Finley Ball (12 page)

CHAPTER 22

THE A'S RETURN

1973

I
f Charlie Finley wasn't a hero in Oakland before the 1972 season, he certainly was after the World Series victory. The championship made people more enthusiastic about Charlie, and it made bearing the Finley name a happier experience for me—for a while, anyway. Some of my schoolmates began asking me what I was doing in an Oakland public school. I didn't know how to respond. Dad, after all, had been a public high school principal, so it never occurred to me to look down on public schools or the kids attending them. When I told Dad what my classmates were saying, he gave me a typically abbreviated response. “Good,” he said with a tight smile. He was pleased that people were perplexed and perhaps unconvinced of my relation to Charlie Finley. He was kind of hiding me “in plain sight.”

TICKETS

One day I stopped by the Coliseum to say hi to Dad. Charlie was there, and he made me an offer I was too excited about to refuse. I had
a new job! With the A's! At the Coliseum! Even Dad didn't try to stop this one. As the A's marched toward another American League Western Division title, I was to help Dad administer playoff ticket sales.

Charlie was growing increasingly mistrustful of anyone but family, and he managed to turn ticket sales into a cloak-and-dagger operation. He had always had a suspicious side, of course. One reason Charlie had hired Dad in the first place was that he wanted a family member he trusted to help him run the ball club. But Dad thought something was different now. He had never seen Charlie so mistrustful of outsiders—he didn't even want security guards hired or the team ticket manager (an otherwise natural choice) involved in the operation.

For security reasons, playoff tickets were processed not at the Coliseum office, where there was plenty of room, but at a vacant bank in San Leandro, a working-class town a few miles south of the Coliseum. For half of August and all of September 1973, that empty bank became our home away from home. Dad and I would get up at 4:30, eat breakfast at the café in the Edgewater Inn, stop at the main Oakland post office to pick up the ticket orders—several sacks full—and arrive at our secret work location by seven or eight o'clock.

AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPS

On August 7, baseball took a back seat for the Finleys when Charlie suffered a major heart attack. He spent two weeks in a Chicago hospital then went to recuperate at his LaPorte farm. Meanwhile, the A's went on a tear, leaving their AL West rivals the Kansas City Royals in the dust as they went 21–7 from July 31 to August 31. The A's clinched their third consecutive AL West title after they beat the White Sox in late September, with a still-recovering Charlie in attendance at Comiskey Park.

In the AL Championship series, they faced the Baltimore Orioles, who had their own great stable of arms in Jim Palmer, Mike Cuellar, Dave McNally, and Grant Jackson. Like the Tigers the year before, the Orioles gave the A's all they could handle. Down two games to one, and trailing 4–0 in Game Four, the Orioles staged an incredible comeback.
They won 5–4 and forced a Game Five in Oakland. Baltimore seemed to have all the momentum after shocking the A's the night before. That is, until Catfish Hunter hurled Game Five's first pitch on the evening of October 11. From that point on, it was all A's. Oakland scratched out three runs, including RBIs by Vic Davalillo and Jesus Alou, two of the three players Charlie had picked up in trades on July 31. The third man picked up that day, Mike Andrews, hardly played in the series, going 0–1 with a sacrifice. No matter. Hunter did the rest by tossing a complete game shutout. The A's were back in the World Series. They would face the New York Mets, who had staggered through the '73 season with a .509 winning percentage.

TWO IN A ROW

Game One was in Oakland, and the A's won it 2–1—yet another one-run decision in the World Series. Game Two the following night went twelve innings. In what Curt Gowdy called one of the “longest and weirdest games in World Series history,” a blinding afternoon sun made catching flies an almost superhuman feat. Two twelfth-inning errors by Mike Andrews at second base led to three runs and a 10–7 victory for the Mets. Charlie suspected—with good reason, it turned out—that Andrews's errors were attributable to an undisclosed injury, and he had the infielder placed on the disabled list. That decision provoked one of the biggest controversies of Charlie's baseball career and brought down the wrath of Bowie Kuhn, a story told in full in the next chapter.

