Finley Ball (14 page)

Charlie was on top of the baseball world again and, this time he had made history. He had started in 1960 as an outsider, leading the running punchline that was the Kansas City Athletics. Less than fourteen years later, he had beaten the insider's insider, the Dodgers' owner, Walter O'Malley, and reached the rarest of rarified air—three consecutive World Series titles.

CHAPTER 26

CATFISH, THE MILLION-DOLLAR MAN

1975

T
he victory champagne from the 1974 World Series had hardly dried on the Coliseum clubhouse floor before Marvin Miller, the head of the MLB Players' Association, persuaded Catfish Hunter to let him file a grievance on his behalf. The complaint was that Charlie, by failing to make an annuity payment of fifty thousand dollars to an insurance company of the pitcher's choosing, had broken his contract with Catfish. Miller and the players' union attorney, Dick Moss, saw this as an open-and-shut case. The contract provided that once Catfish notified Charlie of the breach, the A's had ten days to mend it by making the annuity payment. The ten days had passed with no response from the A's, so the grievance went to an experienced labor arbitrator, Peter Seitz.

Dad told me this wasn't the only time Charlie had been late with a payment. The A's spectacular success, Dad believed, subjected them to higher scrutiny. And Charlie was an insurance man! Dad was a stickler for deadlines—he always called me on January 2 to say he had already finished his tax return—and he tried to caution Charlie about his cavalier attitude.

This was uncharted territory for Major League Baseball. If Seitz ruled against Charlie and the A's, he could penalize them in a number of ways, including making Catfish a free agent. Miller and the players had been seeking free agency for a long time, but the owners had always blocked them. By 1974, the players had grown to hate the Reserve Clause, which they saw as a kind of forced servitude. The former Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood had tried to kill the Reserve Clause in 1970 with a lawsuit attacking the anti-trust exemption that MLB owners had always enjoyed. He got as far as the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1972.

Miller saw the dispute between Charlie and Catfish as an opportunity to make free agency a reality. On December 16, Seitz ruled in favor of Catfish and against Charlie. It was official: Hunter was a free agent. For better or for worse, it was a new day in baseball. Many years later, Catfish recalled that he was nervous when he learned about the ruling because he was out of a job. He called Charlie and offered to come back to the A's, but Charlie couldn't afford a free agent Catfish Hunter. So Catfish went out onto the open market. After a bidding war, he signed a five-year contract worth $3.75 million with the Yankees.

The turn of events, from the owners' perspectives, was bad all around. At that point, no one knew what effect the ruling would have on free agency for all ball clubs. But it did affect Seitz, who soon also found himself a “free agent.” The owners were so angry over his decision that they fired him as baseball's arbitrator.

Charlie obviously was unhappy too. He had lost his best pitcher, a Cy Young Award winner, and one of his favorite ball players. Oddly enough, no owner had understood the nuances and potential danger of free agency better than Charlie. In fact, he had counseled the other owners that they should make
all
the players free agents because the saturated market would keep the salaries down. Privately, Miller knew Charlie was right, and he fretted that owners might do just that. The result of the ruling, however, was that there was only one free agent, and just as Charlie predicted, the lack of other free agents had started a bidding war that drove up Catfish's salary.

DARK HUMOR

Baseball people in those days often spent the winter months on the banquet circuit, giving speeches at charity events or dinners promoting ticket sales for the upcoming season. In January 1975, Charlie and the A's skipper, Alvin Dark, appeared at a banquet together. It was just a few months after the A's third consecutive World Series victory, and maybe Dark was feeling cocky. While speaking to the crowd, Dark made a joke about Charlie's losing Catfish to free agency. Not smart. The audience half laughed, half groaned, knowing that it might not go over well with the A's owner in attendance.

When it was Charlie's turn to speak, he offered a tight Mona Lisa smile and said, “Managers are a dime a dozen.” When spring training started in Mesa a few weeks later, Dark was still the A's manager. But for how long?

A MISERABLE YEAR

As the 1975 season began, Charlie's split-up with his first true star player was official and unavoidable. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be his last divorce of the year.

Aunt Shirley said to me once that Charlie could be “real ornery.” That was a nice way to put it. Charlie was always sweet to me, but I knew he had a Scotch-Irish temper. Sometimes he yelled at Shirley. Sometimes he yelled at the kids. I suppose that most dads yell at their kids once in a while, but when Charlie walked into the house, all of his children—my cousins—ran away. That didn't happen in my house when Dad came home. Years later, Charlie told me and a lot of people that he regretted not spending more time with his kids. Whatever finally pushed Aunt Shirley over the edge, she filed for divorce in 1975, and she would never look back.

