Free Finley Ball by Nancy Finley

in.
    CHARLIE’S FAST CROWD
    One evening in April 1965, while the two families were dining out together, we ran into a woman whom my parents and the Benjamins knew. A striking sometime model in her late twenties, she had a sultry air that made it hard not to look at her. She was part of the fun-loving baseball crowd that Charlie led, a group Mom grew to loathe—with good reason, it would turn out.

CHAPTER 10
    SEEDS OF SUCCESS
    MID-1960S
    T hree years after Charlie acquired the Athletics—and despite Ernie Mehl’s efforts—he began to receive credit for some of the changes he had made.
    The readers of Bob Mussman’s sports column in the Chillicothe Tribune lived a hundred miles northeast from Kansas City, but in 1963 he urged them to go take in an A’s game: “The beautiful stadium alone is worth the trip. It combines a muted shade of green, coral orange and cream in the seating area. The well-tended field, the envy of any ardent lawnman, is surrounded by red shale track.” But the stadium wasn’t the only attraction. Mussman noted that “under controversial Charles Finley, the A’s have been making strides toward the goal of building a winning ball club.” He continued, “The A’s have given up their policy of trades with the Yankees, and now are doing some effective building through a well managed farm team.” He credited the organization with “what appears to be an expert managerial and coaching staff” and declared that “this is no longer a team of losers.”

    Despite Charlie’s spending and his never-ending promotions, the Kansas City Athletics in the mid-1960s were still a joke in baseball circles—on the field, in the standings, and at the box office. Charlie and Dad, proud and competitive men, desperately wanted to change that. They knew that the best and cheapest way to build a winner was through the franchise’s farm system. That idea wasn’t revolutionary. Finding and developing young talent and then letting it mature in the minor leagues was a time-honored strategy. But if it were easy, then every franchise’s farm system would be brimming with talent. Few actually were. Executing that plan took good scouts, a smart general manager and player personnel executive, a little luck, and—perhaps most importantly—a generous owner.
    If you asked any team owner or manager, he would say, sure, his farm teams were important. But everyone seemed to treat the farm teams as an afterthought. Charlie’s main focus was finding and signing up prospects, and after years of quietly going about “watering the plants,” his farm team was perhaps his best-kept secret. He did not look for quick and easy ways to build a competitive team. “I have to think about the next ten years,” he said.
    Charlie elaborated in an interview in 1968: “I decided a long time ago that we’d have to start raising our own ballplayers. It’s the only way. It’s like building a house; you have to have a solid foundation no matter how much it costs. I think we have it now.” Looking back in 1996, Marvin Miller, the head of the baseball players union, agreed: “He was his own scouting system. He personally recruited the bulk of that team. I knew nobody in baseball who could ever approach what he did.”
    Charlie started acquiring young talent as soon as he took over. He signed the pitcher Lew Krausse Jr. in 1961 for $150,000, then a pro baseball record. His scouts signed the Cuban-born Dagoberto “Bert” Campaneris for just a few thousand dollars in 1962. A year later, Charlie grabbed Dave Duncan as an amateur free agent straight out of high school, when the feisty catcher was just a skinny teenager. That same season, Charlie signed the pitcher Paul Lindblad, an underrated reliever who would play for the Athletics organization until 1976 (save for a yearand half with other teams in 1971–1972).