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    Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74: SABR Digital Library, #31
    Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74: SABR Digital Library, #31
    Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74: SABR Digital Library, #31
    Ebook1,391 pages34 hours

    Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74: SABR Digital Library, #31

    By Society for American Baseball Research

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    In modern baseball history, only one team not named the New York Yankees has ever won three consecutive World Series. That team was the Oakland Athletics, who captured major league baseball's crown each year from 1972 through 1974.

    Led by such superstars as future Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers, in the final years before free agency and the movement of players from one team to another forever changed the game, the Athletics were a largely homegrown aggregate of players who joined the organization when the team called Kansas City its home, developed as teammates in the minor leagues, and came of age together in Oakland.

    But it was the way in which they did it that immortalized those teams. For if the story of the Oakland Athletics' championships is that of one of baseball's greatest teams, it's also the story of enigmatic owner Charles O. Finley and how those players succeeded in spite of Finley's larger-than-life persona and meddlesome ways. Indeed, before the Yankees' George Steinbrenner, there was Charles Oscar Finley, of the Athletics.

    Featuring the contributions of 46 members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions shares the stories of each of the roster players on each of the A's championship teams, in addition to the managers, coaches, Finley himself, the team's radio announcer, and even Charlie O, the mule, Finley's legendary mascot. Summaries of each spring training and World Series, too, will complete the tale of one of baseball's most colorful and successful teams.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSociety for American Baseball Research
    Release dateSep 30, 2015
    ISBN9781943816064
    Mustaches and Mayhem: Charlie O's Three-Time Champions The Oakland Athletics: 1972-74: SABR Digital Library, #31

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      Book preview

      Mustaches and Mayhem - Society for American Baseball Research

      Introduction

      Champions Three Times Over

      By Chip Greene

      In 1976, Reggie Jackson, then arguably baseball’s biggest superstar, joined my favorite team, the Baltimore Orioles, in a trade from the Oakland A’s. Accompanying him was gritty left-handed pitcher Ken Holtzman. Coming a year after the shocking change of teams from the A’s to the Yankees by free-agent pitcher Catfish Hunter, the trade brought excitement to Baltimore in equal measure with what was assuredly disgust on the part of A’s fans. For Hunter, Jackson, and Holtzman had been integral pieces of Oakland’s three consecutive championships, and now each was gone. It was just the beginning of the dismantling of one of the premier teams in basebal l history.

      With the advent of free agency looming, other stars soon found themselves headed out of Oakland. In June 1976 Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to stem the tide of an Oakland housecleaning when he blocked the proposed sale of former Cy Young award winner Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million as well as that of star left fielder Joe Rudi and relief ace Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $2 million. As it turned out, Kuhn was only delaying the inevitable. The breakup of the three-time champions occurred with lightning speed.

      For five years the Oakland A’s had been a glorious franchise. Built from the inside out, with a stable of young homegrown talent who had matured together in the minor leagues, from 1971 through 1975, Oakland won five consecutive American League West titles, winning it all in the middle three of those seasons. In the process, the core starting lineup of Bando at third; Campaneris at short; Green at second; Rudi in left; Jackson in right; Tenace catching or playing first; and Hunter, Odom, and Fingers on the mound, together with such imports as Holtzman and Bill North, took the field and withstood both their own internal squabbling and one of the most notorious owners the game has ever known to defeat all comers and permanently etch their names as one of the greatest teams ever assembled.

      Their common foe was always Charles Oscar Finley. If the A’s players sometimes fought with one another as well as their opponents, the bond most of them shared was a loathing of the A’s irascible, overbearing, pompous, manipulative, scheming, cantankerous, bombastic, often prevaricating, but flamboyant, creative, forward-thinking, and inventive owner. Indeed, so frequently did Finley meddle in the affairs of his team, so often did he commit some seemingly egregious offense against one or another player, that the result became a shared commitment among the A’s personnel to band together against Finley’s dictates and misbehavior and denounce him as an abhorrent and often juvenile cheapskate and a louse. Finley became the unifying negative force in the locker room (not that he ever really minded, if it meant his team would win) and the players took that camaraderie to the field and won in spite of his churlish behavior.

      This book chronicles the lives and times of those men and those teams. Included is a biography of each player who appeared in an Oakland uniform in each of the three championship years, together with the managers, coaches, Finley himself, and Monte Moore, who broadcast the games. As baseball seasons begin with spring training and end with the World Series, so too is each season here similarly recapped, in chronological order, with the men who joined the team in a particular season included in that year’s account. Documenting multiple seasons was, of course, a major undertaking, and would not have been accomplished without the dedication and able writing of a number of SABR volunteers, each of whom I sincerely thank and whose excellent work speaks for itself in the pages that follow.

      Beyond the outstanding writing, however, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to an editorial team which for the better part of two years read every word and checked every fact to ensure that we got it right. In particular, this book would not have been produced without the commitment of Bill Nowlin, Len Levin, and Greg Erion. For their assistance, I am eternally indebted.

      Chip Greene

      Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

      November 29, 2014

      The A’s:

      Westward-Ho, In Stages

      By Curt Smith

      Rock and roll is the métier of choice at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum (a.k.a. O.co Coliseum since 2011). For example, the Allman Brothers Band’s hit Ramblin’ Man can often be heard at the baseball Athletics’ 35,067-capacity home. It is fitting, given the franchise’s peregrination from Philadelphia to Kansas City in 1955 and then to Oakland in 1968. In particular, the Coliseum’s ups and downs deserve reliving — especially the Summitry of 1972-74. As Oscar Wilde once said: Grief has turned her fair.

      The Athletics’ trek began with original owner, manager, and president Cornelius McGillicuddy — Connie Mack. In 1909 he opened Shibe Park at Philadelphia’s 21st Street and West Lehigh Avenue. Shibe touted baseball’s first ramps, umpire and visiting team rooms, terra-cotta trim above each archway and windows, and the cupola — the age’s skybox. The first double-decked arena was built by modern material and design — cutting off, lifting, and pushing forward the top half of a deep single deck.

      After Shibe, supports linked most parks’ upper and lower levels, putting fans nearer the diamond than in the past wooden-seat age. For the first time, concrete and steel let you round façade angles behind the plate, extend stands down each foul line, and form the double deck. Shibe flaunted a Beaux Arts tower and churchlike dome behind the plate, miming the French Renaissance, and also a green wall and seamless web of angled blocks, planes, and triangles. Presiding was McGillicuddy, tall and gaunt, in suit and tie, a scorecard in one hand, signaling to fielders from the dugout, his name trimmed to Mack to fit a box score.