Game Three, two nights later in New York, was another nail-biter, going eleven innings. The A's won by one run, 3–2.

Many teams crumble under this kind of pressure. Would the A's? The Mike Andrews fiasco dominated the headlines, and the Mets dominated the A's, taking Games Four and Five at Shea Stadium by a combined score of 8–1. The controversy over Game Two had been relentless during the trip east, and it looked like the A's were letting the series get away from them as they returned to Oakland down three games to two. Coming home should have been the perfect tonic for a club just a loss
away from elimination. Both teams wanted to get back to focusing on baseball. But the press was treating the Coliseum like a crime scene with Andrews cast as the victim and Charlie, of course, the villain.

Catfish Hunter was the A's Game Six starter. No slouch, he had led the A's in victories and winning percentage in the regular season, notching twenty-one wins against five losses with a 3.34 ERA. He came through on Saturday with a 3–1 win. If the A's were going to win another World Series, it would once again be in Game Seven.

In spite of a week of angry headlines, 49,333 Oakland fans packed the sold-out Coliseum on October 21. They got their money's worth. The A's broke the scoreless tie in the bottom of the third, leaning on the October heroics of a couple of guys for whom it was becoming commonplace. Holtzman started the party by hitting a one-out double. Campaneris did the rest by ripping a two-run homer. A few minutes later, Joe Rudi slapped a single and then Jackson swatted one of his trademark big hits—a high, powerful, no-doubt-about-it shot to the right-field alley that he stopped to admire for a second before jogging around the diamond. Smelling blood, the Coliseum crowd shot to its feet, letting out a primal roar. Within minutes, the A's had raced to a 4–0 lead and now were fifteen outs from being MLB's first repeat World Series winner since the 1962 Yankees. Mets runs in the sixth and the ninth were not enough, and the A's held on to win 5–2—World Series champions once more.

The roar of the Oakland Coliseum reverberated around the East Bay. The team did what most teams do when they win a championship—they hugged and jumped around and poured booze on each other's heads. Charlie congratulated Williams and individual players, but gone was the joviality and the ear-to-ear grin he had flashed in '72. There is video footage of Charlie moving through the clubhouse and walking up to Reggie Jackson, who is surrounded by reporters. Charlie congratulates Reggie, who was named World Series MVP, and Jackson somewhat stiffly thanks him in return. Once Charlie walks away, Jackson flashes a sarcastic look at the journalists hovering nearby. It was that kind of “party.”

Unfortunately, there were several reasons for the bad vibes. Bad feelings from the controversy surrounding Andrews lingered, souring the taste of the victory champagne for some players. So did the knowledge that A's skipper Dick Williams was leaving. He had told his squad before Game Six, and they had kept the secret. But now that the season was over, Williams announced that he would not be returning to Oakland the following season.

Some of the players refused to believe it, saying they hoped he'd change his mind. But he didn't. The media, as usual, ran with a story before checking all the facts, splashing it all over the sports pages that he was quitting because of Charlie. But that wasn't true. Although Williams was not a “people person,” Charlie had seen something special in him and gone with his intuition. They had made a good pair. But Williams had given Charlie his notice well before the start of the series, and he gave as his reason that he simply wanted to return to the Boston area, which he considered home.

Most of the fans didn't care about the controversies. They lined Broadway in downtown Oakland several deep for the victory parade, just as they had done the year before. The postseason had been as rocky as it was victorious. With two titles under their belt, Dad and some of the players hoped the constant off-the-field controversy would diminish for the Green and Gold. But even more was in store for 1974.

CHAPTER 23

MIKE ANDREWS'S LAST HURRAH

1973

C
harlie had suffered a heart attack in August 1973. Watching the second game of the World Series a few months later could not have been good for his condition.

