MLB: The Swingin' A's

[Music] [Applause] an estimated 20 000 people showed up at the oakland airport to welcome home their world champion athletics man have i got a story for you it's about a ball club my ball club it was better than any other ball club ever put together here [Applause] i'm serious they were that great but the thing was they were also kind of crazy the a's were like sort of this orphanage gone man we just got used to being different i'm talking about the way they play and how they fought he threw me under the bus they fought each other he hits reggie next thing i know we're bouncing around in lockers ray fosse went out on a gurney and they fought for the team's owner oh he hated us my veins were popping i wanted to go across the table and choke him yeah the owner he was kind of let's just say complicated when i walked in here it reminded me of a den of thieves you'd sell your house if he became your neighbor but complicated in a genius type of way he's the guy that put together this this crazy bunch they opened they had a fist fight but they're right on target into another world series what i'm saying is three consecutive world series titles aren't the only legacy of the openings of the 70s no man the legacy is how they did it we kicked their ass cox said like that what they didn't care about we won that's all it counts and what they somehow overcame is the turmoil going on in that clubhouse like we're led to believe does anybody like anybody over there trust me because i had a front row seat and i'll never forget what i saw here at the oakland coliseum we were a special breed we were one of the great dynasties fighting a's swinging a's mustache gang love them [Music] my first guest tonight is a very colorful man and he's guided the oatland athletics to five consecutive division championships and three consecutive world championships would you welcome please charlie o finley [Music] you want to talk about the swinging a's then you gotta start and finish with charles oscar finley better known as charlie oh i hate to speak ill of the day but the guy was out of his mind he was a piece of work charlie was a piece of work you could write a book how not to run an organization i mean it was just terrible incidentally can you be fine for being on the show tonight i'd like it i'd like you to do something where you wouldn't be fine i probably will be finley was the caricatured scrooge mcduck a guy who would perpetually choke a quarter to see if he could kick up three dimes a guy who didn't mind manipulating people he was just a bunch of fooly man well the first time i met him he cut my salary 20 i mean when you start the relationship off on that you know it's going to be kind of a war after the 72 world series i was making 29 000 bucks and charlie finley that winner sent me a one thousand dollar raise and i said you gotta be kidding me so i called him up i told charlie what he could do with his raise and uh slammed the phone down and uh from that day on i didn't say one word to charlie finley can you live with the criticism when the people get on here well johnny sometimes it gets a little rough yeah but you know you've got a grin and barrett [Music] mr finley bought the team in 1960 when they were the kansas city a's and from the outset he didn't fit into any old baseball establishment and he never would charlie finley was an insurance mogul from the midwest loved baseball but also i think saw baseball as a way of improving his status charlie came in as the rank outsider and when you say old boys clubs about you know the owners of the time it truly was that he was so not their guy you know the guy who you know brought a mule to the ballpark and then brought it to hotels on the road charlie or the mule who not only smiles but kneels for you so nicely charlie oh the jackass a missouri mule absolutely we used to think of very appropriate he was kind of a carny it was all about bringing attention to the team and bringing people out but at the same time he wasn't putting a quality product on the field this all changes in the late 60s he slowly and kind of single-handedly because he doesn't really trust anybody builds the great dynasty of the 1970s i mean there were a lot of great ballplayers in the mid 60s that came up and he signed all of them charlie had some of the scouts on the other teams taking a little cash under the table or something to give him some tips whoever knew mr finley was never shy about shaking things up and in 1968 when he got sick of low attendance in kansas city he moved the team west and oakland california that's where i come into the story charlie finley he finds this kid stanley burrell dancing for change in the parking lot hires him to be kind of a gopher he was just a cute little kid you know we didn't know he was going to become what he became stanley burrell who's known as m.c hammer hammer we called him little hammer because he looked just like hank aaron if he put him side by side he looked like he was a baby hammer the hammer and basically he's there to spy on the players everybody thought well how's charlie finding out everything that's going on in the clubhouse and we found out that it was a clubhouse kid and every time a player would do something hammer would get on the phone to charlie back in chicago and say hey this guy's doing this rally skull and pipeline pipeline pipeline yeah pipeline right