And they didn’t lose in the playoffs to a bigger-market team; they lost to a smaller one, the Minnesota Twins. According to Forbes, for the 2002 season Oakland’s operating budget was No. 24 at $172 million with an operating income of $6.6 million while the Twins were ranked 27th at $148 million with an operating income of $400,000.

Well, as Maxwell Scott says in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When fact becomes legend, print the legend,” and there’s no doubt the printed legend surrounding the 2002 A’s will continue to overshadow the facts.

What is peculiar, though, is that Billy Beane’s A’s this year really are a “moneyball” team. They just clinched the American League West with a .596 win-loss percentage—second in the league only to the Red Sox. During September they are 16-5. And they are doing it with a payroll of $60,664,500—the fourth lowest in the major leagues and less than half of the payroll of their downstate league rivals, the Los Angeles Angels, who currently trail the A’s by 16½ games.

And they’ve done it all without any superstars. The A’s are arguably the most no-celebrity team among the pennant contenders; most of their players are barely household names in their own households.

No team has gotten more return on less investment. Outfielder Coco Crisp (who will take home $7 million this year) has hit 22 home runs and will finish the season with score more than 90 runs scored. Third baseman Josh Donaldson ($492,000) has 24 home runs and has hit over .300 for most of the season. Forty-year old Bartolo Colon (salary: $3 million) has been amazing, with a 17-6 record and a league-leading ERA of 2.64. The Athletics’ fist-pumping closer, Grant Balfour ($4.5 million), a 35-year-old Australian and a much-traveled veteran of four major-league teams, has an ERA of 2.72 with 38 saves. Beane got set-up man Ryan Cook ($505,000) even cheaper; Cook has posted an ERA of 2.59 in 68 games.

First baseman Brandon Moss ($1.6 million), age 30, also a veteran of four big league teams, has 27 homers. Yoenis Cespedes ($8.5 million), a Cuban immigrant who was 2012 Rookie of the Year runner up, has hit 26 home runs. And no Oakland A has delivered more wins per dollar than 25-year-old A.J. Griffin ($492,000), who’s won 14 games.

Kurt Suzuki ($6,487,000), a superb defensive catcher, started last season as an Oakland A, was traded to everybody’s favorite preseason pick, the Washington Nationals, then recently traded back to the A’s, for whom he is batting .313. Suzuki summed up the team’s success perfectly when he recently told reporters, “My teammates would be kind of like, ‘Oh, man, the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Tigers, the Rangers—they’ve got all these big-name guys, the superstars. How are we going to compete?’ We don’t think that way anymore, we just think ‘Let’s go out and win.’”