Finley Ball (15 page)

CHAPTER 28

FROM THE HIGHS TO THE LOWS

1975

T
he phone rang at our Oakland apartment on a foggy June morning in 1975. “Carl, it's me,” Charlie said, with an extra jolt of energy of his voice. “Meet me at the Edgewater.”

This time it was exciting news.
Time
magazine was going to do a cover story on Charlie, and they were sending a photographer that weekend to shoot the photo. Charlie didn't always hit it off with the press, but the magazine's photographer, Fred Kaplan, turned out to be a great guy. He was close in age to Dad and Charlie and was exactly the kind of funloving rogue that the Finley boys enjoyed.

The photo shoot was in a warehouse near the Coliseum. As soon as the work was done, Charlie and his twenty-something blonde girlfriend invited Kaplan, who had hit it off with a beautiful brunette stewardess on his flight from New York, to go out with them. They invited Dad and me, too, and the six of us had dinner and drinks at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. I was still just seventeen, but I'm tall, and with makeup I could pass for a decade older than my age. After dinner, Charlie took
us to the Tonga Room, a bar at the Fairmont. I felt so grown up hanging out with this crowd, and Charlie, who paid for everything, was a wonderful host, provided that you let him order for everyone. That's how he liked to do things, and you had to go along with the flow.

The issue of
Time
with Charlie on the cover hit the newsstands on August 18 with the headline “Baseball's Super Showman.” Wearing a kelly green blazer and cowboy hat and gripping a bat, Charlie glared out from the cover like one of his sluggers staring down a pitcher. The backdrop was alternating rows of white and orange baseballs, a reference to an innovation that Charlie had pushed, unsuccessfully, in 1973. The orange baseball had become a symbol of his devil-may-care approach to the game's hallowed traditions.

The backdrop was my handiwork, actually.
Time
's concept for the cover called for a stack of orange and white baseballs, but it was up to the franchise to deliver the visuals. That became Dad's responsibility—and thus
my
responsibility. In those days before digital graphic design, we arrived at a low-tech but effective solution: we glued baseballs to a large white poster board. It was that simple. As Charlie gripped a bat and assumed his batter's stance, Dad and I held the poster board behind him while Kaplan snapped away.

Charlie was thrilled with the attention. Catfish Hunter was gone and his wife had divorced him, but to all appearances, Charles O. Finley was on top of the world. His Oakland A's were still the kings of baseball. They had won their third consecutive World Series title just ten months earlier. Now, in the middle of the summer, they were playing great and gunning for a fourth straight championship.

DARK'S BIG MOUTH

Those days should have been the prime of Alvin Dark's managerial career, but he couldn't keep his mouth from getting him into trouble. When Dad read Dark's comment in the
Time
article that “Charlie's tough and rough, and at times you think he's cruel,” he put the magazine down on the table and sighed. Though Dark had softened the criticism by adding,
“But he is a winner,” Dad knew that wouldn't make up for what Charlie would take as an insult. Sure enough, as Dad and Charlie were winding up their daily phone call on the last Friday of August, Charlie suddenly said, “Carl, did you see what ol' Mr. Dark had to say about yours truly?”

Dad thought he could hear Charlie's teeth grinding. “Forget about it, Charlie, you know how Alvin gets. Especially when he starts talking religion.”

“It's one thing if he says it in a small-town, Shitburg, U.S.A., newspaper,” Charlie said, getting wound up. “But in a national publication, with millions of readers. I wonder if his God can cure his foot-in-mouth disease.”

“It was definitely a stupid thing to say, but that's just Alvin,” Dad said. “Do you know how many times he told me I'm going to hell if I don't get closer to Jesus?”

“Jesus? He should concentrate on getting closer to his boss, and not so close to the Chicago White Sox,” Charlie said. “I'll forgive him for the quote. Not so much, though, if he comes in second place.”

“You'll forgive him for the quote?” Dad asked, genuinely surprised.

