All Library locations will be closed Monday, September 2, for Labor Day.
Kansas City remembers Charles O. Finley, the unconventional owner of baseball’s Athletics when they made their home here in the ’60s, for parading a mule as a mascot, delivering game balls via mechanical rabbit, and outfitting his teams in bright green and gold. That, and jilting KC in 1968 for Oakland.
Nancy Finley knew “Charlie O.” as a favorite uncle who ran the franchise with his right-hand man – her father Carl – for nearly two decades. In a discussion of her book Finley Ball: How Two Baseball Outsiders Turned the Oakland A's into a Dynasty and Changed the Game Forever, she recalls growing up in the game and the evolution of the A’s from perennial loser in Kansas City to a three-time World Series-winning powerhouse in Oakland.