Champagne and Baloney: the Rise and Fall of Finley's A's

by Tom Clark

Portrait of the Oakland Athletics baseball team ca. mid 1970s.

Genres: Baseball

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Clark was an American poet, editor and biographer. Clark was educated at the University of Michigan and served as poetry editor of "The Paris Review" from 1963 to 1973 and published numerous volumes of poetry with Black Sparrow Press. His literary essays and reviews have appeared in "The New York Times," "Times Literary Supplement," and many other journals.

Reviews

[Chip Rickard · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book about the rise of the 1960's 70s Oakland As. It also serves as a biography on owner Charles Finley. It was interesting to see how Finley built that team. I knew Finley was a hands-on owner but I didn't realize he was that hands-on. It was written in a different style that really worked. I wish the author had held off a year or two before finishing the book. What happened in 1976 was really unusual.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyable history of Charlie Finley and the Oakland A’s dynasty of the early 1970s. Many books have been written about the team over the years but this one, published in 1976, was contemporaneous. It included many interesting nuggets I haven’t read elsewhere. Highly recommended for baseball aficionados.

[Chris Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first books on the A's of this era, it was wonderfully done and tells the complete story fresh in the time. Hard to find at times, if you can get your hands on a copy of this book, you will not regret it.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charley Finley's rhetoric is terrifyingly familiar.

[Hazy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent recounting of the beginning of the Oakland A's and their '72-'74 World Series streak, along with the rather painful thrashing in '75, where they literally stagger to the playoffs only to be taken out by Boston.

Fun to read if you want a decent play-by-play of a few seasons of a respected baseball team, along with all the drama and fights that go along with it. Writer's decent and, while the subject matter is a bit tedious at times (it is baseball, after all, which is obviously much more enjoyable watching than reading about), Clark does a good job retelling the seasons with good humor and minute detail.

Also a good book if you want to get an idea of how much of a bastard Finley was.

[Kareem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stumbled upon this book at the public library a few years ago. Had heard a lot about this team from watching classic shows and from older baseball fans about how this team was, and this title heightened my understanding to an even higher level. So when they said the owner was controversial and eccentric, they weren't kidding. And when they said the players quarreled with each other a lot, that was so true. Most entertaining book; the author appears to take the reader right inside all the shenanigans that happened. And they won three straight World Series along with all of that! I still check it out of the library about every 18 months or so.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun book by the Beat poet and Paris Review poetry editor Tom Clark on the Charley Finley Oakland A's of the early 70s. The book is written in the present tense and it appears as if neither Finley nor the players or coaches of the A's were interviewed but it makes a great read and really gives you the sense of how the seasons and playoffs unfolded.

I'm surprised that more people don't mention this book when talking about their favorite baseball books.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I became a baseball fan in the early 1970s, when I was eight years old. I was (and still am) a Mets fan, and while no player stood taller than Tom Seaver, the other stars from around the major leagues also had an incredible amount of stature in my eyes. Willie Mays. Hank Aaron. Johnny Bench. Bob Gibson. Roberto Clemente. Willie Stargell. And the crazy colorful crew that made up the Oakland Athletics.

So reading this book was a fun trip down memory lane, although not all the memories were good ones. (I wish the 1973 World Series had turned out differently.) Tom Clark brings a poet's touch to his descriptions of the game action and the book includes a beautiful description of a great catch by Joe Rudi. Clark also vividly describes the exhilaration that fans can feel when things suddenly go right, and the heart-stopping thud when things suddenly go wrong.

I'm not sure how Clark gathered his information. I don't get the sense that he was a reporter in the locker room, but he quotes the players using language that certainly wouldn't have been printed in newspapers of the time, nor in newspapers of today for that matter. Did he have access to the notebooks of some journalists? Did he see words like "bleeping" in published quotes and do his own translation? Or did he make stuff up? I don't rule out the latter. The book had a few inaccuracies that I noticed, and I'm sure a devoted A's fan of the time would notice many more. (Clark got the name of the Washington Senators' stadium wrong, he misquoted Tug McGraw's famous "You Gotta Believe" rallying cry, and he even started a sentence with "On November 31" a date that just looks so plain wrong I had trouble typing it!) But these mistakes didn't detract from a fun and entertaining narrative.

Other notes:
* I hadn't given much thought to Billy Martin in many years, but this book reminded me of what a miserable prick he was.
* I recall Charley Finley as a colorful character, a guy who tried to introduce orange baseballs. But this book portrays him as a vindictive and petty narcissist, and if this type was ever considered "colorful" those days have long passed now that someone who fits that description lives in the White House.
* I wasn't at all aware of the "musical second basemen" strategy described in the book. The idea was that the team's second basemen would never bat! The plan was that each time the second baseman's turn came up in the lineup, he would be pinch hit for. In each game in which this happened, the team would use four second baseman and four pinch hitters. That means that one lineup position uses up eight players. It seems unbelievable, but I did find a few examples where this happened, including in this game: September 19, 1972.
* Reading this book reminded me of some of my favorite baseball cards from when I was a kid, including this classic 1971 Topps Vida Blue card: