Charles O. Finley
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Charles O. 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. 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. Early life Finley was born in Ensley, Birmingham, Alabama, attended Ensley High School but was further raised in Gary, Indiana, and later lived in La Porte, east of Chicago. In 1946, he suffered a bout of tuberculosis that nearly killed him, until his wife's obstetrician, H. Close Hesseltine, convinced him that he could beat it, if he put his mind to it and he successfully did. 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 fo ...
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Ensley (Birmingham)
Ensley is a large city neighborhood in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. It was once a separate and thriving industrial city. It was formally incorporated on February 12, 1899, but later annexed into Birmingham on January 1, 1910 under the "Greater Birmingham" legislation. History It was founded in 1886 by Memphis entrepreneur, Enoch Ensley, as a new industrial city on the outskirts of a rapidly developing Birmingham (then just 15 years old) and directly adjacent to the Pratt coal seam. Zealously promoting and investing his own wealth in the project, Ensley soon attracted the interest of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), which bought a controlling interest in the Ensley Land Company. In the first year of development, sanitary engineer Edwin Waring, Jr. of Rhode Island was contracted to lay out the new city's streets and infrastructure, including an early application of separate storm and sanitary sewers. Meanwhile, Ensley and TCI erected four 200-ton b ...
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Barn
A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain.Allen G. Noble, ''Traditional Buildings: A Global Survey of Structural Forms and Cultural Functions'' (New York: Tauris, 2007), 30. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms byre or shippon being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings (or housebarns in US literature). In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing. Etymology The word ''barn'' comes f ...
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Charlie-O
Charlie-O the Mule was the mascot used by the US baseball teams Kansas City / Oakland A's from 1965 to 1976. Charlie-O the Mule was purchased from Harold Sloan a small town farmer and muleskinner from Osborn, Missouri. The mule was named after Charles O. Finley, the team's owner at the time. The team's original mascot was an elephant. Use of an elephant to symbolize the Athletics dates from the early years of the franchise, when a group of Philadelphia businessmen headed by industrialist Benjamin Shibe became the team's first owners. When asked to comment, John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants of the rival National League said something to the effect that Shibe had bought himself a "white elephant." In response, A's manager (and future owner) Connie Mack selected the elephant as the team symbol and mascot and from time to time the elephant has appeared on the Athletics uniforms ever since. When the A's moved to Missouri, where the official state animal is the mule, Wa ...
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Mule
The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey and a horse. It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes; of the two possible first-generation hybrids between them, the mule is easier to obtain and more common than the hinny, which is the offspring of a female donkey (a jenny) and a male horse (a stallion). Mules vary widely in size, and may be of any color. They are more patient, hardier and longer-lived than horses, and are perceived as less obstinate and more intelligent than donkeys. Terminology A female mule that has oestrus cycles, and which could thus in theory carry a foetus, is called a "molly" or "Molly mule", though the term is sometimes used to refer to female mules in general. A male mule is properly called a "horse mule", though often called a "john mule", which is the correct term for a gelded mule. A young male mule is called a "mule co ...
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Mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional, representative spokespeople for consumer products. In sports, mascots are also used for merchandising. Team mascots are often related to their respective team nicknames. This is especially true when the team's nickname is something that is a living animal and/or can be made to have humanlike characteristics. For more abstract nicknames, the team may opt to have an unrelated character serve as the mascot. For example, the athletic teams of the University of Alabama are nicknamed the Crimson Tide, while their mascot is an elephant named Big Al. Team mascots may take the form of a logo, person, live animal, inanimate object, or a costumed character, and often appear at team matches and other related events, sports mascots are of ...
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Elephant
Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. The order was formerly much more diverse during the Pleistocene, but most species became extinct during the Late Pleistocene epoch. Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive skin. The trunk is used for breathing, bringing food and water to the mouth, and grasping objects. Tusks, which are derived from the incisor teeth, serve both as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. The large ear flaps assist in maintaining a constant body temperature as well as in communication. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears, and convex or level backs. Elephants ...