      In 1910-14 Mack’s Athletics won four pennants, three World Series, and more games than any other club. Mack then sold or traded players, partly to pay for Shibe. Living on thin profit’s edge, he added left-field seats, then covered the pavilion. By 1925 a second tier tied third and first base, respectively, to center field and right field’s corner. Seventy percent of the park was now double-decked, sportswriter Allen Lewis noted. Shibe stayed that way the rest of its life. The park’s last big-league match was played there on October 1, 1970.

      Like a bobbed cork, Shibe Park again rose in 1929-31, hosting each American League titlist, then resurfaced in the public eye in 1941 as Ted Williams went 6-for-8 there in a last-day doubleheader to finish with a .406 average. A decade later, A’s pitcher Bobby Shantz won the 1952 AL MVP award. It wasn’t enough to overcome 1954’s wretched 51-103 record and 304,666 attendance. That winter Mack, for whom Shibe had been renamed in 1953, sold the A’s to Kansas City tycoon Arnold Johnson. We just couldn’t make a go of it, said Connie, who retired in 1950 and died, at 93, in 1956. Instead, the franchise chose to go about 1,125 miles west, to a city that soon deserved better than it got.

      For years Kansas City had been a great Yankees farm club, recalled Kansas City Star sports editor Ernie Mehl. Mantle, Rizzuto, they all played here with the American Association Blues. In 1938 Muehlebach Field was renamed Ruppert Stadium after Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert. When Arnold Johnson bought the Athletics in 1954, he renamed the stadium after the Triple-A Blues. In 1945 Johnson’s pals Del Webb and Dan Topping had bought the Yankees. After Mehl convinced him that Kansas City deserved a club, Johnson used Webb and Topping to run interference, get the AL to OK the A’s sale, and move them from Philadelphia. Kansas City straightaway gave Johnson $500,000 for Blues Stadium, renaming it Municipal.

      Johnson bought the Braves Field scoreboard for $100,000, put it in right-center field, and moved the plate 25 feet toward the outfield. Dimensions fell, rose, then fell again. At Shibe Park center field had been as much as 468 feet from home plate. At Municipal, center veered from 410 to 430; left, 312, 369; left-center, 375, 408. The bottom of the light tower was in play. Right-center followed the bouncing ball from 382 to 360; right, 347, 325. Wall heights wavered: left, 10 to 38; center, 10 to 40; right, 4 to 40. In 1955 the city rebuilt and double-decked Municipal Stadium in 22 weeks: capacity 30,296. Over time, the Athletics, like the park’s lengths, shrank.

      On April 12, 1955, former President Harry Truman, flanked by Connie Mack, threw out the first ball at Kansas City’s big-league opener. The Boss is the real fan, Harry said of his wife, Bess. Her rookie Athletics finished sixth (in 13 years, Missouri’s A’s never made the first division) and drew 1,393,054 (quadrupling Philadelphia’s last year). The following season the club won just 52 games and attendance fell to 1,015,154, a mark the franchise wouldn’t hit again until 1973. Midway through the 1957 season, skipper Lou Boudreau was fired: over the club’s remaining nine years in Kansas City, nine other managers succeeded him. Bob Cerv bashed 38 homers in 1958. In 1960 Municipal hosted an All-Star Game, Nationals winning, 5-3. Seven Yankees made the AL All-Star team — a common trend.

      The Yankees! They called us their cousins! cried 1955-61 A’s broadcaster Merle Harmon. Johnson kept trading our fine players — Art Ditmar, Bobby Shantz, Ralph Terry, Hector Lopez — the Yankees got every one. The New York Central Railroad shipped Vic Power, Irv Noren, Enos Slaughter, and Jerry Lumpe west. In late 1959, KC dealt Roger Maris to the Big Apple for Norm Siebern, Don Larsen, Hank Bauer, and Marv Throneberry. Oh, said Merle, and how the trades goaded our fans. One July night the A’s ripped New York for 27 hits. "For one night we felt like the powerhouse. Self-effacement lit the air. ’Course, that feeling didn’t last for long."

      What did last was disarray. Through 1960 the A’s never settled above sixth place. That December, Chicago insurance broker Charles O. Finley bought 52 percent of the club from the Johnson estate, Arnold having died in March. Finley tried to bully a rental reduction. He also showed a fine baseball sense and showman’s yen to please. In 1961 Lew Krausse got $125,000 to sign. The first great bonus baby, said Mehl, and the first pitcher to start without any minor-league experience. Blue Moon Odom and Catfish Hunter signed for $64,000 and $75,000, respectively. Bert Campaneris arrived from Venezuela. Sal Bando jumped from Arizona State. Alumni Rick Monday and Reggie Jackson led baseball’s 1965-66 free-agent draft. Finley was his own scouting system, said Harmon, signing them all. He seemed less adept at winning and drawing. The style was mom ’n’ pop, not U.S. Steel.

      We’ve got nowhere to go but up, eighth-placers once cried in an eight-team league. The 1961 A’s differed: tied for last in expansion’s new 10-team AL. Only 683,817 found the park, two miles east of downtown. By 1964 Finley wanted to move to Louisville. The AL told him to sign a KC lease or lose the team. Campaneris, who went on to star at shortstop for the 1972-74 Oakland world champions, pitched ambidextrously for 1962 Class A Daytona Beach. At 22, Campy debuted in the big leagues with two homers in a game, his aid not enough: The 1964 club went 57-105. One day in 1965 he played each position versus California. That September Satchel Paige, 59, pitched for the first time in the majors since 1953: one hit in three innings. If you think I’m gonna throw anyplace but your letters, shame on ya! he growled. Finley’s shame was the Yankees: He envied, but hated, them.

      On August 18, 1962, New York drew Municipal’s best crowd — an overflow 35,147. What a social occasion, said Mehl. People from all over Mid-America arrived by car, bus, and train. Many sat on a grass slope between the right-field fence and Brooklyn Avenue behind it. It was too steep to be mowed. Finley imported sheep and dyed them A’s green and gold. An employee with a shepherd’s cap, cloak, and stick managed the animals. When the Yankees played [invariably, selling out], laughed Bando, Finley put the sheep behind the fence. One day a man accosted him and said he had sat on sheep manure. My pants are ruined. What you gonna do about it? Finley had them cleaned and pressed.

