Charles Oscar Finley (February 22, 1918 – February 19, 1996), nicknamed "Charlie O" or "Charley O", was an American businessman who owned Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics. Finley purchased the franchise while it was located in Kansas City, moving it to Oakland in 1968. He is also known as a short-lived owner of the National Hockey League's California Golden Seals and the American Basketball Association's Memphis Tams.
Finley was born in Ensley, Birmingham, Alabama, attended Ensley High School but was further raised in Gary, Indiana, and later lived in La Porte, 60 miles (100 km) east of Chicago. Finley made his fortune in the insurance business, being among the first to write group medical insurance policies for those in the medical profession.
Finley showed a penchant for flair and inventive business practices. Sometimes, when wooing prospective customers, Finley would drive the client through the richest section of Gary. Pointing out a large mansion, Finley would declare "That's my place there, but I'm having it remodeled right now." Finley's fortunes grew and he ended up owning a 40-story insurance building in downtown Chicago. In 1956, Charles Finley purchased a home built in 1942 on Johnson Road just north of Pine Lake in LaPorte, Indiana. He hired John Mihelic as his ranch caretaker. The property was a working cattle ranch which consisted of an 18th-century, eleven-room colonial manor house and nine barns with various outbuildings. Finley had a large mansion built on the property, keeping the colonial house as caretakers quarters. The new house, which featured rounded porticoes and columns, resembled the White House.
Finley had a large "Home of the Oakland A's" sign installed on the roof of another large barn where it could be viewed by vehicles passing on the Indiana toll road. It was to this place that Finley often brought the whole team and held picnics and pool parties attended by friends, business associates, and locals, who mingled with members of the team and took numerous photographs.
In 1941, Finley married the former Shirley McCartney. They had eight children before the marriage ended in a bitter divorce, the proceedings of which lasted 6 years. The Finleys separated in 1974, and according to a biographer, Finley was unfaithful during his marriage and frequently estranged both his friends and family. Shirley Finley won a massive divorce settlement. Finley was estranged from most of his children at the time of his death. Finley died three days shy of his 78th birthday. His former wife, who remarried, died in 2010.
Finley entered the ranks of Major League Baseball owners after multiple failed attempts to acquire franchises during the 1950s.
He first attempted to buy the Philadelphia Athletics in 1954, but American League owners instead approved the sale of the team to Arnold Johnson, who moved the club to Kansas City for the 1955 season.
In 1956, Finley unsuccessfully bid for the Detroit Tigers, who instead were sold to a Michigan-based group led by broadcasting magnates John Fetzer and Fred Knorr. In 1959, when Dorothy Comiskey Rigney put her majority holdings in the Chicago White Sox up for sale, Finley lost out to a group headed by Bill Veeck. Then, one year later, he was among a group of contenders for the American League expansion franchise earmarked for Los Angeles, but actor, singer and broadcasting tycoon Gene Autry ended up as the founding principal owner of the Angels.
Fate, however, would play a role in Finley's fifth, and ultimately successful, attempt to enter baseball — and it would come from his 1954 target, now the Kansas City Athletics. On March 3, 1960, owner Arnold Johnson died suddenly and unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 54. The second-division Athletics struggled through a last-place season while being operated by Johnson's estate. Just weeks after Finley lost his bid for the Angels' franchise, on December 19, 1960, he purchased the estate's controlling interest in the Athletics; he then bought out the minority owners a year later. Finley quickly started to turn the franchise around, refusing to make deals with the New York Yankees (for which the Athletics had been criticized) and searching for unheralded talent. From 1961 onward, Finley was effectively his own general manager, though the A's nominally had someone who had the title or duties of general manager until 1966.
Finley also repeatedly tried to move the team. In January 1964 he reached an agreement with Louisville, to move the team there for the 1964 season, signing a two-year lease on a stadium. When that proposed move was blocked by the American League he entertained offers from Denver and San Diego
Charlie-O becomes the Athletics' mascot
Finley replaced the Athletics' traditional elephant mascot with a live mule. "Charlie-O" was paraded about the outfield, into cocktail parties and hotel lobbies and into the press room after a large feeding to annoy reporters. (The mule died in 1976, at age 20.)
After supposedly being told by manager Ed Lopat about the Yankees' success being attributable to the dimensions of Yankee Stadium, Finley built the "K.C. Pennant Porch" in right field in April 1964, which brought the right field fence in Municipal Stadium to match Yankee Stadium's dimensions exactly, just 296 feet (90 m) from home plate. However, a rule passed in 1958 held that no (new or renovated) major-league fence could be closer than 325 feet (99 m), so league officials forced Finley to move the fences back after two exhibition games.
The A's owner then ordered a white line to be painted on the field at the original "Pennant Porch" distance, and told the public address announcer to announce "That would have been a home run in Yankee Stadium" whenever a fly ball was hit past that line but short of the fence. The practice was quickly abandoned after it turned out that the announcer was calling more "would-be" home runs for the opposition than the A's.
In 1963, Finley changed the team's colors to Kelly Green, Fort Knox Gold, and Wedding Gown White. In 1967, he replaced the team's traditional black spikes with white. Finley also started phasing out the team name "Athletics" in favor of "A's." (When Mickey Mantle saw the A's' green-and-gold uniforms, he jeered, "They should have come out of the dugout on tippy-toes, holding hands and singing," according to Baseball Digest.)
When the Beatles made their August/September 1964 concert tour of the United States, Finley was determined to bring them to Kansas City to perform at Municipal Stadium. Seeing one open date on the tour, Finley offered and paid the Beatles $150,000 ($1,557.1 million+ today) for a concert on September 17, 1964, erasing a scheduled off day for the band in New Orleans. The tickets read: "CHARLES O. FINLEY/ IS PLEASED TO PRESENT..FOR THE ENJOYMENT/ OF THE BEATLE FANS IN MID-AMERICA/ 'THE BEATLES'/ IN PERSON” on the front, and showed a photograph of Finley wearing a Beatles wig on the back with the quote, "Today's Beatle's (sic) Fans/ Are/ Tomorrow's Baseball Fans." John Lennon was quoted later as saying he disliked Finley's attempt to strong-arm the Beatles into playing longer than their then-standard half-hour concert set. The Beatles' $150,000 fee for the concert was considered a show business record for a one-night stand appearance.
Finley visited the group's manager, Brian Epstein, in San Francisco on August 19, 1964, where the Beatles were playing the first date of the tour. He told Epstein that he was disappointed that Kansas City was not among the group's itinerary, and offered first $50,000 and then $100,000 if the Beatles would schedule a concert in the Missouri city. Epstein refused, pointing out that on the only free date available, September 17, the band was scheduled for a day of rest in New Orleans. Finley encountered Epstein again in Los Angeles a week later and they agreed on $150,000.
The A's (as they were officially known from 1970) moved to California in January 1968, just as the new talent amassed over the years in the minors (such as Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Catfish Hunter, Rollie Fingers, and Vida Blue) became ready for the Majors. Marvin Miller, the founder of MLB's players union, called him "absolutely the best judge of baseball talent I've ever seen."