Bowie Kuhn's Effect on the A's
by Gerard on Dec 4, 2007 4:33 PM PST
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PrintI believe it was Finley that had a larger impact than Kuhn could have dreamed of. Okay, orange fluorescent baseballs didn't stick. What did was the DH and prime time playoffs and WS, which was Finley's idea. Kuhn...I'm really not so sure of his efforts and how productive they were. Indellible, yes but not productive.
In 1976 Finley attempted to trade Rudi and Fingers to the Red Sox and Blue to the Yankees. His goal was to use that money to retain his other players before they left for free agency. Was his act any worse than that of Connie Mack's? Hardly. In today's version of player dumping no on else has done a better job than the Marlins, who have 2 WS rings in a phenomenally short amount of time.
So Kuhn, in all of his brilliance, decided the A's dynasty should stick together. Well, at the end of the 76' season, many of those "dynasty" players left via free agency and Finley was left to look like a pauper. The $3.5M he would have received would have allowed him to continue to compete. Some may argue he was only being greedy. Let's not forget it was his eye for talent that built that team. He enjoyed winning more than most of his contemporaries. Yet, Kuhn will now be enshrined for his contributions to baseball. Please explain them to me. Bowie Kuhn has passed away and so ends an era in baseball that from our standpoint is mixed. Before the era of steroids Kuhn was Commisioner during the period that brought free agency to baseball. Drug use occurred as amphetamines were passed out like candy but it was an accepted part of the baseball culture in some circles.Like many, Kuhn remained idealistic but his actions were quixotic.
On one hand Kuhn didn't want to see dynasties broken up but at the same time he is single handedly responsible for the breakup of the Swingin' A's. Did baseball really change under Kuhn or were there others that influenced the game more in my mind forever be linked to Finley due to that infamous intervention.
To think that the A's would have had the opportunity to retain their captain Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Gene Tenace, along with keeping Billy North and possibly resigning Mike Torrez and Don Baylor whom they received in the Reggie Jackson trade changes the perception and quality of the 1977 team immediately. Of course, its fun (and painful) to speculate about what could have been. But this, in my mind was the result of Kuhn's decision. Does Marvin Miller have a role in all of this? Absolutly. But no team was more devastated than the A's. Who benefitted? Yep, King George as we all saw Reggie and his Reggie bar reached tremendous popularity. Never mind that they ended up with Catfish Hunter and Ken Holtzman.
So what is your impression of Bowie Kuhn (for those that remember)? Does he stand out in a positive way or was his tenure mediocre or poor?
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I'm actually old enough to remember this...
Kuhn's move seems disastrous for the A's in retrospect, but free agency was new at the time and I don't think anyone other than Marvin Miller had any idea what was going to happen at year's end. It appeared at the time as an attempt to save A's fans from a greedy owner and a miserable rest of the season.
Bowie was viewed as a defender of the
populist stand? I didn't know that. Very interesting.
Finley's "apology" on behalf of village idiots everywhere is what I remember most about Bowie.
Kuhn knew that would destroy the A's
It was no secret that Kuhn hated Charlie Finley. I believe it was his intent to, with his ruling, make sure Finley could not keep a winning team together. Kuhn had often mentioned that he wanted to have baseball return to his native Washington D.C. after the Senators left in 1971. He wanted to move the A's. I can remember the Oakland Trib writing stories about the "impending " move.
Finley stuck with it, but the team was not very good. Somehow he still posted a profit, except for 1979, he lost about $50,000.
Baseball continued to implode with the strike of 1981, loosing almost half a season. I think Finley was right, he was the village idiot.
when does Finley get in?
The man was many things, a lot of them bad, but he built a winner. 15 of the 23 A's to see action in the '72 World Series, were drafted by the team. That seems pretty impressive to me. And that doesn't include Reggie, who was out with an injury that year. So really it's 16 players, three of whom are in Cooperstown.
Time that Finley joins them.
