Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball's Super Showman (review)

Longtime baseball fans, particularly those who grew up rooting for Oakland's "Mustache Gang" of the early to mid-1970s, are sure to remember the name of Charles O. Finley. "Baseball's Super Showman" was the precursor to such animated sports owners as the Yankees' George Steinbrenner and the Dallas Mavericks' Mark Cuban. Whether it was trotting outfielder Ken Harrelson out of the visitors' dugout on a donkey, pushing for the use of orange baseballs, or fabricating an injury to his starting second baseman in the middle of a World Series, Charlie Finley was a constant source of amusement to fans and a frustration to the "Lords of Baseball." In this well-researched and wonderfully-constructed biography, authors G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius present Finley as an incredibly complex (and inconsistent) man, ultimately dominated (and doomed) by his need for autocratic control. And yet, as the authors point out early, towards the end of Finley's reign in Oakland "the baseball world was changing. The baseball lords were losing control . . . it would be the iconoclastic, yet 'old-fashioned' Charlie Finley and his rambunctious players who now unwittingly led the baseball world into a new, uncertain era" (15).

The prologue to Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball's Super Showman sets the scene by introducing the reader to Charlie Finley at his worst, recounting the story of Finely's efforts to place starting second baseman Mike Andrews on the disabled list for making two bad plays in the first game of the 1973 World Series. By introducing readers to the worst of Finley right off the bat, the authors succeed in balancing what, throughout the remainder of the book, feels at times like an overly sympathetic account of the manic owner. With that said, there is no question that the real strength of this book is demonstrating Finley's immense impact on the game, despite all of his personal flaws.

Chapters two through four cover Finley's rise to wealth in the medical insurance business and his failed initial efforts to purchase the Philadelphia A's, the Detroit Tigers, and the Chicago White Sox, before finally muscling his way into ownership of his original target, the A's, after they had moved to Kansas City. What follows is an excellent account of the backroom dealing and two-faced lying that best characterized Finley's time in Kansas City. It was in Kansas City where Finley first developed his reputation as a maverick and as an innovator. Though he spent his entire tenure in Kansas City looking for an alternate city with a better market, while stuck there, Finley developed a number of innovations for his stadium, including a ball-dispensing rabbit that rose from the ground just behind the umpire and a pasture in the outfield stocked full of farm animals. While it is hard to imagine that such eccentricities had any real benefit to the game, it is equally hard to imagine that novelties such as Arizona's outfield pool area would exist today if Charlie had not set the precedent.

Chapters five through seven focus on the rise of Finely's Oakland dynasty from the day he landed in Oakland on October 26, 1967, through the end of the 1973 season when the A's won their third straight (and final) World Series of the Finley era. Along with firsthand accounts of Finley's autocratic meddling-much of which, the authors point out, helped to create those championship rosters-Green and Launius demonstrate how poor attendance, in spite of fielding the best team in baseball, continued to plague Finley in Oakland. With players' salaries slowly but steadily beginning to escalate, the lack of revenue "forced" Finley, who already had a miserly reputation, to let his ace pitcher Catfish Hunter get away prior to the 1974 season. One of the real strengths of this book is the authors' demonstration of...