At the start of the twelfth inning, the game tied 6–6, Dick Williams sent his newly acquired designated hitter, Mike Andrews, to cover second base. Why he would put a DH in a fielding position is unclear, but it would be a fateful decision. With the Mets up 7–6, two outs, and the bases loaded, John Milner hit a grounder directly at Andrews. I watched the ball zoom toward him . . . and then go between his legs! I screamed. Even though Dad was back in the stadium catacombs somewhere, in my mind I could hear him utter his trademark “Goddammit!”

“I don't believe this!” I said to myself. A major league player letting a ball go between his legs—in a tight World Series game! The Mets' lead grew to 9–6.

The next batter hit a grounder that again bounced toward Andrews. In that moment, I felt like throwing up. But I just knew that he wouldn't
make another error. He fielded the ball and threw firmly to first base. A routine out. But no, the ball was thrown wide, just enough to pull first baseman Gene Tenace off the bag. The runner was safe, and the Mets' Cleon Jones scored from third. The rest of the game is a blur in my memory. The A's scored once in the bottom of the twelfth but couldn't make up for the three runs that Mike Andrews's errors had allowed.

But the drama on the field paled in comparison with what happened after the game. Charlie, already apprehensive about Andrews's ability to play when he was signed, was alarmed by his two errors and insisted on having him examined by the team doctor, Harry Walker, in the Coliseum. Dr. Walker informed Andrews that he had found something wrong with his right shoulder—biceps tenosynovitis—a condition that often follows a previous injury to an arm or shoulder. He was going to recommend that Andrews be put on the disabled list.

Andrews denied that there was anything wrong with his throwing shoulder. But Charlie's instinct told him that his initial impression about Andrews was correct, and Dr. Walker's report seemed to confirm it. Charlie had Andrews sign Dr. Walker's report, acknowledging his injury, and put him on the disabled list. He reminded Andrew of the time the team bus was departing for the airport in the morning, assuming he would be on the plane to New York with the rest of the team. To Charlie's surprsie, Andrews said he didn't feel like traveling with the team and wanted to go home to Boston. Charlie, trying to be nice, agreed.

Dad considered Andrews's decision a confidential personnel matter, so nothing was said to his teammates. They noticed that Andrews was not on the plane the next day, however, and assumed that Charlie had kicked him off the team. Angry and resentful, the players, led by Reggie Jackson, decided to protest Andrews's supposed ouster by wearing black arm bands.

Two days later Andrews held a press conference and issued a statement accusing Charlie of forcing him to sign a false medical diagnosis in order to put him on the disabled list and make room on the roster for Manny Trillo, a younger fielder, for the remaining games in the series.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn responded by ordering Andrews back on the roster and fining Charlie. Suddenly Charlie, Andrews, and the whole franchise were embroiled in what the sports writer Bruce Markusen would call “one of the most infamous World Series controversies of all time.”
¹
Charlie lost the public relations war almost immediately, and to this day he is the official villain in the received narrative of the Andrews affair. Donald Moore's version of the story is typical:

Little did Andrews know, Finley was going to use him as a scapegoat for the loss, and try to force him off the roster by making him sign a false affidavit claiming he had a shoulder injury. That way, Finley could add the infielder he wanted on the roster in the first place, Manny Trillo.
²

When Andrews reappeared in Game Four, the Shea Stadium crowd gave him a standing ovation. He grounded out and never played in a Major League game again. Dick Williams was supposedly so disgusted by Charlie's treatment of Andrews and so fed up with his interference that he told his players he was quitting at the end of the World Series.

This retail version is a folk tale largely invented by the press with the encouragement of Kuhn and the perhaps unwitting complicity of Mike Andrews. The media went along with it because the outrageous behavior of a demon owner made a better story than a team led by an insurance salesman and a high school principal winning its second straight World Series.

