From the early 1900s when baseball was truly America’s Game, Major League Baseball, as had all major professional sports in the United States, has had its share of truly bad owners: racists, criminals, bankrupt, penny-pinching, incompetent. Harry Frazee as owner of the Red Sox is often sited as the all-time worst owner for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
As a long-time Oakland Athletics fan, I’m well aware of their sordid history of owners: Connie Mack whose cash flow problems led to selling Shibe Park and becoming a tenant in their home stadium; Arnold Johnson, whom had a cozy relationship with the Yankees – he owned Yankee Stadium – that resulted in Kansas City Athletics ostensibly becoming a farm team by regularly trading KC’s best players to the Yankees; John Fisher alienated the Oakland fan base and politicians so successfully that he felt it necessary to relocate to Sacramento until the new Las Vegas stadium is complete.
Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish and Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s by Jason Turbow tells the fairly sordid story of the Oakland A’s of the mid-1970s, the team I chose to follow growing up afar in Iowa.
Owner Charley Finley was a penny-pinching narcissist who micromanaged the team and its operations at all levels. A front office with no scouts and just a handful of employees. Trading, selling, buying, reacquiring players at such a frenetic pace that required the creation of detachable name plates on uniforms to accommodate whomever walked through the door on game day. Inventing unwanted nicknames for players. Dictating lineups or in-game pitching changes. A true micromanager in every sense of the word.
The clubhouse dysfunction that destroyed and derailed the aspirations of so many other talented teams’ didn’t in Oakland as the players rallied around their loathing of Finley, at least when they weren’t fighting each other (in-season, during playoffs, it didn’t matter).
Ultimately, Finley’s unwillingness to abide by Catfish Hunter‘s contract because of the tax implications to the team ultimately led to the baseball free agency.
I knew of many of the stories, but Turbow provides details and background that make the stories more compelling and simply unbelievable. Clubhouse fights resulting in injured players missing games? World Series rings with cut glass and no diamonds? Players threatening to not play a World Series game? The book tells the story of a team that won three World Series despite all the off-field distractions, getting results on the field that allowed glossing over what otherwise would have led to player and owner suspensions. The team was capable of winning a fourth or even fifth World Series if not for a meddling owner whom disassembled the talent simply because he could. An incredible, mind-blowing story.
