One of my acute interests related to baseball is the area of eccentric team owners. Having lived through Marge Schott's tenure as owner of my beloved Cincinnati Reds, I grew up rather accustomed to the odd habits, idiosyncracies and foul language associated with her reign. She wore sweatsuits everywhere, smoked enormous cigars that would've made Castro blush, and had what an old homeroom teacher of mine would describe as "diarrhea of the mouth." I loved Schottzie, her enormous St. Bernard who was always with her. It was a tradition at Riverfront Stadium to have Marge trot out the horse-sized dog before a game, and it was rather disappointing for the fans if Schottzie failed to drop a horse-sized dump on the field (for luck).
Recently I have been doing some research on another distinguished member of the wacky team-owning millionaire's club: Charley O. Finley. Finley purchased the Kansas City Athletics in 1960 and immediately set about the business of "making his mark" on the club, which really means that he started pissing off the locals right away.
In those days team uniforms were either white or grey, depending on whether it was a home or away game. The first thing Finley did was change the team colors to a garishly tacky bright green, gold and white. The A's mascot (for some reason) was a (fictional) elephant. Finley bought the team a live mule, replacing the theoretical pacyderm with the very real Charley-O (consider the neglected logic behind these mascot choices: among the entirety of the animal kingdom, would anyone rational really pick either an elephant or a mule to represent a team named the "Athletics"?) As soon as Finley came to town, he promised the city he would keep the team in KC, but almost immediately began a semi-secret campaign to move the team to another city. It was very nearly my hometown's fate to become a major league city in 1964, when Finely signed a lease for Fairgrounds Stadium (now Cardinal Stadium) in Louisville, Kentucky. He wanted to rename the team the Kentucky Colonels, thereby keeping the caps from Kansas City with the interlocking "KC" symbol. He essentially decided on Louisville just to save money on hats. It was not to be however: the league prevented this move for reasons I have not been able to really nail down (though I suspect its because they reasoned that Louisville is not a big enough market.) He rose an enormous stink, and was finally allowed to move the team to Oakland in 1968.
Once in California, Finley began really stirring the pot. He maintained that the sport was in trouble because it was not changing with the times; baseball would die, he argued, if allowed to exist without "new innovations." Innovations, for instance, like petting zoos in the bleachers, sexy ballgirls, orange baseballs, an underground ball-delivering mechanical rabbit, and, especially, facial hair. Finley paid his players a $300 bonus if they grew moustaches, which led to Rollie Fingers adopting his signature handlebar lip-duster.
The designated hitter rule was his invention, as was the designated runner. The very first electronic scoreboard was Finley's doing. Wanting to shorten games and create "more action," he pushed for the league to change a walk to 3 balls, and an adoption of a two-strike strikeout. Many of the more hair-brained ideas were actually tested in a few spring training games, but was not approved by the league, although his DH rule was adopted and is still in use in the American League today.
Reading about Finley's career makes you realize that, while this guy was hilarious and really fun to read about because of his against-the-grain hijinks, you wouldn't exactly want him anywhere near your town. Finley's life story contains the sort of material that made Will Ferrell a star. In fact, Semi Pro reminds me a lot of Charles O. Finley--Ferrell's player-manager character could BE Finley. In fact, Finley actually owned an ABA team in 1972: the Memphis Pros, which he of course immediately renamed (The Memphis Tams: an acronym for Tennessee Arkansas and Mississippi). Until some filmmaker realizes what a gold mine his life is for biopic material and makes Sexy Ballgirls: the Charles O. Finley Story, I'm going to treat Semi Pro as Finley's unnofficial biography.
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