how about we just get on with the story the story of mr finley and his swinging aides the team that looked like no one else acted like no one else and won more than just about anyone else too you can talk about the owner the fights and all the other crap but then again oh my god these guys are three-time champions that's good enough for me the only thing that my ball players and myself are interested in today is doing everything within our power to bring a championship team to oakland the a's very first game in oakland was april 17 1968. it was a sold out crowd at the coliseum and the scene was typical charlie finley he pulled out all the stops but he still had to convince a whole lot of doubters we got a rocky start a senator said oakland is the luckiest team since hiroshima the a's came into town you know as kind of orphans we had to try to sell people on the idea that we're not very good now we've been losing 100 games a year but we're going to be better because of these young guys that are coming up now for the oakland athletics reggie jackson barely anyone had ever heard of the guys on the team we didn't know how great they'd become philly just threw us all out there i think our average on the field age the starting lineup was 22 in 68. i can't tell you how good of a player bando was or how good of a player joe rudy was or how good of a player that the gene tennis was campaneris and you throw a hall of fame reliever in there and a hall of fame starter in there watching them play was like watching a boa constrictor eat you know they didn't win 11-1 they'd win three to two and they just slowly choke you and they just did it day after day so they dawned on people awfully late that this was a juggernaut in the making the a's won 82 games in 1968. i know it doesn't sound like much but it was the first time in 16 years the franchise had a winning record then in 69 they got even better thanks most of all to the birth of a superstar you seem to be waiting for your pitch a little bit more well yes this is true spring training uh joe dimaggio and i did work on several things especially my hitting i had a great year most homers i hit in one season the only bad part of the season is that we didn't win the championship reggie jackson was one of the best players in the game but this was before free agency in the collective bargaining agreement he was making twenty thousand dollars a season so he did what most of us would do he asked his boss for a raise right now we are uh i'd have to say far apart in in uh uh reaching some type of agreement as far as dollars and cents are concerned he didn't pay anybody he didn't pay the brothers the white guys the polox the jewels the italians he didn't pay anybody in retrospect it brought us together because we had one common enemy money would always be one of the two biggest problems between charlie oh and his swinging a's the other was charlie was hands on which is kind of funny because charlie lived in chicago but he had his ways he was always plugged in i can't even tell you how many times during the middle of a game the phone and the dugout would ring and it'd be finally wanting to talk to the manager he wanted a lineup change or he wanted this or wanted that i remember one time the phone rang i picked up the phone and said hello charlie and he said who's the boy said who's this his finger says well this is charlie don't you ever answer the phone like that again still the players they made sure they were always plugged in too at the time we had a few players that would call charlie if they were upset about their playing status or things weren't going the way they thought they should charlie played favorites if you're one of charlie's guys and you got upset you go right to charlie and he called the manager you know and just like spanked the guy he was a terror with his managers that's why he went through so many of them during mr finley's first 10 seasons of owning the a's franchise the team had yep count them that's right ten different managerial changes but mr finley's 11th hire in 1971 he would stick around a little bit longer his name was dick williams and sure enough he comes in there he says fellas i understand the problems here part of it is that you guys are under the owner with problems it's not going to happen so for the rest of this day you can call them every hour is off they'll take the call but starting tomorrow if any one of you guys has a problem and you go to charlie i will have your ass that stop it williams's great gift other than the fact he was a great manager was that he would tell finley no and his players knew that dick was not the kind of a guy that everybody had to like he was really tough i came up with the bases loaded early in the game and i popped up as i was walking by him he says 300 hit her my ass just under his breath but he knew how to motivate guys when you went into his office i called it going into the going behind the iron curtain because he would close that door and chew you out man but the truth was that dick williams suited vital blue just fine that year at age 21 he won the mvp and the scion blue has shown baseball fans around the world that he is the complete pitcher even more importantly the club won 101 games and made the postseason for the first time since mr finley bought the team in 71 i guess you have to say it's been the year of the open age the big green