A FINE CAREER WINDING DOWN

Mike Andrews, always popular with the fans, had had a stellar career with several teams. He began the 1973 season with the White Sox, but his bat had grown cold and his production was fading fast. Just three years after knocking seventeen homers and sixty-five RBIs, Andrews had no homers, ten RBIs, and an anemic .200 average. On July 16 the White Sox released him. Andrews went knocking on doors to see if another
team might sign him. Several other teams expressed interest but never offered a contract because of “roster problems.” When he finally talked to the A's, Charlie was suspicious that there might be something wrong with him.

He had seen Andrews make a throwing error on television earlier in the season when he was with the White Sox, so he asked Andrews about it. Andrews assured him there was nothing wrong with him. Still, Charlie was not entirely convinced, and he didn't invite Andrews to sign. Instead, he urged him to follow up with the other teams with whom he had been in touch, and if nothing came of it, to get back to him. I think Charlie was hoping Andrews would just go away.

Having been turned down by several teams and out of options, Andrews eventually called Charlie. Caving in to Dick Williams's urging, and against his better judgment, Charlie did him a favor and signed him as a designated hitter. Andrews would have a last chance to be part of a winning World Series team. Dad, like Charlie, had his doubts. I overheard him talking to Charlie over the phone:

“Well, he wouldn't be my first choice, Charlie, but it's up to you.”

“And you don't have anyone else for that spot? No one we can call up?”

“I know, it is getting late to go looking. It's your call.”

Charlie's qualms were no secret. Andrews later admitted that Charlie told him, “[P]ersonally, I think you're all washed up, but my manager wants you.”
³

THE UNSEEN DRAMA

After Game Two I was wandering the halls inside the administrative quarters. I saw Andrews go into Dr. Walker's office. Then I noticed Andrews, Walker, Dad, and several other front-office people coming and going from Charlie's office, and I heard voices rising and falling.

I didn't think anything about it at the time. I didn't sense that something unusual had happened until about half an hour later. I had gone down to the after-game party, usually a feast. Ordinarily, Dad and
Charlie would come down about fifteen minutes after the game ended to join us for something to eat. But that night, after half an hour had passed, it seemed odd that neither Dad nor Charlie had showed up. Win or lose, Dad almost always came down for the food. Others in the room started asking me what was holding them up. I ran upstairs and saw people still talking in Charlie's office and returned to the party to report the holdup. Finally Dad showed up. He didn't eat anything but said to me bluntly, “Come on. I need to take you home now.” We drove straight home, and Dad didn't say anything on the way.

A couple of days later it “hit the fan,” or as they say in baseball, a
brouhaha
erupted. Andrews held his press conference, maintaining that Dr. Walker, at Charlie's insistence, had produced a false medical report indicating that Andrews had a disabling condition. He hadn't wanted to sign it, he said, but Charlie had pressured him.

I heard Dad talking to Charlie after Andrews's statement, and he did something unusual—he referred to Andrews as “that son of a bitch.” For several decades that's all I knew about the episode. I read the same version of the story as everyone else in books and magazine articles. I assumed that Charlie had made a big mistake.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

Years later, Dad told me what Charlie had told him in that phone call. Andrews tried to trade his signature on the injury report for a contract to play with the A's in the 1974 season. Charlie, by now painfully aware that Andrews was damaged goods, refused. According to Dad, Andrews finally gave in and signed a report that, in Dad's opinion, was a correct diagnosis, and he chose not to seek a second medical opinion. The Andrews controversy thus appeared to be a case of his word against Dad's, and I believed my father. That's where things stood when Dad died in 2002 at the age of seventy-six.

As his health declined, my father gave up his apartment and moved boxes of A's memorabilia and records to my house. I pulled some collector's items from the stash for safekeeping, but for years the stacks of
papers and documents sat undisturbed. Eventually, my curiosity moved me to start going through the documents, though I wasn't looking for anything in particular. One day I came across a stack of legal documents that, upon examination, shed new light on the biggest controversy of Charlie Finley's controversial career as owner of the A's.

