<Archive Obituary> Charles O. Finlay (February 19th 1996)
Bill Schenley
Traditions, Dies at 77
FROM: The New York Times (February 20th 1996) ~
By Leonard Koppett
Charles O. Finley, the contentious and colorful former owner of the
Oakland A's who challenged baseball tradition by championing changes
like bright-colored uniforms and the designated hitter, died yesterday
at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. He was 77.
Finley, who lived on a farm in LaPorte, Ind., died of heart and
vascular disease, from which he had been suffering for years, said a
hospital spokeswoman, Lauri Sanders.
From the time he bought the Athletics in 1960, when they were situated
in Kansas City, Mo., to the time he sold them as a declining franchise
in Oakland, Calif., after the 1980 season, Finley not only fought with
everyone from commissioner to groundskeeper, but also constantly
pressed for innovations in a sport that had hardly changed in a
half-century.
He dabbled in other sports briefly, purchasing the Oakland Golden
Seals
of the National Hockey League in 1970 and the Memphis Pros (later the
Tams) of the American Basketball Association in 1972. But it was in
baseball that he bucked tradition.
Some of his ideas were considered silly, such as an orange-colored
baseball. But others, like the designated hitter and night games in
the
World Series, became fixtures.
After seven woeful years in Kansas City, Finley moved the franchise to
Oakland for the 1968 season and built the dominant team in the early
1970's, a thickly mustached and heavily sideburned squad that won
three
straight World Series from 1972-74, in spite of bickering among the
owner, players and managers.
Three members of those teams -- Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and
Rollie Fingers -- were signed by Finley and are in the Baseball Hall
of
Fame. But all three, as well as many teammates, were lost by Finley
after the era of free agency dawned in the mid-70's.
Recalling those championship seasons yesterday, Hunter, now a spring
training instructor for the Yankees, said in a statement that Finley
"was the type of owner who knew a lot about baseball and knew how to
get great players and win; he was 10 to 20 years ahead of his time."
Jackson, now part of the Yankees' special advisory group, said that
Finley "was a tough guy," who had taught him "a lot about demanding
excellence, and that helped mold my career."
Charles Oscar Finley was born on Feb. 22, 1918, in Ensley, Ala., near
Birmingham. His father and grandfather were steelworkers. At 13, he
worked as a bat boy for the Birmingham minor league team. At 18, he
worked in the steel mills in Gary, Ind.
He studied engineering in college at night and played considerable
semipro baseball. In 1941, he married Shirley McCartney. They had
seven
children and eventually divorced. During World War II, he was rejected
for military service because of an ulcer, went to work in an ordnance
plant and started selling insurance. When the war ended, he turned to
insurance full time.
But late in 1946, at the age of 28, he developed tuberculosis and
spent
the next 18 months in a sanitarium at Crown Point, Ind. By the time he
recovered, he had devised a blueprint for a group insurance plan for
doctors. By 1954, he had his own company, several million dollars and
an intense desire to buy a major league baseball team.
But he did not get one until March 1960, when he bought the Kansas
City
Athletics, the old Connie Mack franchise that had moved from
Philadelphia after the 1954 season.
His eight years in Kansas City were stormy. His promotional ideas were
ingenious: the colorful green and gold uniforms, the sheep grazing on
the grassy slope behind the right-field fence, the mechanical rabbit
that popped up behind home plate with a supply of new baseballs for
the
umpire and the team mascot, a mule named Charlie O.
As he established his one-man regime, his middle initial came to stand
for "owner." Every detail had to be cleared through him. He changed
managers and general managers with bewildering speed, got into
lawsuits
with former employees, antagonized the baseball establishment.
But attendance remained low for a team that never had a winning
season,
and after continual threats to move, Finley packed up for Oakland.
While he made money there, the attendance was never much higher than
in
Kansas City. Bitter salary struggles, especially with Jackson and Vida
Blue, helped solidify the image of conflict that surrounded a team so
unorthodox that it even employed a track sprinter, Herb Washington, as
a designated runner for the 1974 season.
Finley found a manager, Dick Williams, who finally brought his
developing stars to first place (1971) and two World Series triumphs
(1972 and 1973). But when Williams quit, and tried to move to the
Yankees, Finley stopped him with legal action, then allowed him to
become manager of the California Angels a few months later.
Williams, now an adviser to the Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, said
by telephone from Tampa, Fla., yesterday: "At the time, there was
friction and all that. But you forget about that. I'll remember all
the
innovations and that if a player got injured and I needed one, the
next
day I'd have two or three to choose from. He wanted to win."