      By 1965 Finley, increasingly at sea, became convinced that the Yankees’ dynasty stemmed from the 296-foot right-field line at The Big Ballpark in the Bronx. His riposte: the Pennant Porch, a four-foot-high fence 296 feet from the plate. Baseball regulations said it had to be at least 325, said Harmon. Defiant, Finley ad-libbed a 325 line, indenting it to 296 five feet from the pole. The AL cried foul. Charlie finally painted K.C. One-Half Pennant Porch at the 325-foot pole. Stymied on the field, Finley again looked beyond it. Recalling Shibe’s opulence, you mused what Philly’s high society might have thought of this.

      Finley built a children’s zoo on an incline beyond right field. Its cast included his mule mascot Charlie O., a Chinese golden pheasant, German checker rabbits, peafowl, a German shorthaired pointer dog named Old Drum, and Capuchin monkeys. The Kansas City Farmers Market kept them happy, Tigers pitchers once feeding the monkeys vodka-soaked oranges. Another time Finley led a young Nebraskan on a tour. He thinks they’re going to the zoo, said Campy. Instead, they wandered by mistake on the field [near outfielder Jim Landis] as the pitch was being thrown. The style was home style: A Sam’s Baseball Parking sign still spruces a nearby bridge. Finley listened by radio from his Indiana home. He had a soft spot for Paige, ensuring his pension. Groundskeeper Smokey Olson used Charlie O.’s blanket to warm Satch’s legs in a bullpen rocking chair.

      Some thought Finley off his rocker. Charlie didn’t want umpires to have to stash baseballs in their pocket, said longtime A’s Voice Monte Moore, so he built Harvey the Mechanical Rabbit, rigged a basket, and buried him behind the plate. The ump would point to a ballboy, who pushed a button, making the rabbit rise, unload stock, and return to terra firma. Finley felt umpires demeaned by cleaning home plate — thus, Little Blowhard, a compressed-air jet. Not everyone was aware of Finley’s brainchild. In sequence, one batter readied for a pitch, the ump pressed the button, the airjet hissed, and the hitter, stunned, leapt straight up and fell backward in the box. Little worked. The 1967 A’s finished last, drew a next-to-AL-last 726,639, and in 1968 vamoosed to Oakland. A year later the league expanded to Seattle and back to Kansas City. The A’s were succeeded by the Royals, more quickly at the box office than on the field.

      Finley arrived in Oakland already with the reputation for making Jack Benny seem generous. In August 1967 the A’s flew a regularly scheduled plane from Boston to Kansas City, Finley so cheap he spread us three across in coach, said first baseman Ken Harrelson. Priorities: Charlie O. went first class. En route, Lew Krausse had too much to drink. Finley wanted to suspend him. Manager Alvin Dark refused, leading Finley to fire him, at which point Harrelson called Charlie detrimental to baseball. Next day Finley called, swearing, asking if Harrelson wanted his unconditional release. Hawk said no, wanting and needing his $12,500 annual salary. Charlie said he would call back. Instead, he had Harrelson’s roommate, Mike Hershberger, phone: As of this moment, you’re no longer a member of the green and gold. Released, Hawk became baseball’s first free agent, signing with Boston. Harrelson’s take: Charlie built a lot of things — a prime-time World Series, a great A’s team, free agency — by mistake.

      Oakland’s reputation had been forged by Gertrude Stein, who said famously, There’s no there there — although the city had hosted minor-league baseball continuously since the Oakland Pioneers of 1879. It had never had a major-league club, however, until Finley relocated the A’s. Starting in 1911, the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League played in homespun Oaks Park, near Emeryville. The bleachers began ten feet off the ground. That way, said owner J. Cal Ewing, we can avoid a white hitter’s backdrop. The clubhouse also had a washing machine. If you want to look neat on the field, said trainer Red Adams, you have to start from inside out. Casey Stengel won the 1948 pennant with Nine Old Men, the team averaging 34 years old. The park was older. Every time a ball hit the left-field fence, said ex-NL batting champion Ernie Lombardi, the boards fell down. The Oaks moved to Vancouver in 1958 when the National League Giants arrived across San Francisco Bay. In late 1967 Finley moved into a park at Oakland’s C.W. Nimitz Freeway and Hegenberger Road. Divide and conquer may work in politics. It nearly killed baseball in the Bay.

      Public funds built the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum for the American Football League Raiders. It was symmetrical, like most new 1960s multisport facilities. Lines were 330 feet long. Alleys were 378 (later, 375, 372, and 367), center field was 410 (400 in 1969, 396, 397, and 400 again in 1990), and foul ground reached to Berkeley. (Balls kept getting caught, said 1968 skipper Bob Kennedy. Cost you 10 points a year.) Tall grass stemmed triples. Heavy night air killed would-be dingers. The backstop — a notch in the stands — lay a league-high 90 feet from the plate. The Coliseum lay hard by parking lots nowhere near downtown Oakland. It was easy to reach by highway and train, but had little buzz, less community shopping and dining, and outside concrete walls made increasingly dull by the brick and sandstone exterior of the 1990s and beyond old new parks: a Camden Yards, a Target Field, the phantasmagoric PNC Park.

      Set in the ground like a D-Day concrete pillbox, barely visible from the Freeway, the Coliseum’s appearance fit the neighborhood, plain and rough and spartan. No cable cars or great skyline, said Half Moon Bay native and future A’s and Giants voice Jon Miller, just train tracks and warehouses. A visitor descended to the ticket window, sighting a next door complex housing skating and hockey and hoops. The Coliseum — almost from the start, wags dubbed it the Mausoleum — was stark, outside and in: no arch, roof, or sculpture. Official baseball capacity was 50,000. Three tiers reached beyond each line. A single 7,000-seat bleacher deck trimmed the 8- foot (10 in 1981) outfield wall. A green hill lay beyond it. Given the park’s sterility, read the Oakland Tribune, you focus on the hill, not field.

      The Coliseum premiered on April 17, 1968. First pitcher: Lew Krausse. Batter: Baltimore’s Curt Blefary. Homer: Oriole Boog Powell. Score: Orioles, 4-1. First ball: thrown out by California Governor Ronald Reagan. One thing I’m sure of, he said of Income Tax Day, is that a lot of you paid your taxes. Boos rained from 50,164. Reagan smiled. Up to a few moments ago, I was glad to be here. Straight off, the A’s practiced hand-to-mouth artwork. Charlie O. stepped from a luxury van, stopped at each base, and bowed. Tennessee Ernie Ford and a marching band readied for the National Anthem. But Finley couldn’t negotiate an agreement on live music from the union, said Monte Moore. We played a recording.

