Finley Ball (18 page)

CHAPTER 35

BILLY BALL

1980

I
n 1980 geologists detected signals that something big was about to happen. What they called “harmonic tremors” in the long-dormant volcano Mount St. Helens pointed to the catastrophic eruption that followed in May. That spring, seven hundred miles to the south, the Oakland A's were giving off harmonic tremors of their own.

The antithesis of Ernie Mehl was the
Oakland Tribune
's Ralph Wiley, a talented sportswriter with integrity who shilled for nobody. He didn't have to. Respected as a consummate pro, he sprinkled his daily game coverage with creativity and wit. In March 1980, Wiley set up shop in Scottsdale, Arizona, with the A's. And amid the relative anonymity of the Cactus League's meaningless games under a punishing desert sun, Wiley recognized before anyone else that the A's were about to perform a baseball miracle.

Billy Martin had been appointed GM as well as team manager. In Mesa, there was a sense that Charlie and Dad were handing him a whole new roster loaded with talent. Could he pull it all together? Wiley thought
he could. He saw Martin take twenty-one-year-old Rickey Henderson under his wing, teaching him about the nuances of base-stealing, setting him on the road to the Hall of Fame.

The A's opened the 1980 season at the Coliseum against the first big-league team Billy ever managed: the Minnesota Twins. At first glance, they seemed to be the same old hapless A's. The box score looked like the Twinkies roughed up Langford, Oakland's opening night starter, and squeaked out a 9–7 win in extra innings.

But anyone among the 24,415 A's die-hards could see this was a different team—flawed but hungry and full of fight. The Twins jumped out to a 5–0 lead that seemed insurmountable for a bad team, but the A's were no longer a joke. In the seventh inning they stormed back, scoring seven runs on the hot bats of their young, talented outfield: Rickey Henderson, Dwayne Murphy and Tony Armas. In the end, they couldn't overcome their biggest weakness, the bullpen. “Spacey” Bob Lacey, the A's closer, blew the lead in the ninth, and the game went into extra innings before the A's lost 9–7 in the twelfth. They lost a couple more, and after five games, they were an ordinary 2–3.

But then it started. Boosted by that stellar starting pitching, Billy's A's ripped off seven consecutive wins. Five weeks into the season, the Green and Gold was in first place, shocking the baseball world. But it wasn't just the W's they were hanging, it was
how
they were doing it. Martin was pulling out every trick he could think of, using Henderson's all-world speed to steal bases, calling suicide squeezes, double steals—anything he could think of to steal a win. Martin was putting on a clinic on how a manager gets his team to overachieve. The controversies in other cities, especially in New York, had obscured the fact that he was one of the game's best skippers. “They laughed when Charlie Finley hired Billy Martin,” wrote Wiley in the
Tribune
. “He has brought them respectability without a quality second baseman or shortstop and without a bullpen.”

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

N
othing 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

A
t 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.