A Spring Training Innovation Goes Wrong

In 1971, the ambitious and erratic owner of the Oakland A’s went all-in to change the number of balls for a walk from four to three.Highlights- A “wildly eccentric” owner goes to the library and gets a history of the base-on-balls- A visiting Nippon Professional Baseball team beats the A’s at their own game- The A’s owner puts words into the commissioner’s mouth to force the Angels to play- Charlie Finley pivots to somebody else’s idea, the designated hitter rule, and finds what he was looking for all along Get full access to Project 3.18 at www.project-318.com/subscribe