Best Teams of the 1970s

The 1970s were all about Free Agency and the Power to the Player for Major League Baseball. The decade began with the highest-paid major leaguer earning around $150,000. Ten years later, it was the average salary of the common player.

The decade had everything to do with the ballplayer, under the guidance of loyal union leader Marvin Miller, having first the urge, and then the legal strength, to assert himself against financially scrupulous owners, who had stood content behind the adamantine reserve clause—until the players, backed by the courts, tore it to shreds in 1975. Fearing that they’d fall behind if they didn’t spend on free agents, the owners started spending on free agents. The early years of the 1970s saw the beginning of the Oakland A’s dynasty. The advent of free agency destroyed that when mercurial A’s owner Charles Finley refused to bid on anyone, and helped create another when George Steinbrenner rebuilt the New York Yankees as the best team money could buy.

Baseball’s other powerhouse of the 1970s managed to stay largely resilient from the perils of free agency. The Cincinnati Reds were consistent winners from start to finish, averaging 95 victories a year while securing six divisional titles, four National League pennants and back-to-back World Series championships in 1975-76. The Reds’ ultra-potent offense—nicknamed the Big Red Machine—formed a destructive stat pack of major talents: Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez and George Foster, among others. Under the lively direction of Sparky Anderson, the Reds commanded respect from opponents who paid a heavy price if they didn’t give it. If the Yankees of the 1950s were compared to U.S. Steel, then the Reds of the 1970s—with their synthetic uniforms, their synthetic grass and their outfield walls marked in meters as well as feet—could have easily been synonymous with IBM.

Aesthetically, baseball went through some of its most radical changes during the 1970s. The trend of multi-purpose stadiums made artificial turf more of a necessity than a novelty; by decade’s end, nearly half of the teams were playing on it. Hundred-foot hops, infield seam hits and carpet burns from sliding fielders became the norm for players who rather would have done without the fake grass. Then there were the uniforms. After generations of home teams wearing whites and visitors donning grays, baseball experienced a revolution of color in the 1970s. The Houston Astros took the fashion coup d’état to extremes when, in 1975, they introduced revamped jerseys that included a horizontal rainbow of bright warm colors. The Oakland A’s were also known for their bright colored uniforms.

Not all the teams in this special edition won the World Series for the year they represent. If not, they were the runner-ups or the team with the best record for the year they represent. Some of the teams in this edition won multiple World Series but were included only once for obvious reasons.

The teams we selected to include are the following:

1. 1970 Baltimore Orioles

2. 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates

3. 1972 Detroit Tigers

4. 1973 Oakland Athletics

5. 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers

6. 1975 Boston Red Sox

7. 1976 Cincinnati Reds

8. 1977 Philadelphia Phillies

9. 1978 New York Yankees

10. 1979 Montreal Expos

We hope you enjoy the fun of bringing these teams and players back to life.

 
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