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1966 Kansas City Athletics Season
The 1966 Kansas City Athletics season was the twelfth and penultimate season in Kansas City, and the 66th in overall franchise history. It involved the A's finishing seventh in the American League with a record of 74 wins and 86 losses, 23 games behind the World Champion Baltimore Orioles. Paid attendance for the season was 773,929.''Charlie Finley: The Outrageous Story of Baseball's Super Showman'', p.98, G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius. Walker Publishing Company, New York, 2010, The pitching staff had an earned run average of 3.56, which ranked sixth in the American League. Offseason * October 15, 1965: Satchel Paige was released by the Athletics. *November 28, 1965: Hank Peters resigned from the club and became the minor league director for the Cleveland Indians. * November 29, 1965: Ron Stone was drafted by the Athletics from the Baltimore Orioles in the 1965 rule 5 draft.
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New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League East, East division. They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other is the National League (NL)'s New York Mets. The team was founded in when Frank J. Farrell, Frank Farrell and William Stephen Devery, Bill Devery purchased the franchise rights to the defunct Baltimore Orioles (no relation to the current Baltimore Orioles, team of the same name) after it ceased operations and used them to establish the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders were officially renamed the New York Yankees in . The team is owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, a limited liability company that is controlled by the family of the late George Steinbrenner, who purchased the team in 1973. Brian Cashman is the team's general manage ...
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1961 Kansas City Athletics Season
The 1961 Kansas City Athletics season was a season in American baseball. In their seventh season in Kansas City, the 61st overall for the franchise, the A's finished with a record of 61–100, tying the expansion Washington Senators for ninth place, last in the newly expanded 10-team American League, 47½ games behind the World Champion New York Yankees. Offseason On December 19, 1960, Charles "Charlie O." Finley purchased a controlling interest in the team from Arnold Johnson's estate. In a highly publicized move, he purchased a bus, pointed it in the direction of New York, and burned it to symbolize the end of the "special relationship" with the Yankees. He called another press conference to burn the existing lease at Municipal Stadium, where the team played its home games, which included the despised "escape clause." Finley made numerous renovations to the stadium, including lighting outside, and radio broadcasts in the restrooms. The seats were painted yellow, turquoise ...
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1955 Kansas City Athletics Season
The 1955 Kansas City Athletics season was the 55th season for the franchise in MLB's American League, and the 1st season in Kansas City after playing the previous 54 in Philadelphia. The team won 63 games – only the fifth time in 20 years that they won more than 60 games – and lost 91, finishing sixth in the American League, 33 games behind the AL Champion New York Yankees. Offseason In 1954, the Mack family decided to sell the Philadelphia Athletics. Charlie Finley made an offer to purchase the team, but was refused. Clint Murchison also made an offer to purchase the team with plans to relocate to Southern California, but was also refused. On October 12, 1954, the owners approved the sale of the Athletics to Chicago businessman Arnold Johnson, who moved the team from Philadelphia to Kansas City for the 1955 season. Finley would later buy the A's from Johnson's estate in 1960. Murchison's son, Clint Jr., would later become one of the founders of the National Football Lea ...
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Arnold Johnson (industrialist)
Arnold M. Johnson (Jan. 11, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois – March 3, 1960 in West Palm Beach, Florida) was an American industrialist, businessman and sportsman, who purchased the Philadelphia Athletics baseball club and moved it to Kansas City, Missouri in the autumn of 1954. He had a son, Jeffery and a daughter, Wendy. A native of Chicago and graduate of the University of Chicago, Johnson enjoyed a highly successful business career. He was a stockbroker and banker, served on the board of directors of a number of corporations, and invested in the Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League. Buying, and moving, the Philadelphia Athletics In December 1953, Johnson entered baseball through a real estate transaction by purchasing the top two playing venues of the perennial champion New York Yankees — Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and Blues Stadium in Kansas City, home of the Yanks' top farm club, the Kansas City Blues. Concurrently, struggling major league baseball teams—e ...
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American League
The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league based in the Great Lakes states, which eventually aspired to major league status. It is sometimes called the Junior Circuit because it claimed Major League status for the 1901 season, 25 years after the formation of the National League (the "Senior Circuit"). At the end of every season, the American League champion plays in the World Series against the National League champion; two seasons did not end in playing a World Series (1904, when the National League champion New York Giants refused to play their AL counterpart, and 1994, when a players' strike prevented the Series). Through 2021, American League teams have won 66 of the 117 World Series played since 1903, with 27 of those coming from the New York Yankees alone. The New York ...
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