      Finley’s $1 million right-field scoreboard flopped for several months. The pitcher’s mound lay on a steel shell for Oakland’s soccer team. The exposed shell was covered between innings. Opening Night had sort of a wing-it feel, confessed Charlie. A worse feel was empty seats. On May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter threw a perfect game against Minnesota at the Coliseum — the AL’s first since 1922. The game wasn’t televised. No TV outlet even covered it. Improbably, given today’s media landscape, all that remains is the last radio out. In the ninth inning Hunter faced Rich Reese: A’s ahead, 6-0, two out, and full count. Reese fouled off a panoply of pitches, then fanned. Moore and Al Helfer divided 1968 A’s radio, Al doing the night’s last 4½ innings. From the old school, Helfer never noted the no-hitter till it happened, afraid that he might jinx it.

      Al said only, My goodness, the boy has pitched a no-hitter at the end — a hard drinker, he may not have noticed that the boy had also pitched a perfect game. Either way, a tiny announced crowd of 6,298 watched. Baseball hadn’t caught on yet in the Bay, Moore said. What those of little faith missed. Bay baseball beat writer Bob Stevens believed that Finley thought you could create new fans in the Bay Area. Instead, he stole the Giants’, dividing a finite market. In 1968 both clubs drew a combined attendance of 1,711,069 versus the 1966 Giants’ 1,657,191. Oakland’s 837,466 placed eighth in league attendance. Those missing in action for the no-hitter could have seen the Athletics’ first .500 year since 1952.

      The following year the A’s installed the 24-foot-high and 126-foot-wide Finley Fun [computer score] Board with cartoons and other graphics. They had much to hail in 1969-70 — in one year or the other, Reggie Jackson’s 47 homers, Sal Bando’s 113 RBIs, and Vida Blue’s no-hitter — but even fewer showed up to celebrate. Youngest [21] to no-hit anyone since Daffy Dean, Finley said of Blue. On the other hand, the ’69 and ’70 A’s each drew less than 800,000, Vida’s gem luring 4,284. Charlie was hung up on his color scheme — white, gold, and Kelly green, added Hunter. I remember one home opener had gold-covered bases. Ironically, more marketing gold would have reaped more green.

      From the start Oakland was unsure how to view the enigmatic Finley. After high school, the son of a steelworker entered the mills, sold insurance at night, formed a company, and was a millionaire by 35. Buying the A’s, Finley badgered grounds help, phoned the dugout, hatched trades, and had a reverence for talent developed there. In 1970 he hired baseball’s Jackie Gleason to do radio and TV. Holy Cow! It might be! It could be! It was! Harry Caray became the A’s Voice for a season, selling beer, sacking pomp, and on his arrival in Oakland predicting that here was a club that’ll soon be a world champion, youth not wasted on the young. Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, and Dick Green, left to right in the infield and all in their early 20s, he said. Don Mincher and Mike Epstein at first base. Gene Tenace behind the plate. Joe Rudi, Rick Monday, and Reggie Jackson in the outfield. Pitching wed Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter and Blue Moon Odom and Kenny Holtzman. On and on.

      Quoting Ring Lardner, to some Finley seemed to treat employees like a side dish he declined to order. Caray said Finley treated him like a friend. He let Harry use Charlie’s penthouse on a lake and his Cadillac — gave me the keys. I only wish his team had been in the Midwest where my roots were — Caray left after 1970 to join the White Sox — but you didn’t have to be a scientist to know they were going to be great. Finley had one scout, carried a briefcase, lived two time zones away, yet wound up with this world of talent. Without free agency forcing Finley to break up the A’s, he’d have won a ton of titles more.

      There was a lot to follow, if only Charlie could arrange it. One year he didn’t sign a commercial station to carry games in English, giving A’s rights to the UCLA-Berkeley radio outlet, its peewee signal limited to the campus and a few downtown blocks. Meanwhile, his 1,000-watt Spanish AM flagship station reached most of the area, an engineer explaining that because its tower/transmitter was installed on top of cement pillars in the bay, water as a conduit increased power. This didn’t help Oakland English-speaking listeners even as, ironically, the A’s English radio network stretched to Honolulu. A protester phoned Finley: "It’s nice they can hear you in Hawaii. Why can’t we hear you here?"

      Those who heard, rejoiced. In 1971 Blue burst like Vesuvius: 24-8, 8 shutouts, and a 1.82 earned-run average, receiving the MVP Award. Oakland won the West, still drew only 914,993, and lost the League Championship Series to Baltimore. One night league executives had dinner in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Casey Stengel, 81, began giving tales the Stengel treatment. Suddenly the mule Charlie O. entered, wandered to Casey’s table, and nudged the Ol’ Perfessor, by now slightly wasted. A very remarkable horse, Stengel mused. He hasn’t seen me for a year, and still remembers. There was much to remember about the next three years — Oakland’s 1972-74 dynasty — baseball’s first threepeat since the 1949-53 Yankees. The minor stars changed, but the firmament’s brilliance remained.

      Sources

      Virtually all material, including quotes, is derived from Curt Smith’s books Voices of The Game, Storied Stadiums, Voices of Summer, The Voice, Pull Up a Chair, A Talk in the Park, and Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park’s Centennial Told Through Red Sox Radio and TV (published, in order: Simon & Schuster 1992; Carroll & Graf 2001 and 2005, respectively; the Lyons Press, 2007: and Potomac Books 2009, 2010, and 2012, respectively.)

      Books

      Lowry, Philip, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All Major League Ballparks (New York: Walker & Company, 2006).

      Silverman, Matthew, Swinging ’73: Baseball’s Wildest Season (Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2013).

      Websites

      Baseball-reference.com

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      Charlie Finley

      By Mark Armour

      He owned and operated the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics for 20 years. Nearly everyone, including fellow owners, players, the fans of his teams, the media, and the baseball commissioner, disliked or even despised him. When his team lost, he blamed everyone but himself. When they won, he was apt to call the radio booth during the game if his name was not mentioned often enough. He was a self-made millionaire who, in the words of sportswriter Jim Murray, worshipped his creator. ¹

      Working at a time when baseball abhorred change of any stripe, Charlie Finley had more ideas and imagination than all his fellow owners put together. Tactless, rude, and vulgar, he could outwork everyone, running his insurance company in Chicago while badgering his baseball employees at long distance. Working in an age before cellular telephones, Finley spent hours on the phone, usually with someone who would rather have been doing anything other than talking to Charlie. He was a professional salesman, and worked his fellow owners by browbeating them until they might finally give in. Most of the crazy ideas he advanced — orange baseballs and bases — never caught on, but a few that did — World Series night games, the designated hitter — changed the game forever.

