September 4, 2010
Even The Boss didn't top Charlie Finley
by Richard A. Johnson/
Former A's owner Charlie Finley was an unforgettable figure in baseball history.
“Charlie Finley:
The Outrageous Story of
Baseball’s Super Showman”
By G. Michael Green
and Roger D. Launius
Walker and Company, $27
With the recent death of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, much has been made of the former Cleveland shipbuilder and his flamboyant revival of the pinstripes. And, while his achievement was noteworthy and remarkable, especially from a business standpoint, he was not nearly as bombastic, controversial or visionary as the late Charles Oscar Finley.
Finley has been the subject of several previous biographies, most notably Tom Clark’s wonderful, “Champagne and Baloney,” but he has finally received his just due in the assiduously researched and well-written biography by G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius.
This is not only a wonderful baseball tale but also the saga of one of the most compelling figures in latter 20th century American business and popular culture. His counterparts in the entertainment business would surely be the populist theatrical producer, Joe Papp, and concert promoter extraordinaire Bill Graham. In the case of each gentleman, they remained true to the core of their craft while reaching out to, and creating new audiences for their successful and unforgettable shows.
The man the public came to know as Charlie O was completely self-made. The son and grandson of Birmingham, Ala., steel workers, Finley made his fortune as a Chicago insurance broker selling malpractice insurance to clients such as the American Medical Association.
His lifelong credo, which he even had immortalized in gold on the championship rings won by his 1972 Oakland Athletics, was that sweat and sacrifice equals success.
Finley burst onto the sports scene in December 1960 when he bought the lowly Kansas City Athletics for slightly under two million dollars in a probate-court sale. Little did his fellow American League owners nor league president Joe Cronin imagine what lay in store for the next 20 years as Finley became nothing less than the most eccentric, creative and extroverted owner in major-league history.
The authors make note of the fact that Finley drew much from the example of fellow owner Bill Veeck, who once remarked, “If I ever run out of ideas, Charlie Finley will be out of business.”
However, even the colorful Veeck would have been hard-pressed to have hired a shepherd and grazed sheep on the field overlooking his ballpark as Finley did in Kansas City. Likewise Finley had the seats at Municipal Stadium painted a variety of garish shades or turquoise and orange to make them more attractive to fans. He also entertained fans by promoting a series of special pre-game stunts such as Farmer’s Night, complete with greased pig and milking contests, Hot Pants Night, Mustache Day, and countless appearances by his personal mascot, Charlie O, the Missouri Mule.
Apart from his depicting his often-crass showmanship, the authors go into great detail how Finley perfected the art of the now commonplace shakedown shuffle used by pro sports owners to garner tax-funded support by threatening to move their teams. Finley practically invented the strategy while plotting his exit from Kansas City. Ironically, it would stand as the one decision he later regretted as the city eventually embraced the expansion Royals within a year of his exit and built them a beautiful new ballpark.
Prior to leaving the heartland, Finley did manage to create the minor-league and player-development system that served as the framework for one of baseball’s last great dynasties. Most prospects and draftees were treated to cookouts at Finley’s LaPorte, Ind., farm where they’d be sold on his vision of pennants-to-come over platters of fried chicken and corn on the cob served Finley-style replete with a mandatory stick of butter for each guest.
The authors also inform us that Finley was the only promoter to ever lose money hosting a Beatles concert when the Fab Four played a 31-minute concert in Kansas City in September 1965.We also learn that Finley was a true eccentric who often carried raw fish and meat in his travels and asked restaurant chefs to prepare them “southern style” as he hovered over the stove with them.
Among Finley’s more well-known eccentricities was his penchant for bestowing nicknames on his star players, which he did while christening John Odom with the name “Blue Moon” and fellow pitcher Jim Hunter with the moniker “Catfish” (along with a scripted story that Hunter was asked to repeat to the press regarding how he’d once run away from home only to be discovered with a fishing pole and stringer of catfish).
Finley’s ultimate legacy was both the success of his team, which captured three straight World Series from 1972-1974, and the many innovations he brought to major league baseball. Among the developments for which he deserves credit are night baseball for the World Series, inter-league play, and the adoption of the “Moneyball” player-development tactics so crucial for mid- to small-market franchises.
Finley also pushed such colorful gimmicks as Kansas City’s pitch-o-meter, which counted down the 20 seconds allotted to major-league pitchers between pitches, orange baseballs (to increase the ball’s visibility to hitters and increase offense), double-knit uniforms, white shoes and a three-balls-for-a-walk experiment that was used for just a handful of spring-training games before being abandoned by Major League Baseball.
We also are treated to Finley’s fiery relationships with the members of his “Mustache Gang” who both loved and hated their boss. We learn that Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter not only chafed mightily under the inconsistent, and often dictatorial rule of Finley, only to leave the team as free agents. However, we’re also treated to their fond recollections of their boss when they return for his funeral a generation removed from their glory days.
The authors best capture Finley’s significance when they write, “Charlie Finley was a man of inconsistencies – miserly and autocratic one minute, charitable the next. The one characteristic that ran through his entire soul was control; it was how he brought order to his different worlds. Control meant everything had to be done the Finley way. The baseball establishment vilified him for his maverick ideas intended to improve the game, but the baseball world was changing. The baseball lords were losing control. And it would be the iconoclastic yet old-fashioned Charlie Finley and his rambunctious players who would unwittingly lead the baseball world into a new, uncertain era.”
There is no doubt that this is the entertaining and definitive biography that Finley deserves as surely as he merits a plaque in the halls of Cooperstown.
"The T 206 Collection:
The Players and
Their Stories”
By Tom and Ellen Zappala
with Lou Blasi
Peter E. Randall
Publisher, $38
In celebration of the centennial of the landmark T206 baseball card set comes the publication of this gorgeous volume chronicling the legendary set featuring such cardboard treasures as the famed Wagner, Plank and Doyle cards. The Zappalas have achieved nothing less than writing a must-have book for any
serious sports collector, as well as creating a work of baseball literature that deserves to stand alongside such classics as the venerable “The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book.” And the recently published and critically acclaimed, “Cardboard Gods.”
This beautifully illustrated coffeetable book depicts both the colorful cards as well as telling the equally colorful and compelling stories of well-known stars like Christy Mathewson, Tris Speaker and Ty Cobb, as well as the more obscure likes of New Hampshire’s Arlie Latham (who, as a coach, forced baseball to create the coach’s boxes to prevent his ceaseless taunting while roaming up and down the baselines) and Lena
Blackburne (who developed, gathered and manufactured the concoction made from the proprietary mud he discovered along the Delaware River that umpires still use to rub down the baseballs used in the major leagues).
