Charlie Finley The Outrageous Story of Baseball's Super Showman

by Launius, Roger D.; Green, G. Michael

• ISBN13: 9780802717450
• ISBN10: 0802717454
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-06
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

The first full biography of one of baseball's most colorful and influential impresarios.Before the "Bronx Zoo" of George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin, there were the Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s, one of the most successful, most colorfuland most chaoticbaseball teams of all time. They were all of those things because of Charlie Finley. Not only the A's owner, he was also the general manager, personally assembling his team, deciding his players' salaries, and making player moves during the seasona level of involvement no other owner, not even Steinbrenner, engaged in. From modest circumstances in Gary, Indiana, Finley saw his semipro career cut short by the tuberculosis that nearly killed him in 1946. Yet fourteen years later, his success in the insurance business allowed him to buy the downtrodden Kansas City Athletics. Despite promising never to move, he relocated the A's to Oakland in 1968, and soon reaped the benefit of his talented minor leagues. With the emergence of players such as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blueas skillful on the field as they were eccentric off itthe A's won five straight division titles and three straight World Series (19721974)the latter feat equaled by only one other team in history. However, Finley could be an insufferable bully and impetuously self-destructive. His battles with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn were monumental; and, following the 1975 season, he tore his team apart in one of baseball's most controversial moments. Drawing on interviews with dozens of Finley's players, family members, and colleagues, G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius present "Baseball's Super Showman" (Timemagazine's description of Finley on the cover of an August 1975 issue) in all his contradictions: generous yet vengeful, inventive yet destructive. The stories surrounding him are as colorful as the life he led, the chronicle of which fills an important gap in baseball's literature.

Author Biography

G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius are members of SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research. When not indulging their baseball passions, Green is a senior planner at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C., and Launius is senior curator in the Division of Space History at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Table of Contents

“Charlie Finley takes a commendably even-handed approach to its volatile subject.”—Wall Street Journal

“One of the most promising sports titles on the horizon.”—Wall Street Journal

“[A] marvelous new biography of Finley…Green and Launius have brought an American Original back from the grave.”—Timothy M. Gay, author of Satch, Dizzy & Rapid Robert:  The Wild Saga of Interracial Baseball Before Jackie Robinson

The authors capture not only the enmity Finley engendered everywhere he traveled in the baseball world—including his own clubhouse—but also Finley’s valiant efforts to keep his team alive in the face of a tough Oakland market and exploding free agency. A good complement to the just-published Reggie Jackson.”—Booklist

“Charlie Finley finally gets the recognition--and the well-researched biography--that he deserves. This book bursts with fresh material, vibrant characters, and important historical insight. It's a flat-out winner.”—Jonathan Eig

“I can't imagine that anyone could have done a better job describing the life of Charlie Finley than Michael Green and Roger Launius.  The book was wonderfully written and superbly researched.  Finley may have been a bad guy, but his impact on the game of baseball was enormous.”—Peter Golenbock, author of The Bronx Zoo and Red Sox Nation

"An insightful, often rollicking, look at one of baseball's true kingpins."
—Tim Wendel, author of High Heat: The Secret History of the Fastball and the Improbable Search for the Fastest Pitcher of All Time

 “NASA senior planner Green and Smithsonian Air and Space Museum senior curator Launius do a creditable job pinning down both the mundane and the extraterrestrial aspects of Charles Oscar Finley’s remarkable rise….Most readers will agree with the authors’ final assessment that Finley was an innovative, infuriating jackass whose braying was sometimes sensible, even wise.”—Kirkus