machine the galley green giant we really put it together this year with a great manager great fishing staff some great offense and some great defense but in the playoffs they got swept by the defending champs the orioles we were just in all just to be there and baltimore i mean they've been there before we weren't ready for them yet it was different story next year [Music] in spring training in 1972 reggie shows up in a full beard we had rules no facial hair a reggie wore a beard and as reggie's want to do tells every reporter in sight i don't care if charlie finley doesn't like it so now charlie figures okay he's going to use reverse psychology on reggie so he came up with this mustache charlie told everybody on the ball club if you have a mustache on opening day you get 300 bucks now obviously that doesn't sound like a lot today 300 was 300 back then so he figured if reggie sees what's happening he'll shave his beard off and that's what brought charlie was one but it didn't work took me about three and a half to four months some of the guys told me not to cut it off and keep it i've had it ever since i never shaved it off i just kept it and kept getting longer and longer and uh i kind of like it right now my wife likes it and i'll just keep it as long as i can that's the only reason why i grew this thing was to get 300 bucks out of charlie so we kept the beard we kept our mustaches we started winning that became our trademark yeah they looked pretty cool and they won a lot of games more games actually than any other club in the american league in 1972. and just as important for the a's they had an identity like no other club we were considered a blue-collar stepchild of the bay area san francisco had the glitz and the glamour whereas oakland always wore its edge on its sleep we played in the perfect place at the right time for that we played about five miles from berkeley and the kids at berkeley loved us because we were the counter cultural guys we were hated by the other teams hated by other fans we got in fights everybody wanted to come out to the ballpark to see the crazies from oakland back in the playoffs the a's had another rough battle on their hands this time with the detroit tigers it took all five games but they fought their way to their first world series only thing was it came with a huge loss we lost reggie and on a double steel [Music] [Applause] i paid a price and can't play in the world series but maybe if i didn't score the run we wouldn't be here so we are here and that's what does count now we had to go into the big red machine without reggie oh the big red machine the cincinnati reds the class of the national league old school and no joke loaded with big stars and big confidence and favored big to just blow the a's out i mean you look at bench tony perez morgan pete rose these guys are hall of famers welcome to game one of the 1972 world series they have contrasting styles the a's look different they're the mod gang cincinnati demands his players the business-like approach and look it was billed as culture versus counter culture the hair against the squares i think they called it hairs against the squares we weren't squares but we just we you know tony perez johnny bench joe morgan davey concepcion they're not long hair guys it's just one in their dna we weren't given much of a chance against the big bad cincinnati reds but it's not what you look like as if you can play go on a home run for gene tennis and the a's grabbed the lead to see gene tennis do what he did he had only hit five home runs all year tennis sets a series record with round trippers his first two times up and man a lot he has two in the first game gene tennis had been the backup catcher most of the season but as the starter in the world series he got hot and in a series where six of the seven games would be decided by just one run every one of them would matter i've never experienced a week like that seven games like that it's never happened again gene tennis now is the first catcher to hit four homers in a world series that was unbelievable seven games where you're looking at a ball it looks like batting practice pitch to you gene's big series wasn't all roses though thanks to a scary situation with an angry reds fan in cincinnati before game six this guy was popping off and this lady overheard him say if this tennis guy is on that home run he's gonna shoot me well she goes and gets a security guard and they pull him out of line and sure enough he had a bloated revolver on him and a bottle of whiskey i'm with the fbi the rest of the series but the funniest about the whole story is i get a letter from this guy 10 years later apologize paid his dues went to jail how about that one the reds forced game seven at riverfront stadium but that day tennis again had the big hit to put the a's up for good one more time i really hate to talk about that series because i made the last out of that series i hit the left center off of fingers and joe rudy ran it down i was over there and got the ball and we were just jumping up and down and screaming we couldn't believe that we had won the world series against the big red machine that's what you dream about as a kid and then all of a sudden it's there and it's over in five seconds but what are five seconds it was phenomenal flying back into oakland that first time there was just thousands of people everywhere there