Finley Ball: How Two Baseball Outsiders Turned the Oakland A's into a Dynasty and Changed the Game Forever

by Nancy Finley

  Billy had infused the team with his scrappy, never-say-die spirit, but now the poor student from West Berkeley was getting credit for something new—outsmarting people. That’s exactly what he and his A’s were doing. They were outwitting opponents as much as defeating them on the field, and they started getting inside their heads. Wiley went on to quote a Cleveland Indians scout who said, “Martin maneuvers his players and is always looking ahead. Give him nine guys and he’ll fight you to the finish even if the talent is mediocre.” The undertalented scrapper, the bar brawler, had become baseball’s master tactician.

  Even when stars like Henderson and the starting pitchers faltered, Martin was squeezing every ounce of limited talent out of players like Mickey Klutts and Shooty Babbit. The motley, uneven roster inspired Wiley to write, “Martin’s commando style has produced 13 double steals, one triple steal, seven steals of a home in 13 attempts and 13 suicide squeezes in 19 tries.”

  Wiley coined a phrase that would become part of baseball lore: “The A’s are a kind of exhilaration not because of a man, but because of an attitude. Billy Ball. If it were a fever, the A’s would be an epidemic. There’s another name for it. Confidence.”

  The A’s incredible turnaround made a great story, and Martin’s boys electrified Bay Area sports fans. Even the East Coast media started to take notice, with New York’s beat writers fascinated to see how their prodigal son was faring on the Left Coast.

  As Billy Ball became a national sensation, Charles O. Finley’s calculated risk to hire Martin was beginning to look like yet another brilliant move. “I thought to myself, ‘By God, the old S.O.B. has done it again,’” said Ron Bergman, the former Oakland Tribune beat writer. Like most baseball insiders, Bergman knew that the mad genius had hired Billy to microwave the franchise—make it instantly hot so that buyers would not only want the team but be willing to raise their offer.

  The summer of 1980 unfolded exactly the way that Charlie had envisioned. Bergman was right: the old S.O.B. really had pulled off one last trick.

  Well, maybe not the last.

  CHAPTER 36

  CHARLIE FIRES AND CARL REHIRES

  1979–1980

  Nothing revealed how much Billy Martin’s A’s had captured the Bay Area’s imagination more than the attendance figures. The A’s were baseball’s worst team in 1979, going 54–108. But they were even worse in the box office, selling an unthinkably paltry 306,763 tickets.

  The next year—Billy’s first as A’s manager—Oakland went 83–79 and drew 842,259 fans, an increase of more than half a million. Midway through the 1980 campaign, the attendance boost was right in line with the improved record, and Charlie wanted to thank his new skipper for both successes. He held a “Billy Martin Day” at the Coliseum in August.

  Charlie wanted it to be first-class all the way, so he invited Billy’s old friends and teammates, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Joe DiMaggio to his box seats. Each was a Yankee legend and, except for DiMaggio, an old drinking buddy of Billy’s.

  JOB SECURITY

  When twenty-three-year-old Ted Robinson applied for a job on the A’s staff, Charlie sent him to the Oakland front office and told him to report to Carl Finley, who ran the show out there. This wasn’t going to be Robinson’s dream job, but he came away with fond memories, especially of Dad. Robinson was going to be in charge of getting Billy Martin and his friends onto the field in time for the pre-game ceremony.

  One afternoon at the Coliseum, Robinson recalls, Charlie hosted the American League president, Lee MacPhail, in the owner’s box, in the loge section between the second and third decks. Charlie repeatedly called Robinson up to the box, making special requests for food and drinks that the franchise back then simply didn’t have handy. When Robinson failed to produce the desired refreshments, the team owner exploded and fired Robinson on the spot, in front of MacPhail. A crestfallen Robinson trudged back to the front office. What was he going to tell his parents? Or his girlfriend? First things first, he went to say goodbye to Carl.