I'm not sure
that Kuhn deserves quite as much blame as I'm seeing above for the breakup of the 1970's A's. Finley was really only able to succeed during the brief era when the amateur draft existed but free agency did not. Would Bando, Campaneris, Tenace et al have stuck around if Finley had the $3.5M to spend? I think they were all sick to death of working on the Finley plantation and were ready to move on. The A's probably would not have become the "Triple-A's" of 1977-1979 but the glory days were clearly over.
The legacy of Kuhn is that he presided over a period when the NFL blew past major league baseball as the most popular sport in the country. Pete Rozelle was brilliant at marketing the NFL, getting every game on network television. Meanwhile baseball continued to live in the past. Most teams had about 25-30 games per year on local television. Home games were virtually never televised...good grief, that was giving the product away for free. Baseball made much more progress in marketing itself during Peter Ueberroth's relatively brief reign as commissioner than it did during the entirety of Kuhn's lengthy tenure...but by that time the NFL had clearly established preeminence as the country's top spectator sports franchise, and it has continued to pull away over the subsequent two decades.
TV was really just starting to come into its own
during the early seventies. Football is a "made for TV sport", more so then than now. Baseball never really stood a chance in the tv medium. Football is a cold weather sport. It's difficult to follow in person without the aid of the huge monitors present at the stadiums these days.
I guess thats one of the major differences between the two. I'd much rather watch a football game in the comfort of my living room rather than freezing my ass off at the field. Just the opposite with baseball. Point being that I don't think there's anything Bowie could have done to prevent the confluence of modern color TV and the NFL from conspiring to unseat baseball as the national sport.
Kuhn was 100% correct
And whatever his other failings (and they were many), we should all wish to again have an independent Commissioner. Kuhn voided the sales for cash (not trades) of Rudi, Blue and Fingers "in the best interests of baseball." He was right--allowing wholesale cashing out by owners would have been horrifying. Remember, owners then were even more likely than now to take profits out of a team than to re-invest them into talent. Can you imagine for one moment any Commissioner since Kuhn making a unilateral decision against ownership for the better interests of the game? Would that it were so.
Finley was trying to actually sell his players, not to use the money to improve the roster, but as part of a plan to strip mine the franchise of assets in advance of a free agency era he saw coming and knew he couldn't (or wouldn't) afford to operate under the new paradigm. He was prescient, in fact, when he suggested to MLB that what they really ought to do was make players free agents every year, thus bringing in a pay-for-current-performance ethic in which a sharper owner could compete with fewer resources. MLB ignored him, fighting their rearguard losing battle against Miller and the MLBPA for a few more years before losing all leverage over the new system to come.
Kuhn was mostly a lousy Commish, and Finley an underappreciated foresighted owner in many respects, but the fire sale you cite was one of Kuhn's greatest moments, and one of Charlie's weakest.
Kuhn was never really "independent".
He was old baseball guy through and through. He nixed that sale because he knew he had the support of a majority of the other owners. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Bowie was acutely aware of his precarious position and never forgot that he was beholden to the owners for his livelihood. The owners have always had an ironclad grip on the game. They're more subtle about it these days, and they've been forced to relinquish a fair portion of their revenue to the players, but their hold on the game remains. The only truly independent comish that has ever existed was Landis. That's a mistake the owners will never repeat.
You're right of course
Bowie was an owner's guy, but it's really a question of degree and structure. Kuhn did anger owners at time...he was ultimately deposed because he did flex independent authority more than the Lords liked. After Bowie and the brief Ueberroth era, MLB restructured the Office of the Commish to make it more explicitly a job which reported to ownership, and got rid of the very notion of an independent actor who could make decisions in the best interest of the game.
So he was independent in structure and theory, and even a little in practice. A lot of owners didn't like the quashing of the sale to Boston, because they too felt they had the right to buy and sell their players as they saw fit. If it had been anyone but Charlie, that might have been the end for Bowie right there.
by FreeSeatUpgrade on Dec 4, 2007 10:08 PM PST up reply actions
As you concede
it it was any owner other than Finley, Kuhn would have been gone.
