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- The Swingin' A's is a nickname for the Oakland Athletics baseball team that dominated the American League from 1970 to 1975 and is widely recognized as being among the best in baseball history. The team won five consecutive American League West Division titles, three American League pennants, and three World Series titles. They were the first team to win three consecutive World Series championships in two decades; no team other than the New York Yankees have completed a three-peat, and no team repeated as champion three times until 2000. While the team did not record the most appearances in a World Series in the decade of the 1970s (as the Cincinnati Reds went to four), the Athletics won more titles overall without losing once; of the six teams who made multiple appearances in the Series of the 1970s, the Athletics and the Pittsburgh Pirates were the only ones to not lose once. The Athletics were also the first team in the League Championship Series era (since 1969) to reach it in five consecutive seasons, and they were the second team to win three of them in a row (after the Baltimore Orioles); no team would reach the LCS five straight times until the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s. In their five-year span, they averaged 95 wins while winning their division by at least five games each time. They were characterized by utilizing a tremendous pitching staff to hold precarious leads whenever needed; they scored sixteen, 21, and sixteen runs combined in their respective World Series runs but managed to win each time. In the division era, they are the first and only team to have won the American League West five seasons in a row. (en)
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