      It is impossible to write about the great 1970s Athletics, a team that won three consecutive World Series titles, without presenting Finley as the star of the show; the baseball team, even the games themselves, often seemed a sidelight to some other story. This is exactly how Finley wanted it. Ron Bergman, who covered the Oakland Athletics for the Oakland Tribune, once wrote, Finley makes the games incidental. After the 1973 Series was over … I had to go back and read about the games to see what happened.² Several books were written about the A’s during their glory years, and every one of them placed Finley front and center.

      Finley ran the entire operation to an extent that was startling. He not only made all the baseball decisions in Oakland — deciding whom to draft or sign, making trades, suggesting the lineup, advising in-game strategy — he often wrote the copy for the yearbook, made out the song lists for the organist, decided the menu for the press room during the World Series, and designed the uniforms. Finley had to approve all injuries before a player could be put on the disabled list. Not surprisingly, he went through office staffers at an alarming rate. People soon tire of being screamed at, humiliated, and treated, as one former employee put it, worse than animals.

      And yet he won. And what’s more, Finley won almost entirely with players that his organization had signed and developed. The Athletics were built precisely the way we imagine a great team ought to be built: They signed or drafted dozens of quality players, sifted through them for a few years until several developed, made a couple of key trades to redistribute the talent, and provided depth with veteran role players. It worked splendidly, and likely would have continued to work splendidly had the game’s labor system not changed. Once the players had to be treated on nearly equal ground, Finley’s techniques were no longer successful. For this, Finley had himself to blame, for no one did more to incite the player revolution than Charlie.

      If the architect of the great Athletics had been anyone other than Finley, he might have received a book contract, and spent his retirement years giving speeches on college campuses. Since it was Finley, everyone could hardly wait until he got out of baseball so that they could unplug their noses. It is amusing to imagine what the other owners must have felt watching this man hoist the World Series trophy every year on national television.

      Charles Oscar Finley was born on February 22, 1918, just outside Birmingham, in an area that is now incorporated as Ensley, Alabama. Randolph Finley, Charles’s grandfather had come to the area from Ireland and worked in the steel mills. He and Emma Caroline Finley raised 11 children, one of whom, Oscar, was Charles’s father. Emma Fields, Charles’s mother, came from Georgia originally, but her family made it to Birmingham when she was a child. Oscar met Emma when he was working as an apprentice at the steel mill. They soon married, settled in a residential neighborhood, and were very active in the Baptist Church.

      Oscar and Emma had three children: Thelma, Charles, and Fred. Charles, the middle child, was an extraordinary businessman even as a youngster. By the age of 12 he mowed lawns six days a week, eventually hiring and organizing a crew of people. He sold newspapers and magazines all over Birmingham, with his mother driving the car. He sold eggs. He made and sold cheap wine during the Prohibition era. He was also the batboy for the Birmingham Barons, and he loved the game, playing it whenever he could.

      In 1933 the steel mills began laying people off, so Oscar moved his family to Gary, Indiana. In his new city Charlie quickly found ways to make money, working, always working. He didn’t just play baseball — he organized his own team and found a sponsor. After graduating from Mann High School in 1936, he worked in a steel mill for five years. Laid off in 1941, and classified as 4-F for induction into the service, he went to work in an ordnance plant east of Gary in LaPorte, Indiana. That same year he married Shirley McCartney, a local woman from a well-respected and well-to-do family. He remained employed at the plant until 1946.

      In the meantime Finley began selling insurance on the side, and he was so good at it that he left his job and began working for a Travelers agent in Gary. He set sales records for the company that held until the 1960s. Ironically, the one person he forgot to insure was himself, and this mistake nearly ruined everything. A severe bout of tuberculosis hospitalized him for 2½ years and nearly cost him his life. Typically, he spent all of this idle time planning his next move. He developed a plan to sell life insurance to doctors and surgeons. When he left the hospital, he started his own company, and it quickly became one of the largest insurance carriers in the country. Within a few years he was a multimillionaire.

      Finley was also a lifelong baseball nut, playing on lots of local organized teams before his illness. Once he became rich, he spent several years attempting to buy a major-league team. He first tried to purchase the Philadelphia Athletics from the Mack family in 1953, and was later a spurned bidder for the Tigers, the White Sox, and the expansion Los Angeles Angels. Finally, in December 1960 he bought a controlling interest in the Kansas City Athletics from the estate of Arnold Johnson, and within a few months he had bought out all of the other investors. The club he bought had been terrible for many years, and had finished in last place, 39 games behind the Yankees, in 1960.

      Finley’s first baseball move was to hire Trader Frank Lane to run the team, a sure sign that he wanted a quick fix. Early in the season, Finley overruled a few of Lane’s moves, and it was soon apparent who was running the show. Though working under an eight-year contract, Lane did not make it through his first season. Calling Finley a liar and an egotist, he later went to court to get some of the money Finley owed him. The man who replaced Lane was Pat Friday, who also worked for Finley in his insurance company. Within a few years, Finley’s front office consisted mainly of his wife, Shirley, his cousin Carl Finley, and his son, Charles Jr. The traveling secretary was apt to be a college intern.

      Finley’s first manager was Joe Gordon, who once reportedly handed the home-plate umpire a lineup card that was inscribed: Approved by C.O.F.³ Gordon lasted 60 games. When Finley decided to hire his right fielder as the new manager, he instructed the P.A. announcer to call out: Hank Bauer, your playing days are over. You have been named manager of the Kansas City A’s. Bauer trotted in to the dugout.

      Finley quickly concluded that he understood the game better than anyone else. One classic example involved promising outfielder Manny Jiminez. In July 1962, Manny, a 22-year-old rookie, was hitting .337 with 10 home runs. When asked about his rising star, Finley snapped, I don’t pay Jiminez to hit singles. He ordered Bauer to get him to swing for the fences: Get that smart Cuban in your office, and get another Cuban to interpret and bang your fist on the desk. We’ll see what happens.⁴ What happened was that Jiminez, who was not Cuban at all but Dominican, hit .301, but with only one home run for the rest of year, and showed up in 1963 without a starting job.

