It’s funny how things work. I would be hard-pressed to remember much about a baseball season from two or three years ago, but I can recite chapter and verse about the summer of ’73.

I was 13 that year and was totally immersed in baseball. The games and statistics left an indelible mark in my mind.

They all came back in clear focus in Matthew Silverman’s fascinating new book, Swinging ’73. If Dick Allen hadn’t broken his leg in June of that year, Silverman might have been writing about my White Sox.

Instead, the book is about a memorable season that featured the end of Willie Mays’ career with the Mets and introduction of a new Yankees owner–fellow by the name of Steinbrenner. Another owner, Charlie Finley, was at his peak, showing equal measures of brilliance and cruelty.

The season ended in a tremendous World Series, which saw the great Oakland A’s defeat the surprising New York Mets.

I highly recommend this book. Here is my Q/A with Silverman.

How did you get the idea for the book?

I’ve always felt that 1973 was a crucial year that is often forgotten. Swinging ’73 afforded me the chance to look at multiple teams. Since they are a pennant winner, and one of the most unlikely ones ever, the Mets figure prominently, which would appeal to readers who have been very supportive on my past projects on the team. I also got to take an in-depth look at the A’s and Yankees, plus events outside of sports that year.

Talk about how that season was framed by the end of Willie Mays career and the beginning of George Steinbrenner’s run with the Yankees?

Willie Mays was 42 and running on fumes, but he still came through with big hits in Game 5 of the NLCS and Game 2 of the World Series. Yet he really couldn’t play the oufield any more and I don’t know if he would have been much better off in the AL as an inaugural DH. He announced his retirement as the Mets were making a stunning run from last place to division champ in one month. George Steinbrenner said he would do one thing and did the opposite–that became old hat but it was new and confounding to New York in ’73. He got under the skin of everyone on the Yankees–in the field and front office–and made illegal Nixon campaign contributions to boot.

What struck you about that Oakland A’s team?

They were a money team. They’d always found a way to win. They may not have all gotten along with themselves, their manager, or certainly not their owner, but when it came time to put it all on the line, they couldn’t be beaten.

I had forgotten about what happened to Mike Andrews during the World Series. Did that episode sum up the ruthlessness of Charlie Finley?

Charlie Finley did a lot of good things for the A’s and for baseball, but he had the ability to just make people nuts. He got it in his mind that something had to be done his way, and he wouldn’t be talked out of it. Mike Andrews made two key errors that cost the A’s Game 2 of the World Series. His manager, Dick Williams, made a mistake by putting him in the field, but Finley insisted Andrews sign a form after the game saying he was injured to get him off the team. It totally overshadowed an exciting World Series and led to the best manager in the game to quit minutes after winning a second straight championship. That decision, orange baseballs, and naming a mule after himself are the three things people most remember about him.

Who were your favorite characters from that year?

Tug McGraw and his “Ya Gotta Believe” mantra makes him the poster boy of ’73. Catfish Hunter was an ice-water-in-his-veins pitcher who also had a great sense of humor and actually had a really good relationship with Charlie Finley–for a while. Reggie Jackson was MVP of the league and the World Series, but everything had to be about him–it was great theater that he (and Catfish) spent most of their careers with Finley and Steinbrenner. Fritz Peterson is remembered for his wife swap in spring training of 1973, but before that he was the Yankees’ practical joker who helped keep the locker room loose–that changed after the swap, and his arm also started to wear down.

The first DH Ron Blomberg was–and still is–a character who has gotten more out of a bases-loaded walk in a blowout loss than most ballplayers could out of a bases-loaded hit in the World Series. There are a lot of minor characters who were fun to probe into a little deeper: George “The Stork” Theodore, Buzz Capra, Pedro Borbon, Darold Knowles, Duke Sims, and many others.

Anything else you’d like to add?

For Swinging ’73 I talked to many ballplayers, broadcasters, and writers who were there, and tried to create as much immediacy I could for events of four decades ago. It was a time worth remembering and exploring: the end of Vietnam, the middle of Watergate, and the beginning of the oil embargo. There was the Atkins Diet, Wounded Knee, the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, Secretariat, New York’s financial crisis, Elvis in Hawaii, Dark Side of the Moon, Keith Moon… The proverb, “may you live in interesting teams,” certainly applies to ’73.