ANDREWS UNDER OATH

The documents I had found were transcripts of three depositions—statements given under oath in connection with a lawsuit—taken of Mike Andrews. The first deposition, dated February 13, 1976, was given in the case of
Michael Andrews v. Charles O. Finley, et al
. The second, dated June 7, 1976, and the third, dated June 9, 1976, were in connection with a medical board case against Dr. Walker.

The transcripts were full of surprises, and I soon realized that Andrews's testimony gave a very different picture of his dispute with Charlie from the one I'd gotten from the press. To begin with, Andrews disclosed a long history of baseball injuries: a broken ankle in 1963, a hand injury in 1969, an injury to his right shoulder in 1971 (he threw right-handed), and a broken wrist in 1971. The injury to his right shoulder, he said, “only bothered me as far as throwing the ball went, or being active in baseball. . . . It was just bothering, as I found out, as I would throw.” He sought medical attention for that injury, including cortisone injections.

In his examination of Andrews following the second game of the '73 World Series, Dr. Walker expressed concern about “chronic shoulder disability” and told Andrews that he had found something wrong with his shoulder. Such injuries are common enough among professional baseball players, but there is plenty of evidence that Andrews was injury-prone. The sports writer Saul Wisnia notes that when Andrews broke his wrist on September 1, 1971, it was “the fifth time
that year
he had been knocked from a game by injury” (emphasis added).
⁴

Several times in the course of the depositions Andrews acknowledged his poor throwing and “erratic arm.” He disclosed that in 1972, when he was with the Chicago White Sox, the coaches felt there was something wrong with his throwing and attempted to correct the mechanics of his throwing from second. “[I] never had what you would call an automatic arm, but I managed to get by,” he said. He confessed that his performance with the White Sox in 1973 was not good and that in July of that year the team wanted to cut his salary by 20 percent.

In an interview two decades later, Andrews compared his throwing problems to those of several other MLB players, including Chuck Knoblauch and Steve Blass. “They called it ‘throwing yips,'” he said. “Nobody knows why it happens but on balls hit right to me where I had a second or two to think about it, I just couldn't make the throw.” He referred to that problem in the June 7, 1973, deposition. Asked if he had any type of mental block in connection with releasing the ball, he responded, “Yes. Somewhat.” Asked when he thought this difficulty arose, Andrews explained that during the 1973 season he had not played much and was used primarily as a designated hitter.

Q. So you are saying 1973 this difficulty, mental block more or less came about?

A. Yes, I would say it was more substantial in 1973, than it was in 1972.

Andrews testified that he referred to his mental block in a press interview in early 1973 (about one month before he signed with the A's). He had told the reporter, “I am honestly starting to think I have a mental block about throwing. And I have got to do something about it soon.” Andrews then made an interesting admission. Referring to his 1971 shoulder injury, he said, “I think as time went on when I was with the White Sox, once a person hurts their arm they become very much aware of not hurting it again. . . .”

The contract that Andrews signed with the A's on August 1, 1973, stated: “The player represents that he has no physical or mental defects known to him and unknown to the appropriate representative of the club which would prevent or impair performance of his services.” Yet he admitted in his depositions that he never disclosed to anyone in the A's organization the “mental block” that had become so distressing or the injury to his right shoulder. When a skeptical Charlie Finley had asked Andrews about his condition, the player had replied, “I was perfectly a hundred percent all right.” Elsewhere in the deposition he stated, “I told him I was fine and I was ready to play.”

In light of this history, Andrews's testimony that he strenuously objected to being examined after Game Two is hardly surprising.

Q. Were you agitated or upset by the fact of the examination at that time?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you express this to Dr. Walker?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. What did you tell him?

A. I told him that I didn't want to be examined; there was no reason for me to be examined.