was more people at the airport it wasn't the ballpark it's crazy going from almost obscurity to one in the world series can't really describe the feeling we were the first pro team to win any kind of a championship in the bay area and after 72 everybody said wait a minute these guys may look stupid they may act stupid and we can't stand them but they are pretty good though and we're gonna have to take them serious [Applause] when 1973 got going the a's were defending champs but early on they weren't playing like it he's got him we started off real bad we even got the 500 until right about mid-season it was kind of a struggle that year so charlie comes in from chicago and you're not going to believe who he brought in the bear he brings bear bryant from alabama philly had been raised in birmingham and had got to know bear bryant of course this was during bear's you know heyday it went in all the national championships bear came in and talked about how hard it was to repeat you know you win one it's so hard to win the second one i don't know if that made us better but i know we just kept playing and kept winning yays finally got hot in august taking over first place for good meanwhile in the front office there was a young man climbing up the corporate ladder hey that's me m.c hammer constantly come up and ask if he could do anything charlie really liked how he how hard he was willing to work he promotes this teenage kid from the streets of oakland like higher and higher into the organization until eventually he's the vice president of the oakland a's one day charlie said i want hammer to do an inning a play-by-play tonight i said okay third inning comes i introduce hammer one out later i get a phone call from bill dwyer the general manager of our flagship radio station that had the rights to the ball games said get that kid off the air that was just one of the things that charlie did almost like saying to baseball you've got the scouting department you got general managers i've got emcee hammer mr finley might have treated me well but the players felt otherwise and after they channeled those feelings into a third straight division title the a's beat the orioles in five games in the playoffs to get back to the world series welcome to the 1973 world series the national league champs the new york mets versus the american league champions the open aids the a's were big favorites over the mets but after they took a one to nothing series lead game two went into extra innings and in the 12th a chain of events began to steal makes the players angry all these years later second baseman mike andrews made two big errors that cost das to gain mike andrews and afterwards mr finley lost it and took andrews off the roster they wanted mike to agree they had an arm problem charlie got the team doctor right up i guess a phony medical report that something wrong with his shoulder and went into his office and i read the report which in my opinion was a total lie and i told him i wouldn't sign it he says okay if you're not gonna sign it fine we'll get it through without you andrews did end up signing the document so the team could legally bring in another player to replace him but his teammates were outraged we had a meeting and basically the gist of that meeting was if mike andrews is not reinstated tomorrow morning we're boycotting the rest of the world series we expressed our opinion and we're going to express our opinion and when something like that happens from the top of a ball club there's nothing the players can do except express their opinion fortunately bowie q the commissioner did not allow the change in players and mike andrews stayed on the team and got a standing ovation [Applause] and he's wearing an open age uniform the ovation at shea stadium came when andrews pinch hit in game four well i can't recall any stories like this he ground it out but i think everybody had made their point got a standing ovation from 50 000 people in new york and the only two people that didn't stand up was charlie and his wife and that was great we loved it it was the middle of the world series but already dick williams had decided that for him the andrews incident was the last straw dick came in after we got mike reinstated and said you know i just can't take any more of this at the end of the world series regardless of what happens he said i'm finished i'm done i cannot deal with charlie finley anymore but this was a team that seemed to thrive in the chaos down 3-2 in the series they won game six and then in game seven reggie jackson just about took care of all the rest by himself you know he loved the light that red light on the camera and that's what he called mr october jackson's blast is a cliche the a's lead four nothing reggie caught fire in oakland and just carried us to to win that next world series [Music] it was great to win but it was almost surreal it was not nearly as joyous because finley was very upset with us in fact that when we got our world series rings that year he did not put a diamond in the ring it was the first time in major league history that there was no diamond in the ring he just chose to make a point you know saying if you guys go against me then i'll i can punish you and that was his way of punishing us was to give us a cheap ring it looked like something that came out of cracker jackpot no lie that was the downfall between charlie finley and the players when we got our rings that's when everything started going south [Music] when we would go into chicago never fail i'd get a call from mr finley and he'd say i want you to come over the office and i want to talk to you and this one time he started talking about his wife and his divorce and everything he broke down and started crying that was the side of him that you hardly saw we had a picture when we were playing double a ball his wife got really sick and finley hired a private plane flew her to the mayo clinic in minnesota paid for all of her medical care and everything was never in the paper never said anything about that he would do that kind of stuff but when it came to business he would battle and he was very steadfast after winning our second world series charlie sent me the same contract as i had made in 72 no raise [Music] so i sent it back and charlie just starts ripping into me calling me names ungrateful sob sending that contract back so i took him to arbitration that off season before 1974 salary arbitration hearings were a new thing for baseball we go to arbitration and finley says mr arbitrator the only reason that this pitcher here had a real good year is i've got the greatest relief pitcher in baseball raleigh fingers who saved all of his wins the next guy in the arbitration was raleigh finley tells the arbitrators mr arbitrator let me tell you something the only reason this guy got 20 something saves is i've got the three best starting pitchers in baseball the same arbitrator hears both cases needless to say he lost both cases when i got up there he said balls go buy them on the left balls go buy them on the right balls go through his leg i can't pay this guy with what they're asking and so my veins were popping i wanted to go across the table and choke them my wife was trying to calm me down me and kenny holtzman hated him or shagging fly balls in right field during batting practice before the game we look over in the dugout and i said holtzy look over there there's charlie he's in the dugout he's doing a tv interview him and i said let's let's get this guy and we both threw balls at him from outfield to dugout see if we could hit him and then we laid down and started doing sit-ups by the time the balls got there he had no idea where they came from so yeah things were getting uglier and uglier in oakland and mr finley's choice to replace dick williams one mr alvin dark his old manager from kansas city that didn't make the players much happier i don't think charlie could get anybody i think almond was probably his only choice out there so they had a new manager but they were still the swinging a's swinging by the way in more ways than one we're sitting here playing cards all of a sudden we see billy north and i was facing his way he hits reggie bam and now here it goes it was a legitimate knock-down fist fight i kind of attribute that to being young and full of testosterone and your egos getting in the way vita came over try to break it up it was our starting pitcher that night he got stepped on reggie hurt his shoulder ray fossey went out on a gurney next day in the newspaper he's fighting again [Music] and two weeks later they weren't just fighting they were slumping barely over 500 it felt like the season was on the brink after the game we came marching back up into the locker room and mando was really upset i'm mad that i made the last out i'm mad that we lost so as i come into the clubhouse i kick the trash can and i say alvin dark couldn't manage a meat market oh god an elephant's right there i don't think that alvin was four feet behind him in the walking in the clubhouse when he said that and everybody ever it got real quiet i give alvin credit he said look i'm not dick williams i don't do things his way you guys are two-time defending champions if you don't go out and play on your own he says it doesn't matter what i do so get your butts in gear sure enough from there the a's took off he won another division title and had no problem with the orioles in the american playoffs championship but then in the world series things wouldn't begin easy the 1974 world series against the dodgers fingers and his wife were on the rocks and before game one blue moon odom approaches raleigh fingers and says who's leaving tickets for your wife's boyfriend today you he said something to me i said something to him he said something back to me next thing i know we're in bouncing around in lockers i'm sitting out in the dugout and here came the clubhouse guy from the visiting clubhouse he said yeah you can't believe what's going on back in that dressing room said i heard these guys don't like each other said they're fighting back there right now they're having a huge fight i felt backwards i hit my head on a locker and had about five or six stitches in my head and he sprained his ankle the openings they've already had a fist fight but they're right on target into another world series you know the dodgers were popping off a couple guys made comments that there's only two guys on the oakland a's that could make the la dodgers and i said really i mean we just won two world championships and we're going into a third and there's only two guys on our team that could make the dodgers kind of pissed everybody off we just kind of took it personally as a group and we we kicked their ass long drive to deep left going and