A Fullback at Cal 60 Years Ago, Mike Epstein Helped A's Win the '72 World Series

Switching sports at Berkeley paved the way for him to lead Oakland in home runs.

Sixty years ago this fall, Mike Epstein was a running back for the Cal football team, a teammate of future quarterback great Craig Morton.

It was almost by accident that 10 years later in 1972, Epstein was the starting first baseman for the Oakland A’s first World Series championship team.

Epstein is now 79, happily married to wife Barbara for 56 years and living in Colorado. After retiring from the big leagues he ran a hitting school for decades and today proudly wears the World Series ring he earned after he — not Reggie Jackson — led the team in home runs in ‘72.

“We knew we were going to win the World Series,” Epstein said in a recent phone interview.

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*** Epstein reminisces about some of the great characters he came across during his MLB career 

Born in Bronx and raised in Los Angeles, Epstein was playing baseball one day with his buddies at La Cienega Park in Beverley Hills when a former minor catcher saw him throw. He was impressed and invited a local Chicago White Sox scout to come take a look.

A few days later, that scout informed Epstein he was flirting with 90 mph.

At 14 years old.

But that was as far it went. Epstein's favorite sport at the time was football and he became a standout two-way player at Fairfax High School.

“I was really a football player. I got my kicks out of knocking people down,” Epstein said.

Cal and Stanford were among the schools that pursued him to play fullback and he chose the Bears based on the assistant coach with whom he built a relationship. “It was mainly because Bill Walsh recruited me. Otherwise, I was going to go to Stanford.”

Yes, Bill Walsh was a Cal assistant at the time to head coach Marv Levy.

Marv Levy, as coach of the Buffalo Bills in 1991 / Long Photography

On the varsity team in ’62, Epstein rushed for 137 yards on a dreadful Cal team that went 1-9.

It was that year when Epstein and several of his teammates were walking past the baseball diamond where freshman coach Al Mathews began teasing them, all for the benefit of the Bears’ baseball players.

“These are the most un-athletic athletes you’ll ever see. All they can do it grunt and knock people down,” Mathews told his players.

While the baseball players were laughing, Mathews challenged Epstein to prove him wrong. “Come on over here,” he taunted. “Pick up a bat.”

Epstein knew better. He hadn’t played baseball in more than a year.

“What the hell,” he remembers thinking, before grabbing a bat and stepping into the batter’s box.

Epstein swung and missed at the first five or six offerings from Mathews. “I don’t even know if I was close,” he said.

Then he hit a line drive. Then another. And two or three more.

Then he launched several pitches over the fence.

“The next thing I knew, coach had his arm around me and said, `Son, we’ve got to talk.’ “

Epstein played varsity baseball the next two seasons, batting .375 in 1963, then .384 in ’64. In nearly six decades since, no Cal player has batted .375 or better in consecutive seasons.

The Dodgers tried to sign him in ’63 but Epstein opted to stay at Cal, finishing his degree and earning team MVP honors in ’64.

“School was great,” he said. “Berkeley had those free thinkers, brilliant people I had the opportunity to go to school with. I wish I was smarter.”

In the fall, Epstein was part of the U.S. team that played at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics when baseball was a demonstration sport.

Baltimore signed him that year to a reported $20,000 bonus — big money in 1964. Orioles general manager Harry Dalton said, “He’s a kid who could hit 50 home runs.”

By the summer of ’65, his first full season in the minor leagues, Epstein was a terror at the plate. Playing for the Orioles’ Single-A team in Stockton, He was MVP of the California League, batting .338 and hitting 30 home runs to tie Vince DiMaggio’s league record.

Epstein jumped to the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings of the International League in 1966, and didn’t skip a beat. He hit .309 with 29 home runs and 102 RBIs. He was not only league MVP but was named both the Sporting News and Topps minor league player of the year.

The Orioles invited Epstein to their major league spring training camp in 1967, but the handwriting was the wall. “I was supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle,” he said, “but I didn’t have much of a chance to play because Boog was there.”

Boog Powell played the first 14 seasons of his 17-year MLB career with the Orioles, winning the American League MVP award in 1970 and hitting 339 home runs. He was not going to be easily displaced.

Shortly after the season began the Orioles sent Epstein back to Rochester.

Or they tried.

He refused.

“I went home. I said no way,” Epstein recalled. “We had no rights in those days. I was going to go back to school.”

Epstein wanted a trade, the chance to go somewhere that needed a first baseman. He got his wish, sent to the Washington Senators.

Be careful what you ask for.

Mike Epstein's 1971 baseball card / Topps

Epstein flew into Washington D.C. and no one from the ballclub was at the airport to pick him up. He took a cab to the ballpark, where he found no one to greet him in the team offices.

“Washington was a nightmare,” he said. “I went from one of the classiest, best organizations in the Orioles to the absolutely worst, least-professional baseball operation I ever experienced in my life.”

Epstein didn’t help himself, batting .232 with 22 home runs and 165 strikeouts in 219 games in 1967 and ’68.

But his career turned around in 1969 with the hiring of Ted Williams as the Senators’ manager. Epstein listened to everything Williams had to say and in ’69 delivered career-best totals of 30 home runs and 85 RBIs.

“He came up with so many interesting things about hitting that I got to carrying a small notebook I would take down these things he would say during the course of a ballgame,” Epstein recalled.

If Williams gave Epstein’s career a boost, it was a trade to Oakland in May 1971 that provided his first real chance at pursuing a championship. The A’s were maturing into a juggernaut, with blossoming stars such as Jackson, Joe Rudi, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris and Rick Monday, and a pitching staff that featured Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Vida Blue, Blue Moon Odom and Rollie Fingers.

“We knew we had a great ball club — power, speed, pitching. Dick Williams was a great manager,” Epstein said.

The A’s went 101-60 in 1971 but were swept by Baltimore 3-0 in the AL Championship Series, with Boog Powell homering twice for the Orioles.

Mike Epstein's 1972 baseball card / Topps

In ’72, Epstein enjoyed one of his best years and for six weeks at-season found a groove at the plate, batting .333 with 12 home runs and 27 RBIs over 40 games.

By September, the hits no longer were falling. “I tailed off,” he said. “I was beat.”

Oakland beat Detroit 3-2 in the AL Championships Series, with Epstein contributing a game-tying home run in the Game 4 extra-inning defeat.

The A’s beat Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine” 4-3 in a World Series dominated by pitching. Six of the seven games were decided by a single run, with both teams batting just .209 against the opponent’s pitching staff.

Pete Rose batted .214 for Cincinnati, Joe Morgan just .125. And they’re both in the Hall of Fame. Reggie Jackson was injured and didn’t play. Only the A’s Gene Tenace got much done at the plate, hitting four home runs and driving in nine runs to earn MVP honors.

Epstein suffered through a rough Series, batting 0-for-16 after Morgan promised him he’d be playing second base 40 feet into the right field to neutralize him. “I couldn’t buy a hit,” Epstein said.

Owner Charlie Finley traded him to the Texas Rangers a month later, but Epstein remains convinced “it was because of that fight with Reggie,” alluding clubhouse fisticuffs he had with Jackson.

The Rangers shipped him to the Angels early in ’73 and a year later he was was released, ending after a nine-year career in which he hit 130 home runs.

And became a world champion 50 years ago.

Mike Epstein at an A's game in 2014 / Photo by Kyle Terada, USA Today

Cover photo of Mike Epstein, left, with A's teammates Reggie Jackson and Darold Knowles courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo