TODAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

August 23, 1980, Charlie Finley sells the Oakland A’s to the Levi Strauss company for nearly $13 million. During Finley’s reign in Oakland, the A’s won three consecutive World Championships. Finley also influenced the adoption of the designated hitter, World Series night games, and multi-colored uniforms.

Every era of baseball has its characters, but Charlie Finley operated on his own frequency entirely — and the way he hired his own play-by-play man proves it.

In the mid-1960s, Finley had just bought the Kansas City Athletics. One night, riding in a car with GM Pat Friedman, he decided on the spot to fire announcer Eddie Lopat — who was out fishing and had no idea his job had just ended. The next day, Finley walked into a hotel elevator and was introduced to a young local sportscaster named Monte Moore. Without so much as asking if he'd ever called a baseball game, Finley said: "Hey kid, how'd you like to do my A's broadcasts?" Moore said yes — and just days later, having missed all of spring training and not knowing a single player on the roster, he was on the air calling major league baseball for the first time.

That was Finley in a nutshell: impulsive, demanding, and endlessly inventive. He dreamed up an orange baseball because he thought it would be easier for hitters to see (players hated it — they said it ruined their ability to read the spin). He adopted a live mule named Charlie O. as the team's mascot, parading him around the ballpark before games and even bringing him indoors — including into the lobby of a New York City hotel, complete with a small fence and hay on the carpet. He offered players $300 bonuses just to grow mustaches. He installed a mechanical rabbit behind home plate that popped up out of the ground to hand the umpire fresh baseballs — until it jammed mid-game and delayed play.

Finley also used his broadcasters as his personal news service, calling into the booth mid-game to announce trades live on the air before the players themselves even knew. It didn't always go smoothly — Moore once gently joked on TV that a giveaway batting helmet "isn't safe enough to actually bat in." Finley was so furious he punched a wall and broke his own hand.

But for all the theatrics, Finley was also a genuine baseball mind. He built the Oakland A's into a three-time World Series champion dynasty (1972-1974), assembling a roster stacked with future Hall of Famers. He wasn't afraid of a fight either, famously clashing with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn over player sales and league authority in battles that helped reshape how much control an owner could exert over his own team. And even at the very end of his ownership, his eye for talent hadn't dimmed — his last significant moves included hiring Billy Martin as manager and drafting a skinny outfielder out of Oakland named Rickey Henderson, who'd go on to become the game's greatest leadoff hitter and all-time stolen base king.

Difficult, brilliant, and never boring — that was Charlie O. Finley, the man who built champions, fought the commissioner, and launched Monte Moore's broadcasting career one elevator ride at a time.

Todays Podcast

August 23, 1936, future Hall of Famer Bob Feller makes his first major league start and strikes out the first eight batters he faces. The Cleveland Indians’ rookie finishes the game with 15 strikeouts and a complete-game victory.

August 23, 1942 — Walter Johnson pitching to Babe Ruth is the pregame attraction that draws 69,000 for the New York-Washington game at Yankee Stadium that provides $80,000 for Army-Navy relief. Ruth hits the fifth pitch into the right-field stands, and then adds one more shot before circling the bases. Sixteen relief games contribute $523,000 during the season. In the doubleheader between the Senators and the Yankees, the Senators win the opener, 7 – 6 and New York cops the nitecap, 3 – 0, in 5 1/2 innings.

August 23, 1958 — Gil Hodges hits his 14th career grand slam in the Dodgers’ 10-1 victory over Milwaukee at LA Memorial Coliseum. The first baseman’s bases-full round-tripper establishes a new National League record, but is far fewer than Lou Gehrig’s major league mark of 23.

August 23, 1961 — In the 14-0 rout of the Reds at Crosley Field, the Giants score twelve runs in the top of the ninth with 10 hits along with three Cincinnati errors. Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou, Jim Davenport (inside-the-park), Willie Mays, and John Orsino all go deep in the final frame to tie a major league team record with five round-trippers in an inning, joining the 1939 Giants and 1966 Twins.

Home runs by six different Giants tie the major-league record for a 9-inning game. San Francisco’s 27 total bases in the 9th inning are a modern major league record. Juan Marichal is the winner in the cakewalk, his 7th straight win.

August 23, 1963 — Milwaukee’s Warren Spahn sets a modern National League record—his 601st start surpassing Grover Alexander—while going all the way to defeat the Dodgers for his 343rd career win, but only after spending the better part of the day in Los Angeles filming what will prove to be the first and last performance of his acting career, on the popular World-War-II-set TV series, Combat. Spahn, himself a decorated WW II veteran and avowed fan of the series, appears in an uncredited but heavily publicized bit part as a German patrol. As one refreshingly frank TV critic will warn us prior to the November 5 air date, “This is Warren Spahn’s much-heralded appearance as a German soldier. If the National League saw as little of him as you will, he probably never would have won a game.”

August 23, 1979 — Commissioner Bowie Kuhn slaps Padres owner Ray Kroc with a $100,000 fine for tampering, following remarks Kroc made about potential free agents Joe Morgan and Graig Nettles.

August 23, 1982, Gaylord Perry of the Seattle Mariners is caught putting a foreign substance on the ball. Long suspected of throwing a “spitball,” Perry is ejected from a game for the first and only time in his career.

August 23, 1989 – Rick Dempsey homers off Dennis Martinez in the top of the 22nd inning to break up a scoreless tie and give the Dodgers a 1 – 0 win over the Expos. The game features one thumbing – the umps toss the Expos mascot Youppi! in the 11th for annoying Tommy Lasorda – and he then returns in the 13th wearing pajamas. He carries a pillow and sleeps on the home dugout roof, where the umps have restricted him. In the 16th, Larry Walker apparently scores the game-winner, but the Dodgers appeal – with two umps in the tunnel – and get the play revesed. Eddie Murray in the 18th moves the second base ump and slams a drive that Walker traps off the padding in RF. Fans stand for three “seventh-inning stretches” during the major-league record (in time, and for a 1 – 0 game) 6 hours, 14 minute game. Other club records are set and several major league records are noted: most innings (22) without a walk by the Expos tops the Pirates (who used one pitcher) against the Giants, July 17, 1914.

 ANSWER TO TODAY’S TRIVIA

TRIVIA ANSWER: RICKEY HENDERSON

He claimed it the day he passed Lou Brock in career steals. Sure, he flexed a little, but who’s to argue? Once asked if he thought Henderson was a future Hall of Famer, statistician \ Bill James replied, “If you could split him in two, you'd have two Hall of Famers.” He (Not Bill James.) played 72 games for BOS in 2002.

- #1 Henderson holds the record for career runs scored at 2,295 passing Ty Cobb to get there..

- #2 He was the leadoff spark for the 1989 Oakland A’s & the 1993 Toronto Blue Jays.

- #3 A taxi because he was born before Uber was.

Thank you Horsehide Trivia

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