gone accident field here's how i kind of sum up our club you got two brothers and they fight constantly and this kid across the street comes over now he wants to pick on one of these brothers and that'll do it well now the other brother comes in and said that's not gonna happen that's the kind of club we have we can fight and we can argue but nobody else is gonna mess with us they blow through the dodgers four games to one in 1974. it's not even close [Applause] we beat the dodgers in five games and i was on the podium being interviewed down below me sitting waiting to be interviewed raleigh fingers and blue moon odom with their arms around each other 74 let us know that whatever people said about us in the past it didn't matter when you win the first time everybody points you know back and says hey they were a very good team when you win twice now it's a super good team when you win it the third time i think it kind of puts the stamp on your legacy there's so many wonderful organizations there won three world championships it's the yankees [Music] that's pretty remarkable it was jubilation at that time it was as if we thought this will go on forever [Music] [Applause] in the wake of the a's third straight world series title in 1974 there was one player already looking for a way out of the madness catfish said guys after this world series i'm not going to be with the oakland a's this is my last year playing with you guys i'm talking about catfish hunter knew that mr finley had missed an insurance payment on his contract and he took his case to an arbitrator and sure enough catfish was granted free agency he can negotiate with any team he likes and demand anything he thinks they'll pay it i mean how stupid is that to lose a guy that won the cy young award with 25 wins and not paying and that's just the way charlie was so you know katrina said i'm gone it makes me sit in the driver's seat of a big limousine or something catfish signed for three and a half million dollars with the yankees that left a big hole in our pitching staff you're just not gonna fill a catfish hunter hole even though the a's won their fifth straight division title in 75 they fell to the boston red sox in the playoffs and misery was on its way in three straight the red sox defeat we missed catfish hunter and that was the beginning of the unraveling of the end of the oakland and the unraveling would be completed the next year when free agency became the rule of law in the game the historic court decision striking down baseball's reserve clause allowing players to become free agents after playing out their existing contracts spring training in 1976 most of the a's refuse to sign a new contract with finley because they know when the season ends i'm going to be able to market myself to the highest bidder i mean he could have signed us but he didn't want to spend the money if it's so futile to be a baseball owner why are you still in the business well you know sometimes i ask myself the same damn question nine players on the a's roster were going to be eligible for free agency after the 76th season mr finley wasn't going to pay them but he wasn't going to walk away empty-handed he knew he had to get ahead of the game and his first move was a shocker early in the season right after spring training finley traded reggie and holtzman to baltimore mr finley wasn't done not by a long shot at the trade deadline in june he sold vital blue to the yankees and sent both raleigh fingers and joe rudy to boston it was a pair of deals that made him three and a half million dollars and we're playing boston that night last night in the latest bizarre chapter of the oakland franchise fingers and rudy were in the boston dugout wearing red sox uniforms i got to the ballpark hey you just been traded to the red sox so i went in the clubhouse picked up all my junk out of my locker went across the hall to the red sox locker room it was really surreal and i was just a mess i mean because i've been with that team for 15 years vivada blue moving was even more stunning because mr finley had actually just signed him to a new contract with a very uncharacteristic raise philly had more or less tricked vita into signing a contract and he had gotten sold to the yankees but they wouldn't take him unless he signed and the yankees basically said you know paying whatever he wants he added more money to the number that we have been talking about and of course i go sign the contract in good faith by the time i get back halfway home the hourly news had me going to the yankees i'm like what what questions are being raised about the sale and baseball commissioner bowie kuhn has scheduled a hearing in new york if i vote any better i'd go see a doctor for fear something was wrong i have a telegram from commissioner bowie [ __ ] in the scrapbook saying just stay put the regret is i didn't sell more i guess bowie decided you know you can't sell all these guys like cattle and charlie thought he could bowie kung today canceled the three and a half million dollar sale of three oakland athletic stars charlie oh was furious with the decision and in protest he refused to let vita raleigh and joe rudy rejoin the team charlie was so upset he told us you guys aren't going to be in uniform we weren't in uniform for two weeks so we basically played with 22 guys for two weeks and all the players were upset they were pissed off even