“Your word is good enough for me, ” Billy Martin tells an umpire in an Oakland A’s “BillyBall” commercial from the 1980s.

For three seasons, BillyBall electrified the Coliseum.

When a baseball team moves to another city, the popular culture around it moves with it. And then almost inevitably fades.

In the 1980s, no one was bigger in Oakland’s popular culture than Billy Martin. Today, as the A’s get into what could be their final season in Oakland before slinking off to Las Vegas, let’s stop for a moment and remember 1980 to 1982, the incandescent three years that Billy managed the team. He raged in the press, intimidated his players, kicked dirt upon and chest-bumped umpires until he was finally charged with assault.

All the while, Rich Silverstein and I were writing the A’s advertising campaign. The timing could not have been more perfect.

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

Let me back up.

In the early ’70s, the Oakland A’s had won three World Series, but in 1979, they lost 108 games and averaged an anemic 3,787 fans per contest. Triple-digit crowds were not uncommon. In the emptiness, you could hear the players talk to each other on the field. Owner Charlie Finley, who had pioneered the designated hitter, white spikes and even tried to get Major League Baseball to play with an orange ball, was getting desperate.

In the early days of 1980, just before Finley was forced to sell the team in a very public divorce, he took a big swing and hired Billy to be manager of the........

© San Francisco Chronicle