      Finley spent a lot of time complaining about the city and the ballpark and trying to move the team. In his first few years in Kansas City he publicly courted the communities of Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Oakland, and several times sought league permission to move. In January 1964 Finley signed a lease with the state of Kentucky to use Fairgrounds Stadium in Louisville. Unfortunately, he failed to notify the American League. Ten days later, the league voted 9 to 1 against the shift, and gave Finley until February 1 to conclude a lease in Kansas City.

      Finley remained undeterred. He flew to Oakland, signed a letter of intent to move his team there, and told the league he would sign no more than a two-year lease in Kansas City. In an emergency league meeting, the owners voted 9 to 1 that the lease being offered by Kansas City was fair and reasonable and called another meeting to consider expelling Finley from the league. He finally gave in and signed an ironclad four-year lease to keep the Athletics in Kansas City through 1967.

      When he first acquired the team, Finley tried anything and everything to interest people in his team: cow-milking contests, greased-pig contests, a sheep pasture (with a shepherd) beyond right field, a zoo beyond left. He installed a mechanical rabbit named Harvey behind home plate to pop up and hand the umpire new baseballs. He had Little Blowhard, a compressed-air device inside of home plate that blew dirt away. He hired Miss U.S.A to be the batgirl. He installed a yellow cab to bring in pitchers from the bullpen. He released helium balloons with A’s tickets throughout the countryside. He installed lights in the dugout so that the fans could see the manager and players discussing strategy. He shot off fireworks in the park, but the neighbors complained and the city made him desist. Finley sued the city.

      During Finley’s early tenure in Kansas City, the team received a lot of attention for its uniforms, for which the owner himself, of course, selected the design. Finley first introduced the sleeveless top to the American League in 1962, and the following year he shocked baseball traditionalists by dressing his team head-to-toe in yellow with green trim. The Athletics’ lone All-Star Game representative in 1963, Norm Seibern, did not play in the game, reportedly because manager Ralph Houk thought that the Athletics uniform was a disgrace to the American League. In 1966 the team added kangaroo white shoes to its ensemble.

      The one thing Finley promised the good people of Kansas City that he actually delivered on might have been the biggest long shot: He got the Beatles to play at Municipal Stadium. The 1964 tour, their first in North America, was already ongoing when (after several attempts) he lured the biggest sensation in pop music history for $150,000 — at the time the largest fee ever paid for a music concert.

      In 1965 Finley introduced the baseball world to his new mascot, a Missouri mule, predictably named Charlie O. Not only did the mule have its own pen just outside the park, it also went on a few road trips and stayed in the team’s hotel. In Yankee Stadium, Finley got Ken Harrelson to ride Charlie O., and the frightened mule ran around trying to buck him off. Only the Chicago White Sox did not let Charlie O. on the field, so Finley arranged a protest rally across the street from Comiskey Park with pretty models and a six-piece band, which played appropriate tunes, like Mule Train. One afternoon in Kansas City, he led the mule onto the field through the center-field fence before realizing that the game had already started.

      In late 1965 he signed the 59-year-old Satchel Paige to start a game against the Red Sox in Kansas City. Allowing only a single to Carl Yastrzemski, Paige threw three shutout innings. Soon thereafter, Bert Campaneris played all nine positions in a game, before finally leaving in the ninth inning when, while playing catcher, he was involved in a collision at home plate. After the season, coach Whitey Herzog had seen enough: This is nothing more than a damned sideshow. Winning over here is a joke.⁵

      Despite all of these early efforts at promotion, the Athletics had miserable attendance throughout Finley’s years in Kansas City. In 1960, the year before Finley bought the team, the Athletics drew only 774,944 fans. This was a modest total, even for the time, but it was more than Finley ever attracted in any of his seven years in Kansas City. In 1965 the team attracted only 528,344 admissions. In their first season in 1969, the Kansas City Royals easily surpassed Finley’s highest attendance figure.

      Finley was also full of bright ideas to improve the game. He wanted interleague play and realignment to promote geographic rivalries. He pushed for World Series and All-Star Games at night. He wanted the season shortened. He cajoled for the adoption of a designated hitter for the pitcher. He proposed a designated runner, who could freely pinch-run for a player any time he got on without replacing him in the lineup. He tried to get the owners to adopt a three-ball walk and actually used the rule in one preseason game in 1971. (There were 19 walks in the game, and it was not tried again.) He pushed to have active players made eligible for the Hall of Fame. He installed a clock in the scoreboard to enforce a long ignored rule that mandated no more than twenty seconds between pitches.

      Finley continually tried to add elements of color to the game. His first year in Kansas City, he painted the box seats and the outfield fences citrus yellow and the foul poles fluorescent pink. At the league meetings in 1970, Finley proposed colored bases and colored foul lines, and the A’s received permission to use gold bases for their home opener. A few years later, he pushed for orange baseballs, which he carried with him everywhere he went. He even received permission to use the balls in a spring-training game. About this time most tennis organizations began using a yellow ball, and one cannot help but think that the orange baseball might have caught on if Finley had not been the author of the idea.

      Finley once offered the following advice to a hypothetical man thinking of becoming a baseball owner: Do not go into any league meeting looking alert and awake; slump down like you’ve been out all night and keep your eyes half closed, and when it is your turn to vote you ask to pass. Then you wait and see how the others vote, and you vote the same way. Suggest no innovations. Make no efforts at change. That way you will be very popular with your fellow owners.⁶

      After being forced to sign his lease in early 1964, Finley essentially stopped trying to promote the team. Ernie Mehl wrote in the Kansas City Star, Had the ownership made a deliberate attempt to sabotage a baseball organization, it could not have succeeded as well. … It is somewhat the sensation one has in walking through a hall of mirrors designed to distort, where nothing is normal, where everything appears out of focus.⁷ Finley responded by staging Ernie Mehl Appreciation Day and planned to present Mehl with a poison pen. When Mehl did not attend, Finley arranged to have a truck circle the park with a caricature of Mehl dipping his pen in poison ink.

      Star reporter Joe McGuff wrote a letter to the American League offices claiming: Finley has done nothing to promote the season ticket sale. He has never had one salesman on the street. The A’s do not have a ticket outlet outside of Greater Kansas City.⁸ Finley ignored booster clubs. He gave no support to local groups that organized ticket-buying programs. He made only cursory attempts at selling radio and TV rights. He decided that the city did not care about him so, by God, he was not going to care about the city.

