Last Thursday, the Oakland Athletics played their final game in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum as the franchise, upset with politics, finances, and logistics, decided to move. This will be the third time the franchise has decided to pull up stakes to seek greener pastures. This last game recalled the franchise’s first years in the Bay Area and, especially, Charles O. Finley, who owned the A’s back then.

No matter how banal the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum might be, the team’s time there in the early 1970s was anything but. The franchise was one of really colorful teams in the game’s history, composed of characters both on and off the field. These men battled each other as much as they did their opponents. Finley nicknamed the team “The Swingin’ A’s” for a reason.

“Charley O” was regarded as that era’s chief skinflint, tighter than a drum, cheaper than Connie Mack, the first owner of the Philadelphia A’s. Mack, rather than rewarding his players for bringing “The City of Brotherly Love” their first title in any sport, traded or sold Philly’s heroes to other clubs in exchange for cheaper, mostly inferior talent.

Image: Charles Finley in 1976 (edited for clarity) YouTube screen grab.

Finley purchased the A’s and moved them from Kansas City—their second home and a place where they languished in the bottom half of the American League for 13 straight years—to the then-state-of-the-art Oakland Coliseum.

Finley, cagey, clever, and crafty in the insurance business where he made his cash, took the same skills to his new venture. When he moved the team to the Bay Area, he stocked it with a young, brash core of talented players soon to be champions.

It took just four years. His shrewd and astute baseball drafts, trades, and signings would result in a team that regained the winning edge it had in Philadelphia. But it was more than that. It was a juggernaut that would win three World Series consecutively in 1972, 1973, and 1974.

Put in perspective, Oakland’s “threepeat” was accomplished only three other times—all by the Yankees.

Three players from those teams became Hall of Famers. Those enshrined in Cooperstown are Jim “Catfish” Hunter, a nickname from Finley as a contract bonus; Rollie Fingers, who grew a handlebar mustache at the urging of Finley’s hair codes; and Reggie Jackson—simply “Reggie”—arguably the greatest player in Oakland A’s history.

However, the league perceived Finley not as a baseball genius but as a menace. Other owners and their figurehead, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, loathed him, believing him to be a problem and distraction.

Back to Fingers’ handlebar, it was Finley who turned his back on baseball’s conservative grooming codes, which had been enforced for decades. Instead, Finley went radical, rewarding players for growing their locks, beards, mustaches, sideburns, or beards.

Uniforms went from boring “road grays” and “home whites” to technicolor worn in different combinations on different days, none of which clashed with the white spikes many players were allowed to wear. The A’s became such a fashion statement that Finley included them along with the motto “The Swingin’ A’s” in the Oakland logo.

Yet, a players’ owner, he was not.

Finley routinely argued, belittled, and chastised his players, often providing minimal or no rewards for productive seasons. Finley threw one player, Mike Andrews, off the World Series roster after he committed two errors in a 1973 game against the New York Mets.

Finley also bullied the front office staff and harassed his managers before, during, and after games. Some he fired, others left under their own steam, and still others he traded.

Nevertheless, Finley’s A’s won in this stadium, making it was the center of the baseball universe for three straight Octobers.

Within the league, Finley feuded with the other owners on important baseball economics matters as he tried to grow the game and make it more popular. Owners just ostracized him thinking his ideas were lamebrain.

Finley even sued Kuhn for $10 million dollars after the Commissioner voided his trades. However, Finley lost his case in court when the judge upheld baseball’s “the best interests of the game” argument.

Ultimately, Finley’s personality overrode his genius. Because he was arrogant, narcissistic, and hubristic, he had a bad reputation among fans. Players also tired of his insults and nastiness. When liberated by free-agency, they fled ASAP. And fans who didn’t like to see their stars abused, boycotted him, effectively boycotting the team.

In the end, Finley, who brought winning in triplicate to a moribund franchise and to a city starving for their first professional sports team champion, became an albatross and sold the team he resurrected. He simply had no resources to compete in the game’s new economics.