This may surprise people, but Charlie was genuinely hurt. Though he was not a faithful husband, he wanted to stay married and never would have divorced Shirley. He knew she was a great mother and wife. I do believe that he loved Shirley—though, admittedly, he could have done a better job showing it.

1975 was not a banner year for Charlie Finley. In addition to the divorce, he suffered a heart attack. It was a mild one, but it was a sign that he needed to make some changes. Just a few months earlier, he was on top of the world; a World Series winner again. Now he was in a hospital room, trying to take it easy and make sure he lived to see another baseball season. And, of course, trying to score with his cute nurse.

Divorce, squabbles with Bowie Kuhn, free agency, a heart attack—they all made for a perfect storm of stress for Charlie, and he started relying on Dad more than ever. In February, he had Dad stand in for him in Reggie Jackson's salary mediation proceedings. The team prevailed over Reggie's demand for a salary increase, but Dad told Charlie that he didn't want to act as the team's mediator again, since doing so made his routine work with the players and staff more difficult. The team would need a neutral party for future mediations.

About this time Charlie handed over to Dad one of his most stressful responsibilities: attending the annual MLB owners' meetings. From then on, Dad always attended the meetings as Charlie's representative.

CHAPTER 27

GOING FOR A FOURTH

1975

Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you're swinging
.

—Duke Snider

C
harlie talked about celebrating a fourth consecutive title by creating a World Series ring with a four-leaf-clover design—a leaf for each championship. But first, the A's had to win it again in 1975. Charlie's slogan this time was “Keep it alive in '75!”

Dad asked Alexis Paras, who rode our mascot, Charlie O, at A's home games, to stay with me when he was out of town. I was sixteen, and Alexis was twenty-one or twenty-two. I knew this was glorified babysitting, but I liked the company.

Alexis was a “horse person.” She took me to a rodeo at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, where she seemed to know everyone. We walked around the back, where people were waiting to present a horse or ride a bull. This was Alexis's world—horses and people who rode horses.

I would go to Skyline Stables with her and watch her prepare Charlie O for his presentation. The mule was brushed and his hoofs picked. Then, dressed in his A's blanket, he was loaded into his personal trailer. The owner of the stables, Stan Cosca, drove Charlie O to the Coliseum,
while I rode in a separate car with Alexis. Along the way, drivers honked their greetings at Charlie O, and Mr. Cosca drove along with a huge smile on his face.

Once at the Coliseum we led Charlie O out of his trailer and walked him around, making our way to the corridor where Alexis, mounted and ready, waited for the announcer to introduce the mascot, usually fifteen minutes before the game started. Charlie O ran around the perimeter of the field once or twice, took a bow, allowed a few fans to pet him, then trotted back to his stall.

THE SEXIEST BACHELOR IN THE BAY AREA

Dad brought Marcy Bachman to our box at the Coliseum for the night game on the fourth of July. The author of a daily column in the
Oakland Tribune
called “Frankly Female,” she was conducting a contest for the ten sexiest bachelors in the Bay Area. I suggested to Dad that Charlie ought to be one of the ten. He was in the midst of a messy divorce, and this would likely lift his spirits. Dad passed the suggestion to Marcy, and in due course Charles Oscar Finley was proclaimed one of the ten sexiest bachelors in the Bay Area. (Marcy kindly ignored the fact that he was a resident of Chicago.) As I had expected, he was thrilled, and after that Marcy could do no wrong.

Charlie had always leaned on Dad in running the team and liked to bounce business ideas off him. But now, emotionally bruised from his divorce, Charlie grew even more dependent on Dad. His neediness took on a different appearance. When Charlie brought a girlfriend to Oakland, he always wanted to know our opinions on her: What'd we think? Was she pretty? Was she funny? Did she get his jokes? Could she hold her own?

In 1975, Charlie had been wealthy for two decades and was an accomplished businessman—practically a household name. In spite of all that, he still had a deep insecurity that drove him to succeed. The '75 A's would need that drive if they were going to get that four-leaf clover.

