Charlie Finley

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.

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.

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.

Fate, however, would play a role in Finley's fourth, and ultimately successful, attempt to enter baseball — and it would come from his 1954 target, now the Kansas City Athletics.

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.

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.

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, Kentucky 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

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.

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 mi 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.

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.

(The mule died in 1976, at age 20.)

Finley died three days shy of his 78th birthday.

His former wife, who remarried, died in 2010.

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.