Continued from Big Business Baseball Part 1)
Finley abandoned Kansas City in 1968 and moved his Athletics to Oakland where their fortunes, but not their attendance, quickly improved. (They were replaced by the Kansas City Royals, which under Manager Whitey Herzog, with George Brett, Hal McRae, Frank White, Amos Otis, Dennis Leonard and Paul Splittorf dominated the American League West in the late seventies and early eighties, drawing more than twice the fans the Athletics had drawn.)
In 1968, the Athletics, under yet another new manager, Bob Kennedy, had their first winning season since 1952 and moved up to sixth place. With Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi and Rick Monday in the outfield, and five pitchers who won ten or more games including Blue Moon Odom and Catfish Hunter, Finley had assembled the elements of his 1970s championship teams. In May, facing the Minnesota Twins with Hall of Famers Rod Carew and Harmon Killibrew as well as Tony Oliva and Bob Allison in the lineup, Hunter pitched the American League’s first perfect game (no runner allowed to reach base) since 1922. Over the next two years Finley changed managers twice more and the team rose to second place in the American League West, and in 1971, under Manager Dick Williams they began a five-year-long stay in first place.
In Williams, Finley had hired a manager who could hold his own against him. With Bert Campaneris, Sal Bando, Gene Tenace, Joe Rudi, Rick Monday and Reggie Jackson in the lineup and Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Blue Moon Odom, Chuck Dobson, Diego Segui as starting pitchers and Rollie Fingers as their closer, the Athletics won 101 games. Fingers, Jackson and Hunter were later elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, as was Manager Dick Williams.
Already notorious for their gold, green and white uniforms and white spikes, in 1972 the A’s further differentiated themselves from other teams by growing sideburns and mustaches. Finley, who now called his team “the swinging A’s” awarded a $300 bonus to every player who grew a mustache by the Father’s Day Game. In a sport where every other team required players to be clean-shaven, the A’s began to be billed as the “Hairs vs. the Squares,” and for the first time since I931, not only played in the World Series, but won the first of three consecutive Championships.
During the 20 years Finley owned the team he changed managers seventeen times. Dick Williams was the only one who lasted three seasons, and Finley didn’t fire him. It was the other way around. During the 1973 World Series, Finley tried to force second baseman Mike Andrews out of the lineup to punish him for making two errors in the second game. He demanded that Andrews sign a false affidavit saying he was injured, but Williams objected and Bowie Kuhn, Baseball Commissioner, reinstated Andrews. After winning the series, Williams quit the Athletics in disgust.
Finley replaced Williams with Alvin Dark, whom he’d fired during the 1967 season and in 1974 the Athletics went to the World Series for the third year in a row. With Williams out of the way, Finley resurrected his old designated runner idea and hired Herb Washington, “the world’s fastest man” as a pinch-runner. Washington held the record for the fifty-yard dash, but lacked professional baseball experience.
In the ninth inning of the second game of the World Series against the LA Dodgers, the Athletics were losing 3-0, when Sal Bando got to first base after being hit by a pitch. Reggie Jackson then doubled and Joe Rudi singled to bring both Bando and Jackson home. The Dodgers brought in relief pitcher Mike Marshall who struck out Gene Tenace. With the score 3-2 and one out, Finley ordered Manager Dark to put Washington on first to run for Rudi. Washington was immediately picked off for the second out, Marshall struck out the next hitter, and the Athletics lost the game.
That same year Finley reneged on his contract with Catfish Hunter, mainstay of the pitching staff, and winner of 105 games over the previous five years. Hunter’s contract required Finley to pay him $50,000 in salary and $50,000 in annuity payments. (Hunter had diabetes and wanted deferred income for the security of his family.) Finley discovered that annuity payments weren’t immediately tax deductible and decided not to pay. Hunter went to Marvin Miller, the players’ union head, won in arbitration, and was declared a free agent. Soon after Finley’s baseball strategy lost the Athletics the second game of the World Series, his business strategy lost them Catfish Hunter.
At that point another micromanaging businessman without baseball experience, but with an ego as great as Finley’s thrust himself into the matter. Let’s call him George Stormbronxer. After working in his father’s shipping business and dabbling in professional basketball and the New York Theatre, Stormbronxer bought the Yankees from CBS Studios for $10 million. (CBS had purchased the team in 1964 after they finished first in the American League in both victories and attendance. During eight years of CBS management, the Yankees finished second once, fourth twice, fifth twice, sixth once, ninth once and in 1966, tenth and last for the first time since 1912. During one September 1966 game against the White Sox only 413 fans entered 65,000-plus- capacity Yankee Stadium. Red Barber, who’d succeeded Mel Allen as broadcaster, had his contract canceled for telling listeners about the sparse attendance.)
In 1974, Stormbronxer joined the bidding for now free agent Catfish Hunter and signed him to a five-year contract for $3.75 million, over six times per year what Hunter had been paid by the Athletics. Hunter won 23 games in the first year of the agreement and 17 the second. During the next three years Hunter’s health deteriorated and he won only twenty-three games while losing twenty- four. The Catfish contract was the first of a series of mega-contracts which blew the lid off baseball salaries and changed both the economics and the spirit of the game.
Two years later Stormbronxer signed Reggie Jackson for $2.96 million and in later years Ricky Henderson, $2.1 million, Wade Boggs, $4.7 million, Roger Clemens $15.45 million, Gary Sheffield $38 million, Johnny Damon $52 million, Jason Giambi $120 million and, most recently, Alex Rodriguez $275 million. He paid Randy Johnson 1 million per victory for 34 victories during 2005 and 2006 and Kevin Brown over $2 million per victory for 14 victories during 2004 and 2005.
Over thirty six years with by far the highest payroll in baseball history, Stormbronxer’s Yankees won ten American League Championships and seven World Series. Under Jacob Ruppert, in ten fewer years, the Yankees won twelve American League Championships and eight World Series.
Ruppert stayed in the background and in the world before World War II used his talents to build the Yankee organization, to develop great ballplayers and to produce great teams. In our post-1960s celebrity-worshipping world, where the collector who buys the Rembrandt is more admired than the artist who painted it, Stormbronxer used the Yankees to gain notoriety for himself.
Ruppert will be remembered as one of the owners who did most to build Baseball and as the owner who developed more members of the Hall of Fame than any other. If Stormbronxer is remembered, it will be as one of the owners who did most to damage Baseball, and as the owner who tried to buy more members of the Hall of Fame than any other.
Herb L
oldtimewriter.com