  “What do you mean, you have to go?” Carl asked. “I’ve been fired,” Robinson said. “Charlie fired me.” “Well, you’re re-hired,” Carl said with a reassuring smile and a pat on the back. “Don’t worry, Charlie will forget this ever happened. You still have a job, Ted.” And with that, Robinson went back to work. Nearly thirty-five years later, Robinson remembers being “fired” by Charlie more than once that summer, and each time Dad hired him back. “I loved Carl,” Robinson recalls. “He always had my back and the backs of so many people who worked there.”

  Today, Robinson is the radio play-by-play announcer for the San Francisco 49ers and a sportscaster for NBC. His career in sports started with the Finley boys in Oakland. To this day, Robinson wonders what would have happened to him if not for Carl Finley’s gentle leadership as his first boss. “I might not be where I am today if Carl hadn’t stuck up for me all those times when Charlie fired me,” he says.

  OPTIMISM

  The 1980 season ended for Billy Martin as the first “Rocky” movie did—with a bittersweet defeat but also with the pride and satisfaction of an underdog who has won respect. True to form, Martin’s players fought and scrapped to the bitter end, long after the Kansas City Royals had eliminated them.

  But for the A’s, second place never looked so brilliant. After three years of being a laughingstock, the Green and Gold had again become a contender, a team always respected and sometimes feared. Martin, the short-tempered miracle worker, had been just as advertised, squeezing every last ounce of talent out of this team. He had even kept his famous blow-ups where they belonged—on the diamond. His on-field beefs with umpires enthralled the East Bay’s underdog-loving fans, who roared from the grandstands whenever Billy went nose-to-nose with an umpire. His tantrums often got him ejected, but not before tossing his hat, kicking dirt on the plate or the umpire’s shoes, and carrying on in the grand tradition of the national pastime.

  Off the field in Oakland, Billy (as usual) was no saint, but as summer turned to autumn and then to a typically gray, rainy Bay Area winter, Billy and Oakland fans could enjoy something they hadn’t had for a while—optimism. For Charlie, though, the ’80 season would have nothing to do with his future with the A’s. He was preparing to say good-bye.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE LAST FINLEY BASEBALL

  1980

  At a mid-summer game, I was in our box seats with Charlie. In the next box over, separated from us by a thick glass partition, were some of the Haas family, who were preparing to make a bid for the franchise. Charlie leaned toward me and, with his trademark rascal smile, whispered, “It’s them against us.” He said it in a playful way, just to see my reaction. Just then Dad popped in, and that moment was over.

  “THEY CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME”

  The phone rang in Dad’s apartment at 5 a.m. Already up and in his suit and tie, watching the steam rise from his coffee, he looked at the phone for a few rings and finally picked up. “Is this the current owner of the Oakland A’s or the former one?” he said, forcing back a laugh.

  “Arnold Johnson’s been dead for twenty years, so . . . ,” Charlie replied.

  “Well then, Mr. Johnson, you’ve got the wrong number.”

  They both laughed a little.

  “As of this morning, I’m still Charles Owner Finley. But as of tonight, that might be a different story.”

  “You know, I’ll believe that when I see it,” Dad replied. “You still love it too much.” Charlie had no witty retort for that. The silence made dad uncomfortable. “Don’t you?”

  Charlie let out a big sigh before answering. “Well, I’ve got eleven million reasons to stop loving it.”

  “Not a bad deal,” Dad said, remembering the sale would be for eleven million dollars. “Not bad, considering you had four million reasons to start. Not bad at all.” Dad squinted. There was little life on the other end of the phone. “Um, Charlie—”

  “Hey,” Charlie interrupted, “I’m
still gonna call you at five a.m., you old sonuvabitch.”

  There it is, Dad thought. Then, “And for some goddamm reason, I’ll still answer,” he replied.

  “And they say I’m the crazy one,” Charlie said, laughing. The laughter gave way to another lull, an especially long one.

  “It was one helluva ride, wasn’t it, pardner?”

  “Three consecutive World Series titles. . . .”

  “Couldn’ta done it without ya, Carl.”

  “Five consecutive division titles. . . .”

  “The only non-Yankees dynasty in just about . . . forever!”