ALL STAR COLORS

The evening of Tuesday, July 15, 1975, Charlie watched the All-Star Game at Milwaukee County Stadium, where his three-time World Series–winning A's were the most represented franchise. The AL roster boasted seven A's ballplayers—about 25 percent of the squad. The A's had five starters: pitcher Vida Blue, right fielder Reggie Jackson, left fielder Joe Rudi, first baseman Gene Tenace, and shortstop Bert Campaneris. Oakland also had two reserves: outfielder Claudell Washington and relief hurler Rollie Fingers. Catfish Hunter, in his first post-A's season, was there too, now in Yankees pinstripes. Vida and Catfish both got roughed by the NL lineup, and Catfish took the loss.

Never missing a chance to grab the nation's attention, Charlie had A's players wear as many different uniform combinations as possible at the All-Star Game. Some of them wore kelly green tops, some were in Fort Knox gold jerseys, and others donned wedding gown white ones. While most players wore white pants with the various jerseys, at least one player went all-gold.

Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, watching the game alongside Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, must have fumed when he saw the uniform combinations.

ANOTHER PLAYOFF APPEARANCE

Later that day, the All-Star break ended and baseball resumed around the country. For Charlie's Oakland A's, that meant another win. The A's had ended the first half with hurler Ken Holtzman leading Oakland to victory, and on a warm July night in Cleveland, that's how the second half began too. The A's won 6–3, Holtzman notched his twelfth victory, and Oakland led the AL West by nine and a half games. They would not be caught.

The Kansas City Royals whittled their lead down to four and a half games on September 6, but the A's left them in the dust by reeling off ten wins in twelve games, including a seven-game winning streak. They
clinched the AL West title on September 24 at the Coliseum with a 13–2 blowout win over manager Chuck Tanner's Chicago White Sox.

It was the fifth consecutive year the A's had tasted champagne after clinching an AL West championship and a trip to the playoffs. While many had predicted the A's would falter without Catfish, the team actually finished with a better record in 1975 than the previous year—98–64, eight wins more than the Catfish-led '74 A's had.

The Green and Gold were still known nationwide as a swaggering, brawling club of hot-headed winners. Glenn Frey of the pop band the Eagles told a
Rolling Stone
interviewer, “We're the Oakland A's of rock & roll. On the field, we can't be beat. But in the clubhouse, well, that's another story.” The wins were still piling up, but times definitely were changing. The A's on-field personality shifted in the 1975 season. For the first time in their five-year playoff run, they became a team of sluggers, while pitching stalwarts such as Blue, Holtzman, and Fingers were still playing superbly.

As the A's flew to Boston to face the Red Sox in the American League Championship Series, everyone was aware that no team had won four consecutive World Series championships since 1952, when Casey Stengel's New York Yankees defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games. Yet the Oakland A's were on the verge of accomplishing the unthinkable. And, as the Green and Gold got ready to play October playoff baseball again on a shadowy fall Saturday in Fenway Park, would anyone be surprised if Charlie Finley's “Mustache Gang” pulled it off?

TICKETS AGAIN

Charlie told me how much he appreciated my help with Dad in the A's office, and as the 1975 American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox approached, I was again assigned to the highly sensitive post of ticket processor. That year our secret location was a nondescript one-story office complex on Oakport, across the freeway from the Coliseum.

Once again, Dad and I developed a routine of waking up at 4:30 in the morning and stopping at the Merritt Bakery in Oakland for breakfast. We would reach the office by 6:30 or seven, and I would start opening the envelopes. One thing, however, was different this year—the mail we received from our opponents' fans. Some of the letters were pretty mean, describing in detail what they hoped the Red Sox would do to us. There were threats to “ruin you” and to “put you in the grave”—and those were the polite ones.

Sometimes cash would fall out of the envelopes as we opened them—twenties, fifties, even hundreds. We also received gift certificates and a gold chain. One man wrote asking the person who opened his letter to meet him for dinner. There were occasionally checks from famous people; I recall in particular getting one from Boz Scaggs. Another time, I opened an envelope and a check for thirty-five dollars fell out clipped to an ad for a male anatomical enhancer. It turned out it was addressed to the wrong office.

Charlie's concern that Dad and I might be followed to our secret location developed into a paranoia that I don't recall in earlier seasons. He asked Dad to hire a security guard for a night watch, but then he worried about whether he could trust the guard. Eventually he asked Dad to spend the night with our tickets, which I thought was going too far. Dad spoke to Sergeant Ivey, a retired Oakland policeman and Charlie's bodyguard when he was in the Bay Area, and told Charlie that there would be extra police patrols at night. Charlie was mollified, and Dad did not sleep with the tickets!