haukur/enwik9 · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 0 51.6k
[[Category:Algebra]]
[[Category:Mathematical identities]]

[[es:Identidad de Brahmagupta]]
[[fr:Identité de Brahmagupta]]
[[it:Identità di Fibonacci]]
[[sl:Brahmaguptova enakost]]</text>
</revision>
</page>
<page>
<title>Charles O. Finley</title>
<id>326484</id>
<revision>
<id>40399142</id>
<timestamp>2006-02-20T07:20:55Z</timestamp>
<contributor>
<username>Mike Selinker</username>
<id>373827</id>
</contributor>
<minor />
<text xml:space="preserve">'''Charles Oscar Finley''' ([[February 22]] [[1918]] - [[February 19]] [[1996]]) was an [[United States\|American]] businessman who enjoyed a tenure as the flamboyant owner of the [[Oakland Athletics]] [[Major League Baseball]] team. Finley was a semi-pro [[baseball]] player in [[Indiana]] who had his career cut short in [[1946 in baseball\|1946]] by a bout with [[tuberculosis]] that nearly killed him. Finley then made his fortune in the [[insurance]] business, being among the first to write group medical insurance policies for those in the medical profession.

==Finley's Follies: the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics==
[[Image:cof.JPG\|thumb\|right\|Charlie Finley]]
Finley's first attempt to buy the then-Philadelphia Athletics came in [[1954 in baseball\|1954]], but [[American League]] owners instead approved the sale of the team to [[Arnold Johnson]], who moved the A's to [[Kansas City, Missouri\|Kansas City]] for the [[1955 in baseball\|1955]] season. He later made an unsuccessful bid to buy the expansion [[Los Angeles, California\|Los Angeles]] AL franchise in 1960. (The franchise was purchased by [[Gene Autry]] and named the [[Los Angeles Angels]].)

On December 19, 1960, Finley purchased a controlling interest in the Kansas City Athletics from Johnson's estate (Johnson died in March of that year); he 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]] and searching for unheralded talent. After being told by manager [[Ed Lopat]] about the Yankees' success being attributable to the dimensions of [[Yankee Stadium]], he built the "K.C. Pennant Porch" in right field, which brought the right field fence in [[Municipal Stadium (Kansas City)\|Kansas City Municipal Stadium]] to match Yankee Stadium's dimensions exactly. League officials forced him to move the fences back after two exhibition games. Finley then ordered a white line to be painted on the field at the original "Pennant Porch" distance, and ordered the public address announcer to tell the crowd, "That would have been a home run in Yankee Stadium" whenever a fly ball was hit past that line. The practice was quickly abandoned after the announcer was calling more "would-be" home runs for the opposition than the A's.

He also started [[micromanagement\|micromanaging]] the team, ordering players to change their style of play and firing any [[manager (baseball)\|manager]] or releasing any player who publicly disagreed with him. He replaced the A's traditional [[elephant]] [[mascot]] with "Charlie O," a live [[mule]], and paraded him about the outfield and even into [[cocktail]] parties and hotel lobbies, and into the press room after a large feeding to annoy reporters. When third baseman [[Sal Bando]] departed the team as a free agent and was asked if it was difficult to leave the Athletics, Bando responded, "Was it hard to leave the [[RMS Titanic\|''Titanic'']]?" The mule died in [[1976 in baseball\|1976]], at age 20.

Finley also made changes to the team's uniforms. In 1963, Finley changed the team's colors to "Kelly Green, [[Fort Knox]] Gold and Wedding Gown White." In 1967, he replaced the team's traditional black cleats with white ones. In 1970 (after the move to Oakland) he added an "apostrophe-s" to the traditional "A" logo, and began phasing out the team name "Athletics" in favor of, simply, "A's."

Finley moved his franchise from Kansas City to [[Oakland, California]] in [[1968 in baseball\|1968]] and quickly turned the new Oakland Athletics into a dynasty, winning three straight [[World Series]] from [[1972 World Series\|1972]] to [[1974 World Series\|1974]] and five straight division titles from [[1971 in baseball\|1971]] to [[1975 in baseball\|1975]]. A major embarrassment for baseball resulted from Finley's actions during the [[1973 World Series]]. Finley forced player [[Mike Andrews]] to sign a false [[affidavit]] saying he was injured, after the reserve infielder committed two consecutive [[error (baseball)\|errors]] in the 12th inning of Oakland's Game Two loss to the [[New York Mets]]. Other A's, and manager [[Dick Williams]], rallied to Andrews' defense, and [[Commissioner of Baseball\|Commissioner]] [[Bowie Kuhn]] forced Finley to reinstate Andrews. Williams resigned after winning the Series, and Finley replaced him with [[Alvin Dark]].

In 1976, after losing [[Catfish Hunter]] to free agency, Finley started dismantling his club, attempting to sell [[Joe Rudi]] and [[Rollie Fingers]] to the [[Boston Red Sox]] and [[Vida Blue]] to the Yankees. [[Bowie Kuhn]] decided to invoke the rarely-used "best interests of baseball" clause in order to void Finely's sales. Finley, in turn, hired famed sports attorney [[Neil Papiano]] and proceeded to file a a $10 million dollar restraint-of-trade lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball. This lawsuit is widely recognized as one of the most famous, influential and precident-setting sports-related cases in the history of American [[jurisprudence]].