“Well . . . ,” Charlie said, pondering the thought. There was a momentary lull, then laughter, from both Dad and Charlie. Forgiveness? “Probably not” was the unspoken thought shared between the two. They'd had so many of these conversations that they could complete each other's sentences. The cousins were still laughing when Charlie hung up the phone.

A few days later, Dark and Charlie were staying at the same hotel. Charlie, who had had a little too much wine, knocked on Alvin's door, told him he was fired, then went back to his room. After downing a couple of shots of his signature J&B scotch, Charlie couldn't remember if he had fired Alvin. So he knocked on Alvin's door again and told him, “Al, you're fired.”

“I know,” replied Alvin, “you already told me that.” In the morning Charlie had forgotten all about firing Dark.

There was one way for Alvin Dark to make amends for his indiscreet comments about Charlie—to win, and to keep winning until the A's had
that fourth consecutive World Series title. No franchise had won four championships in a row since the Yankees' five-year streak of 1949–1953. (The Bronx Bombers also had a four-year streak of championships from 1936 through 1939.) Charlie was tantalizingly close to matching the franchise he considered his personal nemesis.

Nobody has done it since. The Boston Red Sox made sure of that.

KING KUHN

During the 1975 season, Bowie Kuhn's contract as MLB commissioner was up for renewal, and Charlie led an attempted revolt against its renewal. Charlie, the Yankees' George Steinbrenner, and a few other American League owners were not happy with Kuhn. He was saved by Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers' longtime owner and the quintessential baseball insider. O'Malley exercised near-complete influence over Kuhn and was not about to lose that power. Working the phones and calling in favors, O'Malley convinced enough owners not to dump Kuhn. The old boys' club took care of its own once again, and the mavericks and innovators were defeated. “When you strike at a king,” said Emerson, “you must kill him.” A year later, when Charlie wanted to sell off some of his most valuable players, Kuhn would have his opportunity for revenge on Charlie.

THE 1975 PLAYOFFS

The A's finished the 1975 season with ninety-eight wins, taking the AL West by seven games. The first two games of the American League Championship Series against the Red Sox were scheduled for Boston. Games Three and, if necessary, Four and Five would be in Oakland. Charlie attended the games in Boston, but he had told me before the playoffs began that he could not be at Game Three in Oakland. He promised to be at Game Four as well as Game Five if the series went that long. I couldn't remember a time when Charlie was not seated behind the A's dugout during any championship game.

The Red Sox were the underdogs, and for good reason. The A's roster—Jackson, Bando, Tenace, Rudi, North, Fingers, Blue, Holtzman—had become household names, thanks to all those thrilling, tense playoff victories in the previous three Octobers. Boston had talent, but they were young and unproved. Catcher Carlton Fisk was twenty-seven, first baseman Cecil Cooper was twenty-five, and shortstop Rick Burleson was twenty-four. Their All-Star outfield was even younger—Dwight Evans and Fred Lynn were twenty-three, and Jim Rice was twenty-two. They weren't all kids—future Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski was thirty-six, and Cuban-born ace pitcher Luis Tiant was—well, nobody really knew how old he was. The press guide said he'd turn thirty-five in a month, but rumor had it he was at least half a decade older.

In Game One at Fenway Park, nobody's age mattered. Boston's youngsters played like savvy vets, and Tiant pitched as if he'd been sipping from the fountain of youth. Boston won 7–1. The A's, meanwhile, looked like they'd been replaced by impostors. Except for Dick Green and Catfish, the core Oakland players were the same, but they didn't play like it. They had more errors (four) than hits (three). Ken Holtzman, who had come up so big for the A's in past playoffs, took the loss, but it was hardly his fault. Five of Boston's seven runs were unearned, thanks to errors by Phil Garner, Sal Bando, Claudell Washington, and Billy North.

