Without Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco, the Oakland Athletics' so-called celebration of their 1989 World Series triumph was a sham.

I'm in New York this week, but thanks to my brother getting a MLB TV package, I was able to watch Tuesday night's Giants-A's game. Before the game, the A's held their 20th anniversary celebration of their 1989 World Series sweep of the Giants. And during the telecast, broadcasters Ray Fosse and Glen Kuiper talked with Dave Stewart, the ace of that '89 team; and Sandy Alderson, the general manager.

It was almost funny how the absences of McGwire (a hermit since suspicions of steroid use first surfaced) and Canseco (a pariah since he spilled the beans about rampant steroid use in MLB) were avoided.

Yes, the A's of 1989 were a truly great team, a team that also had Rickey Henderson, Dave Henderson, Walt Weiss, Dennis Eckersley and several other major contributors. But let's face it: Without Big Mac and Canseco, it wouldn't have been a team quite so formidable.

Alderson seemed to go out of his way to take cheap shots at Canseco. And Fosse made a strange comment -- saying that it was too bad that the Haas family (owners of the 1989 team) didn't own the team in the 1970s because the Haas family, unlike 1970s owner Charlie Finley, would have had the resources and commitment to make that era a real dynasty.

Huh? Say what you want about the legendary cheapskate Finley, but his teams of 1971 through '75, which he personally assembled, won five straight division titles and three straight World Series. If that's not a dynasty, I don't know what is.

And if Fosse, who played on some of those A's teams of the early '70s, thinks the Haas family would have been better owners, more likely to build a "dynasty," why didn't they? The A's made it to the World Series three years in a row under the Haas ownership, 1988-90, but won just once, in 1989. And they made the playoffs again in the early 90s, but didn't make it back tothe Series.

So, Fosse's point is lost on me.