In 1974, the A's won their third straight World Series, this time
under
Manager Alvin Dark, whom Finley had fired before. But in the course of
that season, Finley failed to carry out the exact terms of his
contract
with Hunter, who had become baseball's best pitcher, and an arbitrator
made Hunter a free agent. Hunter signed a five-year deal with the
Yankees, and Finley embarked on another long lawsuit.
The fortunes of Finley began to dip in 1975 when the A's won the
American League Western Division crown again, but were beaten in three
straight games by Boston in the playoffs. Shortly after, Finley fired
Dark as manager.
But his real problems arose with the decision of a Federal judge to
uphold an arbitration ruling of Peter Seitz that opened the door for
free agency in baseball.
Realizing that he might lose all of his unsigned stars at the end of
the 1976 season, he traded Jackson and Ken Holtzman to Baltimore, then
sold Blue to the Yankees and Joe Rudi and Fingers to the Red Sox.
But four days later, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the sales and
ordered the players back to the A's, saying, "The deals were
inconsistent with the best interests of baseball." Finley, enraged,
called the commissioner "the village idiot" and filed a damage suit,
challenging whether the commissioner had the power to cancel a sale of
players. He lost the case in court.
"I think Charlie will be remembered probably as a maverick," Kuhn told
The Associated Press yesterday. "Charlie was Charlie. He didn't like
people telling him what to do. He liked to do his thing, his own way."
Besides the court case, Finley lost most of his championship team and
the A's limped along for most of the 1977 season. By 1979, when the
Athletics finished 54-108, attendance was down to 306,763. After two
attempts to move the franchise to Denver fell through, Finley sold the
team to the Haas family for $12.7 million and dropped from the
baseball
scene.
Some of his innovations, however, had taken hold. Many teams wore
bright uniforms. World Series games were played at night, starting in
1971. And since 1974, the American League has used a designated hitter
instead of letting the pitcher bat.
---
Time Magazine (August 18th 1975) cover:
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101750818,00.html
---
Finley entertained and enraged
FROM: ESPN Classic ~
By Nick Acocella
http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Finley_Charles.html
"His middle name was Oscar, but he said it's Charles O., for owner,
Finley," says Dick Williams, manager of the World Champion Oakland A's
of 1972 and 1973, on ESPN Classic's SportsCentury series.
Charley Finley was a loud-mouth, a tyrant and a miser. He also was a
master showman and an innovator.
His two-decade tenure as owner of the Kansas City and Oakland
Athletics was one of the most erratic administrations in baseball
history. By the time he stepped aside, it was difficult to say whether
he was disliked more by his players, other owners, the baseball
commissioner, the fans of two cities or U.S. Congressmen.
But for all that, Finley's A's won five straight division titles
(1971-75) and three consecutive World Series (1972-74). Also part of
his legacy are Charley O the mule, orange baseballs, mustachioed
players, the designated hitter and designated runners.
Finley was about the only baseball person other than Marvin Miller who
realized that the advent of free agency could work to the owners'
advantage if they allowed all players to become free agents every
year, thus matching supply with demand.
What was beyond doubt was that the insurance executive had filled his
own pockets, while his enemies lined up to get him. He was described
by a Los Angeles Times columnist as "a self-made man who worshiped his
creator."
Finley was born on Feb. 22, 1918 in Ensley, Ala., outside Birmingham.
When Charley was 15, the poverty-ridden family moved to Gary, Ind.,
where he was active in sports. After graduating high school, Finley
worked in Gary's steel mills for six years.
Then he became a life insurance salesman in 1942. In his spare time,
he was a first baseman-manager for a semipro team. But his playing
days ended after a severe bout with tuberculosis. While hospitalized
with the disease for 2½ years in the late 1940s, he hatched a plan to
sell disability insurance to doctors, an idea that made him a
millionaire before he was 40.
With his newly earned wealth, Finley bid on several franchises in the
1950s. But it wasn't until December 1960 that he finally realized his
ambition when he paid $1.975 million to the widow of Arnold Johnson
for 52 percent of the Kansas City Athletics. Besides being the
principal owner, Finley also became the team's chairman of the board.
To keep fans interested in an awful team, Finley dressed his players
in flamboyant green-and-gold uniforms with white shoes, introduced
Charley O the mule, let a herd of sheep graze beyond the outfield
fences and installed a mechanical rabbit that popped up from the
ground to give balls to the home-plate umpire.