      Finley constantly fiddled with the dimensions of his ballpark, until it reached the point of absurdity. His first year he thought the Kansas City pitchers needed help, so he moved the left field fence back 40 feet. By 1964 he had determined that the Yankees won every year not because of their great talent, but because of the dimensions of their ballpark: deep in most of left and center fields with a short distance in right. Finley decided to make his right-field configuration identical to that in Yankee Stadium.

      Unfortunately for Finley, as of 1958 the rules decreed a minimum distance of 325 feet down the foul lines with the exception of those parks already with shorter dimensions. Never one to be put off by something as silly as the rules of the game, Finley ordered that his fence conform to the Yankee Stadium dimensions from center field to right field until it reached a point five feet from the foul line and 296 feet from home plate (the Yankee Stadium distance). From there, the fence angled sharply back out so that it was exactly 325 feet away when it reached the foul line. He thus neatly skirted the rule, which stipulated the distances only on the foul line, not the distance five feet from the line. He painted KC pennant porch on the new fence (which was exactly 44 inches high, as it was in Yankee Stadium).

      After two exhibition games, American League President Joe Cronin told Finley that all of the fence must be at least 325 feet from the plate. Finley moved the fence back to 325, changed the sign to say One-Half Pennant Porch and painted a line on the field that represented the Yankee Stadium dimensions. He then ordered the public address announcer to call out, That would have been a home run at Yankee Stadium for every fly ball that went past this line.⁹

      This was no joke to Finley. He was apoplectic about the Yankees, and believed the rules were deliberately stacked so that they won the pennant every year. Before its reconstruction in 1974-75, Yankee Stadium had monuments for Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth in deep left-center field. Finley threatened to put a statue of Connie Mack right in the middle of center field, saying: They let the Yankees have their monuments out in the playing area, but if I put one up they’ll probably try to run me out of baseball.¹⁰

      In the meantime, Finley traded for Rocky Colavito and Jim Gentile to hit home runs over his new fences. This strategy sort of worked in that the team finished third in the league with 166 home runs, including 34 by Colavito and 28 by Gentile. But Kansas City pitchers allowed 220 home runs, a major-league record that lasted until 1987. The 1964 Athletics finished last with a record of 57-105.

      The next year, Finley moved the fence back, put a 40-foot screen above it and got rid of Colavito and Gentile. These actions suggest a management that does not have any idea what it is doing. Just as the pitchers and hitters begin to figure out how best to deal with the dimensions of the park, the next year they come back and have to learn all over again. In 1965 the Athletics remained in last place, with a record of 59-103. The screen stayed, and Municipal Stadium remained a pitcher’s park as long as the A’s stayed there.

      Although Finley likely never relinquished the idea of leaving Kansas City once his four-year lease expired, there was nothing much for him to do about it in the meantime. He could now concentrate all of his considerable energies on a different task — signing players for his team. From 1964 to 1966, Finley invested perhaps $2 million in 200 players. This group included three future members of the Baseball Hall of Fame (Jim Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Reggie Jackson) and several other future All-Stars (Rick Monday, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, John Blue Moon Odom, and Sal Bando). With all these players in place, the team began to get better.

      The 1966 team won 74 games, their best showing in Kansas City. Their rise was highlighted in a spring 1967 cover story in Sports Illustrated predicting great things ahead, perhaps as soon as that season. It did not happen that quickly, and the 1967 season was marred by a bizarre player revolt.

      On August 3, 1967, the Athletics returned home from Boston on a commercial flight, and a few players got a little rowdy. A couple of weeks later Finley, who had not been present, investigated briefly and fined and suspended pitcher Lew Krausse. Krausse was known as something of a drinker and was certainly in the middle of whatever happened, but according to his teammates there was no particular reason for singling him out. The players backed Krausse and issued a joint statement suggesting that the event had been blown out of proportion and blaming the whole episode on Finley’s go betweens.

      Finley did not like back talk, especially from the hired help, and things deteriorated quickly from there. He first demanded that the players publicly retract their statement, which they refused to do. Inevitably, Finley fired manager Alvin Dark, who knew about the players’ statement and had failed to forewarn his boss about it. Ken Harrelson was quoted referring to Finley as a menace to baseball.¹¹ Finley responded by giving Harrelson, one of the better players on the team, his unconditional release. The Hawk turned his freedom into a $75,000 contract with the pennant-bound Boston Red Sox. The ramifications of Harrelson’s free agency so disturbed major-league owners that they amended the rules so that, in the future, a released player had to pass through waivers before becoming a free agent.

      The surviving players sought and received a hearing with Commissioner William Eckert, causing Finley to threaten retribution against those who planned to participate. The players contacted Marvin Miller, the new head of the Major League Players Association, who subsequently filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board. On September 11 there was a 14-hour meeting with the commissioner, and Finley agreed to back down in exchange for the players dropping the charge. It eventually all blew over, but this proved a watershed event. From this point forward, whenever the players union needed a symbolic bogeyman, Charlie Finley was generally around to stand in.

      Finley’s four-year lease at Municipal Stadium ended in 1967. This time Finley had laid the groundwork for his escape by quietly gathering the votes of his fellow American League owners. On October 18 the league formally approved his move to Oakland as part of a package deal that included the league expanding to two cities, including Kansas City. Finley likely chose Oakland over other possibilities because it had a brand new ballpark ready to go. The city of Oakland, cognizant of whom they were dealing with, drew up a strict 20-year lease with no option for moving. Finley signed, but was talking with Toronto by 1970.

      Once he was settled in Oakland, Finley branched out to buy two other sports teams: the Oakland Seals of the National Hockey League (renamed the California Seals), and the Memphis Stars of the American Basketball Association (renamed the Tams). Both teams changed colors to Finley’s favored green and gold, but neither could draw fans or win games. In 1974 both teams were taken over by their respective leagues.

      Meanwhile, with his baseball club gradually improving, Finley worked equally hard to keep them from getting his money. He went through very public and openly hostile holdouts with Reggie Jackson (in 1970) and Vida Blue (1972), both times using humiliation and degradation to get his stars to come to terms. Both men were popular and well-liked players who never again seemed to play with the carefree joy they had before Charlie put them in their place. In both cases, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, rarely considered friendly to the interests of players, intervened to get things settled.