At the beginning of Game Two, Oakland fans felt as if things were finally getting back to normal. Reggie Jackson walloped a two-run homer in the first inning, and twenty-two-game-winner Vida Blue silenced the Red Sox hitters. For a while, anyway. After three and a half innings, the Green and Gold led 3–0, and A's fans could exhale, thinking that Game One was an anomaly, a mulligan that that could shrugged off. Then the bottom of the fourth started and all hell broke loose. The Sox tied the game 3–3, with the bulk of the scoring coming on a Yastrzemski two-run homer.

Desperate for reliable pitching, Dark brought in closer Rollie Fingers to start the fifth inning. And the ever-dependable future Hall of Famer was, unfortunately, anything but. Fingers allowed three runs and was
tagged with the loss, while Boston's Dick Drago shut down the A's high-powered offense by pitching three scoreless innings. The Sox won 6–3, and thirty-five thousand fans poured out of Fenway knowing they were one win away from heading to the World Series for the first time in eight years.

I was back in Oakland, and like most A's fans I wasn't worried, despite the two resounding losses. Winning in October was what we did, and we fully expected our heroes Reggie, Rollie, Vida, Geno, Rudi, Captain Sal, and the rest of the boys to right the ship. All they needed was a little home cooking and they'd be fine. After all, they had been winning close playoff games for half a decade. Losing was unthinkable.

Two days later, the unthinkable happened in front of 49,358 A's fans who packed the Coliseum. If Alvin Dark was feeling confident, he didn't show it with his choice for starting pitcher. He sent Kenny Holtzman back on the mound to start Game Three on just two days' rest. After a few innings, predictably, the hurler ran out of gas, giving up a run in the fourth and three in the fifth. The Sox went up 5–1.

The A's scored two in the eighth, cutting the lead to 5–3. But we wouldn't score again. That was all she wrote. Boston won the AL Championship Series in a three-game sweep.

ALL OVER NOW

And just like that, one of professional sports' greatest dynasties was over.

I don't remember much from that night, other than taking a deck of cards from Dad's office and playing solitaire after the game as I waited for him to finish his work. Afterward, Dad and I walked out to the car in silence. We drove to Oscar's restaurant, where we knew we would be with friends who would help us drown our sorrows. On the way Dad mumbled, “Sic transit gloria mundi.”

“What?” I asked.

“It's an old Latin expression. ‘How quickly the glory of the world passes.'”

Everyone—friends, strangers, the bartender—kept trying to console us. “You'll get 'em again next year,” or “You guys have won so many, you had to lose some time.” They meant well. But at the time, I was inconsolable.

I can't help thinking that one reason we lost the 1975 American League Championship Series is that Charlie Finley was not there. Looking at Charlie's empty seat behind the dugout, it was obvious that the energy was missing. In other games, Charlie would call down to the manager and make a subtle change. This team was like an orchestra playing without the conductor. Whatever alchemy was behind the A's success, Charlie was the one who held it all together. Sure, sometimes he unified the team only because they were all angry at him. Charlie was completely aware of that dynamic. As long as it bred success, he didn't mind at all.

So where was he this time? The chaos of the previous twelve months, especially his messy divorce, had caught up with him. During the series, he had been in Chicago meeting with lawyers and devoting even more time to his insurance business because of the financially precarious situation the divorce might put him in.

Throughout the ALCS and World Series games from 1971 to 1974, players and fans would see Charlie sitting behind the dugout, often with a celebrity like Clint Eastwood, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, George C. Scott, or Miss America. He might join the fans in waving an A's pennant, or he might sit there silently seething at an umpire's bad call. But he was present and accounted for. But this time he wasn't there. And I don't think the unhappy outcome of Game Three was a coincidence.

A few weeks earlier, Alvin Dark had told his church congregation in Castro Valley, a small community about fifteen minutes southeast of the Coliseum, that “if Charlie didn't accept Jesus Christ as his personal savior, he was going to Hell.” The comment found its way into the local newspaper and soon became national news. That was yet another negative public comment Dark had made about his boss in less than two years. For Charlie, it was strike three—Dark was out.

Charlie soon set out to hire a new manager. His choice of Chuck Tanner as Alvin Dark's replacement would be one that I would never forget.

