The Sounds Of Science

They wore mustaches – some of the handlebar variety. Their uniforms were even outlandish: garish combinations of Kelly Green, white, and Fort Knox Gold. I’m not making those hues up; that’s their official description, according to the team’s owner, who was just as colorful as the threads.

Oh, and they battled. Fought. Hard. Some real knockdown, drag outs. And that was with each other.

The Oakland Athletics of the 1970s, one could say, didn’t appear to have any business doing what they did, which was win three straight world championships of baseball. How could they have done it, when they didn’t have that supposed necessary ingredient?

Chemistry.

It’s perhaps the most overused word in sports, and that’s saying something, when you’re talking about an entity never known for its suppression of the largesse.

I challenge you to go an entire week without hearing the word in reference to our athletic heroes and the teams on which they play.

It came up the other day, when Chicago Bulls GM John Paxson was talking about why he didn’t pull off a trade, after the NBA dealing deadline came and went Thursday.

“I was concerned about chemistry,” Paxson said.

At the time of his words, the Bulls were entrenched in third place in their division, the Pistons’ division. They were scuffling along, a few games over .500. Only the delusional consider them title contenders. Yet Paxson was worried about ruining team harmony.

Phooey.

One spring, the mantra around Tigers’ training camp in Lakeland, Fl. was how chummy everyone was with one another.

“Everybody here gets along so well,” utility man Shane Halter gushed to the scribes somewhere around the grapefruit trees. “And that’s so important. The chemistry is really good here.”

The pH-balanced Tigers then went out and lost about a hundred games that season. An “A” in chemistry, an “F” in execution, mainly due to another failing grade in the most important ingredient of them all: talent.

Charlie O. Finley’s Oakland A’s won those three World Series in 1972, 1973, and 1974 not because of their top marks in chemistry. They won because they overwhelmed their opponents in the talent department. End of discussion.

Reggie Jackson. Joe Rudi. Sal Bando. Catfish Hunter. Rollie Fingers. And that’s just for starters. Those A’s teams were loaded, so no wonder they hoisted three straight trophies. And no wonder that when they fled Finley’s eccentric ways via the new thing called free agency, the A’s went promptly into the porcelain Standard.

It was once said of the great Yankees teams of the 1950s and ‘60s: “When the Yankees go out to dinner together, they sit at 25 different tables.”

Light on chemistry, heavy on winning. Talent, again, trumped all.

The 1970s A’s were the last back-to-back-to-back World Series winners until the Yankees of 1998, ’99, and 2000. And those recent Yankees teams weren’t particularly noted for joining hands and humming folk tunes. But guess what? They had the best baseball players on the planet.

The funny thing is, I’m not even sure what chemistry is – when it comes to sports. And I’m almost certain that most of the people in sports who use the word aren’t really sure what it means, either. But they just gotta have it.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland, early in spring training this year, talked about the ubiquitous term. And, being an old school guy, he pooh-poohed it.

“I’m not a chemistry guy,” he said. Then he went on to discuss why good ballplayers are what turns him on.

So what IS chemistry?

If it was the players being chummy and all, then Leo Durocher would have been wrong.

“Nice guys finish last,” Leo the Lip said. Well, almost.

Leo was actually talking about a team in the 1950s that hadn’t been faring too well in the yearly standings. “They’re nice guys. But they finish last. Nice guys. Finish last.”

Maybe it’s more likely that “chemistry” is actually code for a bunch of talented guys who happen to play well together. But there are those who would have you believe that what goes on off the field, and in the locker rooms, somehow has terrific effect on what happens during the playing of the games.

Again, phooey.

Another Oakland team, the Raiders football club, was, for years, a band of renegades and ne’er do wells. Many were outcasts from other NFL teams. They were judged to be miscreants and locker room “cancers.” Well, the former was probably true, anyway.

Yet all “da Raiders” did was win, win some more, and win just a little more. They captured Super Bowl titles in 1977, 1981, and 1984. Their owner was like the A’s’ Finley. Al Davis, with his “Just win, baby” approach and “Commitment to Excellence” on team stationery, didn’t care, frankly, what kind of a person a man was. Could he play football?

Today, the Raiders aren’t winners. Far from it. And the only possible miscreant they employ is the receiver Randy Moss. So the argument could be that they need more snot noses on their team.

Chemistry. The word is so often used, and its powers are thought of so highly, that some general managers and accumulators of personnel, like the Bulls’ Paxson, become practically paralyzed with fear of disturbing it.

That’s OK. Perhaps the immobility of John Paxson was a help to the Pistons’ mission. No moves for the Bulls. Thus, it would seem, no improvement, either.

But at least the Bulls have harmony. A bunch of nice guys, apparently.

Cue Leo the Lip.