But when Finley wasn't making Kansas City laugh, he was making it
cringe. Soon after extracting a more favorable lease on Municipal
Stadium, he began making suggestions that the franchise needed a
larger market than Kansas City to survive. Throughout the 1960s,
rumors swirled about the club moving to Dallas, Atlanta or Oakland. In
1964, he signed a two-year lease on a Louisville stadium, but the
American League refused his request to relocate by a vote of 9-1.
Finley reacted by signing a new four-year lease on Municipal Stadium,
then suing to reclaim rights to the earlier pact, which contained a
favorable escape clause. With the waters muddied, he announced that
the franchise was for sale and drew offers from Denver and San Diego.
The issue was settled when American League President Joe Cronin
promised Finley he could move within three years. Finley's last years
in Kansas City were marked by a player revolt over what was seen as a
gratuitous fine against pitcher Lew Krausse. Slugger Ken Harrelson
called Finley "a menace to baseball" and was released as one of the
rebellion's ringleaders. Manager Al Dark was fired for not
disassociating himself from the players' uprising. For his actions,
Finley was dragged before the National Labor Relations Board to answer
charges of harassment.
When major league owners approved Finley's request to move his club to
Oakland for the 1968 season, even an 11th-hour negotiation to provide
Kansas City with an expansion team in 1969 didn't prevent a firestorm
of criticism by Missouri politicians. Sen. Stuart Symington called
Finley "one of the most disreputable characters ever to enter the
American sports scene."
The big difference between Finley in Kansas City and Finley in Oakland
was that he had good teams in California. Under him, the A's signed
Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Vida Blue and Bert
Campaneris and they became baseball's dominant team.
It also was the same familiar round of pregame promotions, tensions
with star players, and complaints about how the franchise couldn't
survive where it was located.
His major contribution during this period was sponsoring the
designated hitter, an innovation the American League adopted in 1973.
Finley professed indifference to the often savage bickering among his
players and to their contempt for him, pointing to three straight
world championships as an acceptable trade-off. On the other hand, he
wasn't so indifferent to what he viewed as modest attendance figures
for the best American League team of its time.
After initial hints that he was considering moving again, to either
Toronto or Seattle, he let his trial balloon deflate for a few years.
But then in 1974, with his popularity continuing to drop despite the
A's success on the field, Finley began a series of on-again, off-again
romances with potential buyers from Toronto and Denver.
At the same time, he returned to his old tactics of slashing costs,
firing employees and cutting back on ticket plans and promotions to
help make his case to the league that he needed a bailout. When those
tactics failed, he went on national television during the 1974 World
Series to complain that Oakland couldn't support a major league team.
And it got worse. After the season, Catfish Hunter was declared a free
agent because Finley had neglected to fulfill a contract stipulation
to put aside part of the pitching ace's salary in an annuity. Hunter
signed a lucrative contract with the Yankees.
In 1975, Finley failed in a headlined attempt to get rid of
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. The next year, in the wake of the
Messersmith-McNally decision which paved the way for free agency, he
began gutting his championship team before his stars made good on
threats to walk away.
Finley tried to sell Blue to the Yankees and Fingers and Joe Rudi to
the Red Sox for a combined $3.5 million, claiming he needed the money
to sign free agents and rebuild. Kuhn disagreed, voiding the sales by
saying they weren't "in the best interests of baseball."
A furious Finley branded Kuhn "the village idiot" and sued to have the
deals go through. Finley lost this battle.
By 1977 some A's players were calling for the league to take over the
franchise. Attendance dipped below the half-million mark, leading
locals to refer to the Oakland Coliseum as the mausoleum.
Finley, however, kept making money, mostly by selling players,
although the best of his talent - Rudi, Campaneris, Bando, Fingers,
Don Baylor and Gene Tenace - escaped via free agency. If this
embarrassed Kuhn and other owners, there was little they could do
about it.
Meanwhile, Oakland authorities wouldn't let the club out of its
commitment to the stadium so it could take advantage of what appeared
to be done deals with Denver and then New Orleans. At one point, even
San Francisco Giants owner Bob Lurie agreed to contribute cash and
some home games in the Coliseum if it meant getting rid of the A's.
Finally, on Aug. 23, 1980, in ill health and unable to continue
battling on so many fronts, Finley sold the franchise for $12.7
million to the Haas family, owners of Levi-Strauss.
In his post-baseball years, Finley suffered several business setbacks
and lost much of his fortune. He died on Feb. 19, 1996, three days
before his 78th birthday, of heart and vascular disease.