CHAPTER 29

THE CREEPING HAND AND STARTING OVER

1975–1976

I
t was always exciting to join Dad and Charlie for one of their nights on the town—dinner, a few drinks, and talking baseball and life. On one of these evenings, while we were brainstorming promotions for the A's, Charlie named me a vice president because he was impressed with some of my marketing ideas. I was proud to be recognized, but Dad knew that Charlie was being his usual charming, mischievous self. He let me know gently that, well . . . he fired me the next morning.

I treasured these times with Dad and Charlie, whether we were at a ballgame in the Coliseum, at a party at Oscar's, or at dinner in San Francisco. The three of us made a family—unusual and offbeat, but a family nonetheless.

Charlie enjoyed those evenings too. He was growing mellower, less restless. The divorce, which had estranged him from his large brood of children, had rocked his world. As rich and powerful as he was, he had never before been this lonely and heartsick, not even when he was deathly ill and hospital-bound in the 1940s. For those who clashed with Charlie
in baseball—ex-players, reporters, old managers, fellow owners, and commissioners—it might be tough to envision Charlie as vulnerable. But that's exactly what he was in the mid-to-late 1970s—emotionally, physically, and in time even financially vulnerable.

Before spring training in 1976, Charlie asked Dad to take me out of school and bring me to the Edgewater Hotel for a news conference at which Charlie would introduce the A's new manager, Chuck Tanner. “The press conference will be more educational for her anyway,” Charlie said.

Dad agreed, and we met Charlie for breakfast at the hotel a couple of hours before Tanner was to meet the press. While I nibbled on eggs and toast, Dad and Charlie briefly talked about Tanner's personality, his way with people, and his managerial record in Chicago. A little while later, Dad and Charlie disappeared to meet with Tanner, and I waited in the coffee shop.

After an hour, Dad came in to tell me the press conference was about to start. I took a chair toward the back of the huge ballroom, Charlie and Tanner sat at a table at the front of the room, and Dad lingered off to the side. As the silver-haired A's owner and his new manager talked with the press, I realized that I was starting to anticipate certain questions (“How do you manage the modern ballplayer, Chuck?” . . . “This is your third skipper in four years, Charlie. What makes you think he'll succeed where others haven't?”). I also anticipated many of the answers. “I don't mind input from Charlie,” Tanner said. “He's won three World Series. He must be doing something right.” The press conference went smoothly, and Dad and I drove Charlie to the airport in our Camaro.

Tanner was alone in town and knew practically nobody, so Dad and I took him to dinner at Oscar's. He sat between us in a U-shaped booth. I kept quiet while he and Dad talked about the inner workings of the ball club and about life in the Bay Area. Everything was going fine until late in the meal. Then it got weird. Awkwardly, horribly weird.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my thigh. I was stunned. Keep in mind, I was seventeen, and Tanner was forty-seven. Dad, who had been talking
about what to expect in spring training in Arizona, looked at his glass of wine and kept talking, oblivious to what Tanner was doing. I tried my best to keep a straight face, and Tanner kept his eyes on Dad, pretending to listen. I thought for a second that maybe it was just an honest mistake. I moved my leg. But the hand came back. I moved my leg even further away, but his hand again found my thigh.

As Tanner and Dad bantered, I moved my leg again, and for a second it seemed that he had taken the hint. But then there was the hand again, more aggressive this time, moving up my thigh. I quickly grabbed his hand, as if to say, “You are not going any further.” Panicked thoughts raced through my head: Do I slap him? Do I scream? Was he just drunk? Do I tell Dad? Or do I do nothing until I have time to think? I chose the latter. Fortunately, dinner was just about over, and I continued to keep Tanner's hand from moving any further.

We drove Tanner back to his hotel after dinner. As he got out of the car, I got out to move to the front seat; Dad stayed in the car. Trying to do the polite thing, I extended my hand to say good-bye to Tanner with a handshake. He grabbed me, pulled me close to him, and tried to kiss me. From the driver's seat, Dad could not see what was happening. I pulled away from Tanner and plunked myself down in the seat next to Dad for protection while the two men said good night.

