blair sped to first.

“He won the game with a bunt. How many times do you see that?” Hendricks told me years later.

The bunt sign wasn’t on; Blair had acted on his own, telling reporters after the game that he came up with the idea while in the on-deck circle. “I haven’t been hitting much,” he said. Martin tipped his cap in the visitors’ clubhouse, saying, “The bunt was perfect. It was a good play, nothing at all wrong with it even if it didn’t work.”

Game 2 was another classic, an epic duel between starting pitchers who’d won 20 games that season, Baltimore’s Dave McNally and the Twins’ Dave Boswell. Neither allowed a run through nine innings. They stayed on the mound in extra innings. McNally struck out the side in the tenth and stranded two runners in the eleventh.

Boswell, a Baltimore native and Calvert Hall grad who later pitched for the Orioles, walked Powell to open the bottom of the eleventh. After Brooks Robinson moved Powell to second with a sacrifice bunt, Belanger popped up for the second out. Then a game of managerial chess ensued. Weaver sent the left-handed-hitting Hendricks up to bat as a pinch hitter. Martin countered by bringing in Perranoski, a left-handed pitcher. Weaver replaced Hendricks with a right-handed hitter, Curt Motton.

Weaver prevailed when Motton lined a hit toward right field, the ball sailing just beyond the glove of Minnesota second baseman Rod Carew. Powell dashed around third, headed for home and touched the plate with the winning run just as outfielder Tony Oliva’s throw hopped past the Twins’ catcher.

The two losses in extra innings seemingly emptied the Twins’ resolve. The Orioles secured the pennant with an 11-3 win in Game 3 at Metropolitan Stadium.

Coming on top of a 109-win season, the ALCS sweep bolstered the Orioles’ confidence. “It confirmed our belief that we always found a way to win. It never occurred to us that we might lose the World Series,” Hendricks said.

Their roll continued with a victory over the New York Mets and ace Tom Seaver in the World Series opener. At that point, the Orioles’ overall record for the year, including the postseason, was 113-53. But in one of the biggest shockers in baseball history, the Mets won the next four games to take the World Series.

The only positive for the Orioles was it motivated them in 1970. In a virtual replay of the year before, they won 108 games, easily captured the AL East and took on the Twins again in the ALCS.

This time, the outcome was never really in doubt. Playing in Minnesota, pitcher Mike Cuellar hit a wind-blown grand slam as the Orioles broke open Game 1 with a seven-run fourth inning. They held a one-run lead late in Game 2 and sealed the win with a seven-run outburst in the top of the ninth. Jim Palmer threw a complete game in Game 3 at Memorial Stadium as the Orioles secured the sweep with a 6-1 win.

The sweep offered a classic snapshot of the one of the defining hallmarks of the dominant Orioles. Over the three games, they handled 111 chances defensively without committing an error. The Twins faced 106 chances, committed six errors and yielded eight unearned runs.

The time, the Orioles didn’t falter in the World Series; they defeated the Cincinnati Reds in five games, with Brooks Robinson’s glove playing a starring role.

In 1971, the Orioles won “just” 101 games, breezed to another division title and faced a new opponent in the ALCS. The Oakland A’s, young and restless on the cusp of greatness, also had won 101 games while easing to the AL West title.

Almost before the A’s knew it, they’d been eliminated, swept by the veteran Orioles. Doubles by Morton and Blair highlighted a four-run seventh inning that defeated Vida Blue in Game 1. Cuellar outdueled Catfish Hunter in Game 2, allowing just one run. Palmer again pitched a complete game as the Orioles concluded the sweep with a 5-3 win in Game 3.

“Oakland was really good, but they were young. We left them crying on the dugout steps. They just got wiped out. They were shocked. They were upset. They were out there crying,” Frank Robinson told me in his Bird Tapes interviews.

The sweep gave the Orioles a perfect record in the ALCS: three appearances, three sweeps. The cumulative score of the nine games: Orioles 58, Opposition 23.

“They had a hell of a team. You couldn't hit the ball through the left side of the infield,” said Oakland manager Dick Williams, a former Oriole who became a top manager. (Spoiler alert: My vintage interview with Williams, a Hall of Famer, is coming to the Bird Tapes later this fall.)

It couldn't last forever. After the Orioles won the AL East in 1973 and 1974, they lost the ALCS to the A’s in both years. Then they prevailed in their next two ALCS appearances, in 1979 and 1983.

But since they won a tense ALCS against the Chicago White Sox in 1983, they’ve gone 0-3 in the ALCS, losing in 1996, 1997 and 2014. Overall, they’re 5-5 in the ALCS since that round of the playoffs debuted in 1969.

Now, of course, with the playoff field greatly expanded, a team has to win two series just to get to the ALCS. The league playoffs are a minefield for favorites, as the Orioles have discovered. They could use a sprinkling of whatever magic dust their more distant, sweep-happy predecessors may have left behind.