After winning our first two exhibitions against divers pairs of Sox, we got crushed by the powerhouse that will be Jim Marshall's A's, Plenty of their young players chipped in, including the not-very-young Keith Lieppman (age 30 season), who had a double in 2 ABs.
Lieppman was drafted by the Dodgers in the 70th round in 1967, but wisely chose to attend the University of Kansas, where he was not only All-Conference in baseball, but played on the 1969 Big 8 football champion team that went to the Orange Bowl.
In 1971, he was Oakland's #2 pick in the January draft, and quickly rose to AAA…but of course no farther. 6 years one step away, and never got the call. To be fair, that career-best .799 at Tucson in 1974 was never going to move Sal Bando off of 3B (even after Bando went to Milwaukee). By 1979, he was about to start his final season at AAA Ogden.
But the end of Lieppman's playing career didn't mean the end of his life in baseball. Keith started coaching in Oakland's minor-league system and by 1982 he was a minor-league manager.
By 1986, he was the manager at AAA Tacoma, but when Jackie Moore was let go as the boss in Oakland, Keith was passed over as owner Roy Eisenhardt jumped on the chance to hire Tony LaRussa and his Magic Needles, who had been fired from ChiSox earlier that month. (Seriously, how is LaRussa in the Hall? And if you take him, why not trainer Barry "Needles" Weinberg, too?)
So Lieppman missed his chance to be a ML manager, and instead moved into the front office. After a few years as the A's Director of Instruction, he took over as Director of Player Personnel in 1992, and stayed in that post for almost 30 seasons. When he formally retired last year, he had been with the franchise for 52 years, and was
inducted into the Athletics' Hall of Fame.
(Keith, second from the right, standing next to Sal Bando, Jr., as you could probably guess. How did it take this long for the franchise to induct Bando and Joe Rudi [left], anyhow?)