we tell you how we got it reinstated we're going to strike it all came to a head on june 27th as the team's new manager chuck tanner was filling out his lineup card salvanna went in his old chuck you'd call up charlie we're not going to play today everybody's in their street close uh 15 minutes for the game we're not going to play the game against minnesota you're going to lose the gate tanner's on the phone with charlie in chicago they're going back and forth what are they doing what are they doing they're walking charlie i'm telling you they're sitting in their lockers they're ready to go right out there in the car they go home chuck told him on the phone said charlie the boys ain't gonna play they can't do that i wasn't mad at these guys he said you got this lineup coach i got one with rudy and one without which one you all may take out there and read it to him chuck came out of his office and he read the lineup [Music] leading off billy north burt capeneris hitting third playing left field joe rudy place went crazy that's how we got got us back on the roster the players might have felt like they won that battle but in the end they couldn't overcome what two weeks without those three stars did to the team we lost our division by two and a half to kansas city two weeks we lost service of joe rudy is our third place here vita in our rotation and raleigh out of that building we might have had a two and a half game lead at times i thought they speak and i thought he didn't want us to win because now you got to pay he won't do that it was like every last bridge had burned and as they packed up their lockers at the end of that 76 season they knew it was over i knew it was over for our swinging a's if there were ever a time when you'd think at this time for a funeral that was it dies were dead you know there's an old saying that if you want to see the sunshine you got to weather the storm right now we're uh i'm going through a storm and uh i feel it won't be too long before i'll be looking at the sunshine and the rainbow no rainbow looked to be coming to oakland in 1977 when the a's lost 98 games and the only reminder of the good times was poor old vital blue stuck in oakland thanks to that contract extension he had been tricked into signing i'm there all by myself now we're in a rebuilding state and go live i was just on three world championship teams to be an oakland a's fan can be a lonely existence wow the the highs and lows of this business the emotional roller coaster that you're on was quite telling and i was very frustrated up until the few years ago it was a battle of the wets now today it's a battle of how much you got on the hip by 79 it was a franchise that looked like it wanted to die and that's when he got out perhaps the most controversial owner in all of sports charles o finley has given up the reins it was very emotional for him charlie called and was weeping saying he wished he hadn't sold the team i loved baseball i was in it for 20 years and i do regret that i'm not in the game today because i do miss it it's almost as if you're cool if you are a charlie finley hater and that's what i want to see done away with and let people know the positive side in what we achieved you know players are going to remember the fights obviously and the miserable way he used to talk to us and treat us like crap and then on the other hand you say you know what he's the guy that put together this this crazy bunch maybe maybe he wasn't that crazy maybe he knew what he was doing you know and maybe he deserves some credit for doing it [Applause] everything they did everything they want will never be forgotten but just think about it how many more championships could the a's have won we were on the verge of something real special the oakland a's are the world champions of baseball the sad part about it is that the nucleus of our ball team who knows we might have won that fourth might have won the field for the row who knows that's what's so frustrating about it we never give an opportunity to see if we could accomplish that if we just stayed together with the same exact team i think we could have won two or three more world championships but you know charlie wouldn't let that happen so they still talk about the maidens but they'll also never stop talking about how great it was [Applause] even the big red machine doesn't dominate the nationally the way the oakland has dominated the american league in the first half of the 1970s i don't think we got the respect that we deserve if our team was in new york or in chicago or in l.a we would have been greatest team in the in the decade we were one of the great dynasties we won five divisions three world series in a row we were a special breed and when you look back at it you have a great appreciation for it and you're thankful that you were part of it i wish more people saw it well i saw it the titles it's been a long hard grind but they made it the fights the openings were still squabbling and everything in between there was just no other team like the swinging age nobody believed they could do it but themselves there was just no other group that will ever give you a story like this one you

Channel: cacable7

Views: 84,575

Rating: 4.8761821 out of 5

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Id: -PQwanQt7FM

Length: 44min 25sec (2665 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021