Former A’s great Dave Kingman

Welcome to the A’s Police. For new readers, this site used to be about the Mets but yesterday proved that only 35,014 people care about that team so I have moved on to something more marketable, the A’s Police.

The A’s Police is about the honoring of our great franchise, nagging ownership to take pride in our history, to stand up for fans, to look back with nostalgia at some of our retired heroes, and of course to forever rid the franchise of those horrible looking gold alt-uniforms.

For the first post on the A’s Police, I thought we’d reminisce about the great slugger Dave Kingman.

I’ll never forget that time in 1986 when he homered off Ron Guidry. It seems like just yesterday that our boys were going 76-86 on their way to finish 3rd, but things were about to get a lot better for us weren’t they? A dynasty loomed.

There was someone else of interest on the ’86 A’s.  We didn’t know it at the time but that skinny 22 year old kid wearing #25 and playing first base in 18 games was going to have a big big future ahead of him…but for now, our big bat was Sky King.

A’s Kingman Rocks Guidry with Homer
Chicago Sun-Times

The Oakland A’s turned to Eric Plunk as an emergency starter yesterday and will go with another, Dave Stewart, today against the New York Yankees.

“Hey, it’s nothing to worry about. We’ve got it going now,” manager Jackie Moore said after Dave Kingman’s one-out homer off Ron Guidry in the ninth inning gave the A’s a 4-3 victory, their second straight following a five-game losing streak.

Guidry no doubt knew about the strength of Kingman, whose homer was his 11th this year and No. 418 of his career.

“He hit a slider. That’s all I threw him. I had to go with my best pitch,” Guidry said.

The homer was Kingman’s third in four games. It came on a 3-2 pitch and was only the fifth hit off Guidry (4-4). But it was the third homer off the vteran left-hander, who lost his third straight decision and hasn’t won since May 10.