  Another long pause and another big sigh.

  “And,” Charlie started to sing in a bad Sinatra impression, “They can’t take that awaaaaaay from me!”

  “You be good, Carl,” he added. “But try to be bad a little more often, will ya?”

  And with that, before Dad could reply, Charlie hung up.

  CHARLIE SELLS THE FRANCHISE

  By 1980 Dad was actively seeking potential buyers of the franchise. Working his many contacts, he finally attracted interest from Walter Haas Jr., the CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. and a scion of one of San Francisco’s wealthiest families. The sale went through in August, just as Billy Martin was dragging the A’s back to respectability.

  For Charlie, it was farewell to a dream. Despite all of the things he accomplished in life—self-made millionaire insurance man and father of seven, among other things—he would be known forever as the owner of the World Series–winning Oakland A’s. He loved attention, even more than money or winning championships. And as intelligent as he was, he had to have known that the thing that brought him the most notoriety, being an MLB team owner, was going away.

  Charles O. Finley was gone. But the pieces of his successful team were still there. Young star players like Rickey Henderson, Dwayne Murphy, and Mike Norris were making A’s fans roar again at the Coliseum. And Charlie’s manager, Billy Martin—that combustible baseball genius—was leading the improbable Green and Gold show to victories.

  There was just one more notable holdover: Carl Finley, who had been there the longest. Haas and his family were successful business leaders, but they had never run a baseball franchise. They were smart enough to realize they might need to lean on someone like Dad, who had run the day-to-day franchise operations for nearly two decades. Dad was happy to oblige. In August 1980, it was a new A’s era, with new owners, in a new decade. Dad wondered how strange it might feel being the only remaining Finley in baseball.

  Andy Dolich remembers Carl Finley as “the master of having fourteen jobs” as he ran the A’s front office, “each of which he did in spectacular fashion.” Dolich became the A’s director of marketing after Haas and his family took over. He was immediately impressed with Carl because “he never told you how busy he was like so many people do today,” says Dolich, now a Bay Area sports business consultant.

  Dolich was less impressed with the physical state of the A’s front office in 1980, when he first saw it a few days after the sale was official. Dolich parked in the Oakland Coliseum parking lot, walked up the slight concrete hill, and entered the A’s offices. The first thing he noticed was that nobody was there. Where a receptionist might sit, there was a steel cage desk—right out of an old film noir movie. A phone said “Dial 0 for assistance.” Dolich dialed but there was no answer. He looked around the empty room and tested the knob of a sliding door. It was unlocked and opened into the switchboard room. “It was the kind of switchboard you’d see in Mayberry RFD,” he said.

  Dolich went to the next office, and nobody was there, either. This was getting eerie. Was he in the right Oakland Coliseum? He walked deeper into the suite and finally found signs of life. Wally Haas (the owner’s son) and Roy Eisenhardt (Wally’s brother-in-law) were sitting there. That was his first introduction to the A’s front office.

  Later in the day, he met Carl Finley and discovered how thinly staffed the front office was and how much weight fell on Carl’s shoulders. “When I looked around, I was impressed with what was happening, not what wasn’t happening,” he recalls.

  Carl wrote the daily game reports, communicated with Major League Baseball leaders, communicated with the A’s baseball personnel, and dealt with employees on the business side, which included the “bat boy” M. C. Hammer.

  “Who’s taking care of the food? Who’s leaving the comp tickets at Will Call? Where’s the mechanical rabbit getting oiled up? Where’s Charlie O the Mule sleeping? Carl took care of all of that,” Dolich said.

  After a few days in the Coliseum offices, Dolich noticed that there was a telephone in the front office’s men’s bathroom. This was at least twenty-five years before cell phones became omnipresent. He asked Carl, who shrugged with a smile, saying that if Charlie needed to talk or wanted updates on the ballgame that day, Carl could speak uninterruptedly.

  “You could hear Charlie coming before you saw him,” Dolich said. “That’s when I realized the extent to which Carl could really compartmentalize his ego, his needs. Carl was never about himself. He understood that Charlie was always about Charlie. It takes a deft touch to navigate that, which Carl did.”

