Finley Ball: How Two Baseball Outsiders Turned the Oakland A's into a Dynasty and Changed the Game Forever - Hardcover

How did an insurance salesman and a high school principal turn a down–and–out team into one of Major League Baseball's greatest dynasties—the Swingin' A's of Oakland, World Series champs in 1972, '73, and '74?

They didn't do it with money like those guys in the Bronx. They didn't do it with "sabermetrics," which makes for good movies but not World Series titles. And they certainly didn't do it with the help of the baseball establishment, which fought them every step of the way.

Finley Ball is the story of two outsiders—Charlie Finley, the A's maddeningly unconventional owner, and Carl, his cousin and right–hand man—who found themselves part of the ultimate insiders' club. Against all odds, they built one of the best teams ever to take the field and might have saved Major League Baseball in the process.

Telling the Finley side of the Finley story, Carl's daughter, Nancy, offers an unvarnished and often hilarious front–office account of her Uncle Charlie’s twenty-year reign as baseball’s enfant terrible. She reveals:

How Charlie Finley assembled a star-studded lineup—Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Bert Campaneris, Joe Rudi, and Sal Bando among them—and why he lost them

Why Finley hired his enemy Billy Martin as manager and how "Billy Ball" brought the A's back to their winning ways

The truth behind the World Series' biggest scandal, in which Finley allegedly forced pinch–hitter Mike Andrews to sign a fake injury report

How a powerful and jealous sportswriter drove Finley and the A's out of Kansas City in the late 1960s, making Oakland the capital of the baseball world in the 1970s

Why Commissioner Bowie Kuhn's vendetta against Finley paved the way for free agency

The rare neurological condition behind Finley's uncanny "3–D" sense of the game and the brightly colored uniforms that shook up the gray-flannel world of baseball

Charlie Finley was a showman, and his ball club sometimes looked like a combination of Mad Men and Looney Tunes. But by dragging Major League Baseball into the modern era, he saved it from decline and took the game to heights rarely attained. Every fan is in his debt.