Kuhn THOUGHT that he was independent. He was simply a moron.
Agree about Finley.
He managed to raise the ire of just about every other owner in the game at one time or another. I think Bowie may have sowed the seeds of his own demise with his veto of the trade.
Comish has to be one of the most miserable of jobs. Can you imagine having to deal with the 30 super sized egos present at an owners meeting? Not to mention the challenges presented by the MLBPA. It's enough to make you sympathize with poor old Bud.
I'm Not Sure Kuhn was 100% Correct
Indisputabley, Charlie O. was a self serving, self promoting owner but let's consider what he had done. He, not Kuhn brought MLB into prime time more than any other owner. The bright colored kelly green and gold was perfect for its time. Baseball indeed left it's black and white appearance behind from the 60's and Oakland's Athletics were leading the way.
We can't assume he was just going to pocket the money and not reinvest into the team. When interviewed before he died (I wish I could remember the source) he outlined his intention with the money from those trades to keep what he felt was his core of players together. It's all hindsight and potentially revisionist history at this point but there's no disputing the fact that Kuhn's action essentially dismantled this franchise. How could a championship team being stripped to its core be considered in the best interests of baseball?
Finley's eye for talent could not be disputed, he was never given the chance to rebuild the team with "appropriate" financial resources, which was too bad. I know it's sour grapes on my part being a fan watching all of this growing up but I felt that while Finley never qualified for sainthood in baseball terms vis a vis Walter Haas, he deserves praise for contributions to the game which are in effect to this day.
Finley was a true owner
In the end, and the bottom line, Finley brought me the A's. He also brought me an exciting winner.
Nobody has done as much for this fan since.
Kuhn did nothing for me or the A's. He was never fair to this organization or us fans. I would veto the recent vote in a heartbeat if I had the power.
Still I hated Finley man as much as anyone for the way he treated his players. I loved those players then. Remember we all loved him for bringing the team to Oakland. He turned us around fast.
I think a lot of it as just good old business. The A's really had to fight for mentions in the newspapers then. Everyone was a Giant's fan that had to be won over.
Perhaps Finley just capitalized on being newsworthy.
by Thomas Walker on Dec 5, 2007 2:19 PM PST up reply actions
Finley's "Mistreatment" of Players
...is a subject often mentioned during his tenure as owner. Still, his innovative ideas trace back to Bill Veeck's St. Louis Browns and were ahead of its time. It would be interesting to find out wether his actions galvanized the players against him or wether he was part of the distraction that made up the A's at that time.
Despite his Scrooge-like ways he still found ways to motivate his teams considering the "moustache brigade" as well as other incentives such as attempting to get Vida to change his name to "True Blue". Now, Blue Moon Odom is another story that I never found out about in terms of its origin as a nickname.
Anyway, Finley engineered the only team west of the Mississippi to win 3 consecutive WS Titles. That alone validates HOF induction in my mind.
good post
Man, what I didn't realize was that Joe Rudi missed twelve games (I believe Finley purposely held him out of games once the sales were nixed). Don Baylor played left in his place and went something like 6-for-36. For a team that finished two games out, who knows what having Joe in there would have done. As it was the A's were 7-5 w/o him.
I still have the newspaper clippings from that night. The Trib had two pics: one with the caption "Goodbye Joe and Vida" with the two of them shaking hands. And the other one said "Goodbye Rollie" with Fingers suiting up for Boston, who just happened to be in town that night! Neither Fingers nor Rudi actually played for the Sox that series before being returned to the A's.
That and the Mike Andrews fiasco were probably two of Finley's worst moments.
the Mike Andrews fiasco
and the "pinch hit for all second basemen" order to Dick Williams is probably the worst example of meddling ever by an owner. When Mark Ellis broke his finger in the playoffs, I figured it was Mike Andrews putting a curse on the A's.
I've never been convinced...
...that Finley actually intended to use the money to keep/rebuild the team. I've always suspected that he was already getting tired, saw the writing on the wall, and was looking to cash out.
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