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Finley rocks it with calculated abandon. "You can't miss Charlie," says Minnesota Owner Calvin Griffith. "He's the P.T. Barnum of baseball." A showman and a showoff, Finley breezily charges through the owners' gray-suited world in a dazzling green jacket and matching ten-gallon hat. Stubborn and often churlish, he is not afraid to battle with players he thinks are performing poorly or making unreasonable salary demands. By now, big-league legend is rich with stories of his confrontations: the bitter salary wars with Reggie Jackson and Vida Blue, the controversial banishment of Second Baseman Mike Andrews during the 1973 World Series, the loss of Star Pitcher Catfish Hunter last year after an angry contract row.
But Finley does far more than generate turbulence. Baseball can thank him for much of its continuing success in an era that panders to the TV camera and faster-paced, more violent games. Finley has brightened the ball park with colorful uniforms; he has helped to hype lucrative World Series TV ratings by advocating that play begin on a weekend and that all weekday games be played at night. If he gets his way, there will soon be a host of other changes as well, including the use of his orange ball. "Why the hell play with a white ball," he asks, "when we've got one you can see a lot better?"
Finley's most conspicuous achievement has been the building of the most colorful team since the St. Louis Cardinals' "Gas House Gang" of the 1930s and the most talented since Casey Stengel's New York Yankees of a quarter-century ago. The A's squabble incessantly with their owner and fight among themselves —but they win. Oakland took the last three world championships, and the team has a good shot at a fourth this October. Only the old Yankees won more World Series in a row (1936-39,1949-53).
For Charlie Finley, the realization of fame and success is the replay of a ball fan's midsummer dreams. "I always wanted to be a player," he says, "but I never had the talent to make the big leagues. So I did the next best thing: I bought a team." Finley grew up in Birmingham and in Gary, Ind., the grandson of an Irish immigrant steelworker. Baseball and salesmanship consumed his boyhood. By twelve he had already organized his own sand-lot team and was bat boy for the Birmingham Barons of the Southern Association (a minor league team he now owns and calls the A's). He also won prizes for selling thousands of magazines door-to-door.
After working in the Gary steel mills (starting at 47¢ an hour), selling insurance, finishing two years at Gary College and playing first base for the semi-pro La Porte Cubs, Finley was temporarily sidelined by tuberculosis. He spent two years at Parramore Hospital in Crown Point, Ind. During that period he honed the idea that eventually made him a millionaire: selling group disability insurance to doctors.