      A funny thing about Finley was that he could be very generous on his own terms. He was reprimanded or fined several times for giving impromptu performance bonuses (which were and continue to be forbidden) to players for pitching a no-hitter, hitting a game-winning home run, or some other such thing. For many years he offered to invest the money of players in the stock market risk-free — Finley gave the player all gains and assumed all losses. At contract time, on the other hand, he considered it a personal insult if a player was not satisfied with his offer. As he told writer Bill Libby, We have not won a pennant, but we will win one, we will win more than one with these players who are like my own sons, and I am only sad when they will not accept my counsel, the counsel of a man who is older and wiser than they.¹²

      Led by Blue, the A’s won 101 games in 1971 and the division by 16 games. The team fell short in the playoffs, but the core of this team remained nearly intact for five straight division titles. Bando, Campaneris, Green, Jackson, and Rudi held down five of the eight regular lineup spots. Hunter, Blue, and Fingers starred on the pitcher’s mound.

      Finley made two great trades that solidified the dynasty. After the 1971 season he traded Rick Monday to the Cubs for left-handed pitcher Ken Holtzman. A year later, now realizing that he needed a center fielder, Finley traded Bob Locker to the Cubs for Billy North. North anchored center field for the A’s for the next several seasons.

      With his great young team in place, Finley constantly tinkered with the depth of his club, making trade after trade, either to fill in the gaps or because he liked making deals. Finley acquired a huge number of veterans to play a role during the five-year string of division titles. He outworked the other general managers during most of his 20-year career as owner, but he pushed himself even harder once he realized how good his team had become. In 1972 alone he made 19 trades, many of them during the season. Dick Williams later claimed that he found out about trades by seeing who was in the dugout when he showed up for work.

      For spring training of 1972, Reggie Jackson showed up with a mustache. After privately trying to get Jackson to shave it off, Finley instead decided to capitalize on the act of rebellion. He staged a Mustache Night, let mustached patrons in for a reduced price, and gave each player a small bonus if they wore mustaches for that night’s game. All players and coaches obliged, and most kept their mustaches all season. A few even sported beards. The team, dubbed The Mustache Gang in the press, went on to beat the clean-cut Cincinnati Reds in the World Series.

      The Sporting News named Finley its Man of the Year. Jackson and Blue, each once the biggest star in all of baseball, were now back in their rightful place as mere players. The only star on the team was Finley. In case anyone had missed it, he reprinted the Sporting News cover photo in the 1973 A’s yearbook.

      After another pennant the next season, the 1973 World Series finally turned Finley into a national pariah, an identity he would never overcome. After Mike Andrews made two errors in the 12th inning of Game Two, helping the Mets beat the A’s 10-7, Finley forced Andrews to sign a statement claiming that his shoulder was injured and that he could no longer play. Finley added Manny Trillo to the roster to replace Andrews, who left the team and flew home. The players, in the middle of a deadlocked series, rallied to their teammate. Sal Bando: That’s a joke. I’ve seen some bush things on this club, but this is going too far.¹³ Reggie Jackson added, All that nonbaseball stuff takes the little boy out of you.¹⁴ The whole team seemed defeated and uninterested in playing. The A’s players showed up for Game Three in New York with Andrews’ number on their sleeves.

      Commissioner Kuhn ordered Finley to reinstate Andrews, who reached New York in time for the fourth game the next night and pinch-hit in the eighth inning. He received a prolonged standing ovation from the New York crowd — Finley did not stand — before grounding out off Jon Matlack. One A’s employee expressed the general feeling: Although it hurt Andrews, a lot of people were glad it happened because for the first time it directed attention at the way Finley treated people, even if it was far from the first time he’d treated them that way. All of a sudden he was not just a quaint old guy, a fellow who did funny things, but a man who could hurt people and did.¹⁵ The A’s released Andrews at the end of the season, and he never again played in the major leagues.

      The aftermath of the seventh-game victory was eerie. The Oakland locker room was subdued, as if everyone just wanted to get out and go home. Yogi Berra, the manager of the Mets, walked in and commented, This doesn’t look like a winning dressing room to me. Manager Dick Williams announced that he was quitting, and Jackson said, I wish I could get out with him. When a writer suggested to Jackson that Finley deserved credit for getting the team riled up, the star responded, Please don’t give that man credit. … It would have been the easiest thing in the world for this team to lie down because of what that man did. He spoiled what should have been a beautiful thing.¹⁶

      At this point in the story, Reggie Jackson’s star finally rose and replaced Finley’s at the top of his team. He was voted the World Series MVP, not only for his play on the field, but for the way he conducted himself as a sincere, intelligent man in the face of what was finally recognized as nearly intolerable working conditions. Finley had spent years trying to be the center of the team, and he had succeeded even after his team had so many star players. Finley’s childish behavior in 1973 challenged his players to step forward, and Jackson did.

      The departure of Williams resulted in yet another long circus, as Finley first publicly supported Williams’s decision but later refused to let him out of his contract. No one quit on Finley. Williams signed to manage the Yankees, a move the American League blocked. Finley demanded compensation, which the Yankees refused to give, precluding Williams from getting the job. Williams remained out of work until midsummer, when he signed to manage the lowly California Angels. The A’s lingered without a manager until late February, when Finley finally hired old friend Alvin Dark for 1974.

      By 1974 much of the fun was gone. While Finley had flown in to get retractions from players for the occasional criticism in years past, by now the pretense of kissing up to the boss was ancient history. Captain Sal Bando claimed, I would say all but a few of our players hate him. It binds us together.¹⁷

      The 1974 team struggled to hold off the surprising Texas Rangers and won only 90 games. Once the postseason bell rang, they rallied to capture their third straight world championship. Unbelievably, yet another player-relations nightmare dominated the 1974 postseason. This time it involved not a backup infielder but the contract of a 25-game winner, Jim Catfish Hunter.

      In January 1974 Hunter had signed a two-year contract for a salary of $100,000 per year. The arrangement included a wrinkle: Half his salary was to be paid into a life-insurance fund as a form of deferred payment. On the day before the World Series began in Los Angeles, the story broke that Finley had not paid the mandated $50,000 to the insurance company, even after receiving written notice in mid-September. Hunter reportedly planned to ask for his release from his contract as soon as the World Series was over. Finley, obviously more worried than he admitted, went into the clubhouse with American League President Lee McPhail to present Hunter with a check for the amount due. Hunter refused to accept the check and told Finley that they would discuss it after the Series was over.

      After a month of rumors in the press, a hearing was held on November 26 in New York City in front of arbitrator Peter Seitz. On December 13 Seitz found for Hunter and declared him a free agent. The baseball world went berserk — never before had a player of Hunter’s caliber been available to the highest bidder at the height of his career. A three-week bidding war ensued among nearly every team in

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