I was mortified. And even though I knew I'd done nothing wrong, I was embarrassed and kind of ashamed. That's one reason I never told Dad or Charlie what Tanner had done to me. Another reason is that I feared getting Tanner fired and hence jeopardizing the A's chances for success.

Tanner and I never spoke again. He never tried to contact me or find me in the front office, and I was sure to keep my distance. The incident affected me afterwards. I often felt anxious in the company of older men, especially in tight quarters like a restaurant booth. I made sure I sat next to Dad or another woman. All these years later, I wonder if Tanner did the same thing to other young women during his career, which continued until 1988, when he retired from managing at the age of sixty.

STARTING OVER

Meanwhile, some MLB owners and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn were battling Marvin Miller and the MLB Players' Association over the reserve clause and free agency. A dispute involving two players, Dave McNally and Andy Messersmith, went to arbitration, and on December 23, 1975, the arbitrator ruled in favor of the players and free agency. The reserve clause in Major League Baseball was dead.

Charlie and Dad realized that they would probably lose many of their best players, the heart of the roster, to the bidding of other teams, and they had to get busy rebuilding the team. As Charlie had done in the early 1960s, they looked ten years ahead and resolved to “grow” their talent again from the farm team. The first step was to raise money by selling some talent. The A's would conduct a “clearance sale.” They had a whole roster of All-Stars, after all, that other teams had long coveted, and Charlie held out for the best possible deals. He realized that he didn't have to trade player for player. He could trade players for cold, hard cash.

On June 15, 1976, Charlie sold Vida Blue for one and half million dollars to the Yankees, who were charging toward their first playoff appearance since 1964, and he sold Rollie Fingers and Joe Rudi to the Red Sox for a million dollars each. In one day, Charlie had raised three and half million dollars, an unprecedented sum for trading players at the time.

By coincidence, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was in Chicago to watch a White Sox–Orioles game. As soon as he heard about the sales, Kuhn ordered them frozen until he had a chance to review them. First, he called Charlie, who lived and worked in Chicago, and they held a late-night meeting. Charlie pleaded his case, arguing for the deals to be approved. Kuhn said he'd think about it. Marvin Miller again agreed with Charlie, saying that baseball teams had sold players for cash since the sport began, and this was nothing new. While Kuhn deliberated, Fingers, Rudi, and Blue were in limbo—three players temporarily without a franchise. On June 19, Kuhn voided the sales on the grounds that they would be “devastating to baseball's reputation for integrity and to public confidence in the game.”

Somehow, through all of the chaos, the A's were still in the pennant race. Though they were twelve games out of first as late as August 6, the proud five-time AL West champs made a gallant effort to capture their sixth consecutive divisional title. With a 1–0 win over the Royals at home on September 28, they shaved Kansas City's lead to two and a half games with four to play. They were close to pulling off a pennant race miracle, but there was no room for error. One loss and they'd be done. The next day they fell to the Royals 4–0, and the A's dynasty went out with a whimper. The Royals celebrated Kansas City's first major league divisional title on the Coliseum grass in Oakland. The A's lost the division by just two and a half games even though Fingers, Vida, and Rudi missed eleven games during the “clearance sale” controversy. If Kuhn had ruled more quickly or had struck a deal with Charlie that allowed him to avoid litigation and keep the players on the field, the A's might have won the division.

As the season ended, the only vets still under contract were Vida Blue and Billy North. Charlie was desperate for cash, complaining that his “scouts had twenty-one players lined up we were going to sign with that money” from the voided sale of Blue, Fingers, and Rudi.
¹
Once Charlie got into clearance-sale mode, he saw everyone as a moveable piece. He did something few in baseball have ever done: he traded the manager, Chuck Tanner, for a player—to my relief. Charlie sent Tanner to Pittsburgh for Manny Sanguillen, who would play catcher, first base, and outfield for Charlie's A's.