  “Carl had this beatific grin, like Pope Francis has, that seemed to say, ’I’m good, I know what’s happening. I don’t have to open my mouth to let you know what’s happening.’”

  BACK ON THE FARM

  The 1981 A’s became one of the great Cinderella stories in franchise history. But Charlie, the team’s once and forever architect, was back on his Indiana farm and wouldn’t even be there to see the renaissance of Oakland baseball.

  CHAPTER 38

  THE LAST FINLEY TEAM

  1981

  Although we no longer owned the franchise, we considered the 1981 Oakland A’s our last team. That team had the greatest start to a season in the history of baseball and finished first in the American League West. It almost didn’t matter that the season was interrupted by a players’ strike.

  It was the Haas family’s first full season as the owners. More importantly, it was Billy Martin’s second season as manager, and the fame of “Billy Ball” was about to peak. The A’s were the talk of baseball.

  Something was different off the field, too. Led by its marketing guru Andy Dolich, the front office was trying things that no other pro sports team had tried. Dolich promoted the “Billy Ball” brand that Martin embodied, mixing witty TV ads with relentless outreach to Bay Area households. As the team won and won, old A’s fans—and plenty of new ones—came out in droves to the Coliseum.

  As excited as everyone was to be back in the playoffs after a six-year drought, I can’t say that I had fun. I was a kid during the World Series glory years, but in 1981 I was twenty-three. I had expectations and had developed a competitive streak. As the A’s trailed 4–0 in Game Three of the American League Championship Series at the Oakland Coliseum, I was overcome with a frustration that I had never felt before when watching baseball. After two consecutive seasons in which the A’s reached the playoffs, I sat there during the game second-guessing nearly all of Martin’s moves, seething in anger that none of them, for once, was paying off. You could say that I was watching the game like any other die-hard A’s fan, but that doesn’t really capture it. I know what it’s like to have the whole world hang on every swing of a bat, foul ball, base hit, line drive. It’s the best and the most stressful feeling ever. Every base hit by the other team made me want to throw up. But every hit by our side didn’t really make that feeling go away. In fact, I was watching the game as Charlie did, reacting to each pitch with all the childlike emotion that he used to.

  When New York closer Goose Gossage got the last out and the Yankees celebrated on the Coliseum turf, I joined forty-seven thousand other A’s fans in sorrow that night. None of us knew it at the time, but a major chapter in the franchise’s history had just come to a close.

  The fact is, the 1981 team was largely Charlie’s roster—talent he and Dad had scouted and s
igned up in previous years. He had been, in fact, rebuilding the team, using his unique and successful intuitive methods. In 1980 Charlie and Dad had left Oakland and the new owners the foundation of a great team. What they did with it was, for the first time in twenty years, out of our hands.

  The 1982 season was not as impressive, with a fifth-place finish, perhaps because Billy was seen selecting the lineup for some games by pulling names from a hat. Was that a sign of burnout?

  FRONT OFFICE FINISH-OUT

  All the years that we were in the Coliseum we had depressing, cold, unfinished cinderblock walls in our front offices. The Coliseum board never got around to fulfilling the promise it first made back in 1968 to finish out the offices. Charlie, as stubborn as his namesake mule, refused to put his own money into the stadium—he had learned his lesson in Kansas City—and the cinderblock walls remained unfinished. The new owners, however, had less tolerance for such Spartan surroundings. They reluctantly put up the money to finish the walls and floors and replace the overhead florescent lights. When they were done it was a lovely place.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE LAST PHONE CALL

  1982

  Many fans have asked me over the years whatever happened to Harvey the mechanical rabbit. Harvey had been installed in Kansas City in a shaft just behind the home plate umpire and would pop up with a big grin and a fresh baseball after a foul ball or homer. The grinning rabbit with the glowing red eyes followed the team to Oakland, where he continued to entertain fans, but after a few years he malfunctioned. Harvey could get only halfway up his home plate rabbit hole, and Dad never got around to having it repaired.