Finley was in the process of rebuilding the team again in [[1981 in baseball\|1981]] when he sold the team to [[Walter A. Haas, Jr.]], president of [[Levi Strauss & Co.]].

Finley was fond of gimmicks, dressing his players in non-traditional green and gold uniforms and offering his players $300 bonuses to grow [[moustache]]s. For star relief pitcher Rollie Fingers, the [[handlebar moustache]] he grew for Finley became a trademark. After signing pitchers Jim Hunter and [[Blue Moon Odom\|John Odom]], he nicknamed them "Catfish" and "Blue Moon", even fabricating boyhood stories about Hunter to give him press appeal. Finley refused to sign then-prospect (and future Hall of Famer) [[Don Sutton]] to a contract, simply because Sutton didn't have a flashy nickname. He introduced ball girls (one of whom, the future Debbie Fields, went on to found [[Mrs. Fields' Original Cookies, Inc.]]), and advocated night games for the World Series to increase fan interest. Finley also was an outspoken advocate of the [[designated hitter]] rule, which he pushed until it was adopted by the American League. He suggested many other innovations that were tried and rejected for various reasons, including:
*Orange baseballs - Tried in a few exhibition games, hitters found it too hard to pick up the spin.
*A three-ball [[base on balls\|walk]] and two-strike [[strikeout]] - Tried in spring training one year, he thought it would lead to games with more action. Instead the result was more walks and longer games.
*A mechanical [[rabbit]] that would pop up behind home plate and deliver new balls to the umpire - Finley installed one, which he named "[[Harvey (play)\|Harvey]]," at the A's home ballparks in Kansas City and Oakland, but the idea never caught on anywhere else and was dropped by the A's after 1969.
*A designated runner - This idea was rejected for several reasons by Major League Baseball, but it didn't stop Finley from experimenting on his own in [[1974 in baseball\|1974]], hiring a college sprinter named [[Herb Washington]] exclusively to pinch run and [[stolen base\|steal bases]]. Washington stole 29 bases, but was caught stealing 18 times and frequently picked off by opposing pitchers. He was let go after only one season.

Depite these gimmicks and various other promotions during Finley's ownership of the Athletics, the A's were a mediocre draw at best during the 20 years of his ownership, both in Kansas City and in Oakland, despite winning five divisional championships and three World Series in the latter venue. Average yearly attendance for Finley-owned teams was just under 743,000. The high-water mark for attendance came in 1975, when 1,075,518 came through the turnstiles. Four years later, in 1979, only 306,783 fans bothered to attend.

The Finley era in baseball came to an end after the 1980 season. His wife sued for a divorce, and would not accept part of a baseball team in a property settlement. After a deal to move the Athletics to [[Denver, Colorado\|Denver]] fell though, he sold the team to San Francisco clothing manufacturer [[Walter A. Haas, Jr.]], then president of [[Levi Strauss & Co.]].

==Other sports ventures==
Finley purchased the [[Oakland Seals]] franchise in the [[National Hockey League]] in 1970, renaming the team the '''California Golden Seals'''. He sold the Seals in 1974. In 1972, Finley purchased the [[Memphis Pros]] of the [[American Basketball Association]], changing the team's name to the '''Memphis Tams''', the name being an acronym for '''T'''ennessee, '''A'''rkansas and '''M'''ississippi. The Tams were taken over by the ABA in 1974 and renamed the Memphis Sounds. In both cases, the team's colors were changed by Finley to Kelly green and gold. Both teams were abysmal failures, both at the box office and on the ice or court, respectively.

==Indiana legend==
Finley maintained his homes in [[Chicago, Illinois\|Chicago]] and [[LaPorte, Indiana]], a small town 60 miles east of Chicago, even as he owned the Oakland A's. Even though he would make frequent trips to Oakland, he would run the team from the Midwest, earning more derision as an absentee owner. Still, Finley was popular in his hometown of LaPorte, where he remained involved in the community late into his life.

While Finley was building a championship team in Oakland, the LaPorte High School baseball team was becoming a powerhouse. Finley would send the team equipment every season, including the white shoes the Oakland A's made famous and that the LaPorte High School team would use until the late 1990s.

Finley would occasionally throw a party whenever the A's would be in Chicago to play the [[Chicago White Sox\|White Sox]]. He bused the players to LaPorte ("[[God]], we hated that," Bando told ''[[Sports Illustrated]]'' in 1999) and his local friends would mingle with the likes of Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter.

==Quote==
* ''Sweat plus sacrifice equals success.''

==External link==
*[http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/F/Finley_Charles_O.stm BaseballLibrary] - profile and career highlights

[[Category:1918 births\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:1997 deaths\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:Baseball executives\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:Oakland Athletics\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:Kansas City Athletics\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:People from Indiana\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:National Hockey League executives\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:Chicagoans\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:American Basketball Association executives\|Finley, Charles O.]]
[[Category:Memphis Sounds\|Finley, Charles O.]]</text>
</revision>
</page>
<page>
<title>Feast of the Dormition</title>
<id>326485</id>
<revision>
<id>19870189</id>
<timestamp>2005-07-29T18:37:53Z</timestamp>
<contributor>
<username>Mikkalai</username>
<id>28438</id>
</contributor>
<text xml:space="preserve">#REDIRECT [[Dormition of the Theotokos]]</text>
</revision>
</page>
<page>
<title>Dormition</title>
<id>326487</id>
<revision>
<id>20660085</id>
<timestamp>2005-08-10T01:13:47Z</timestamp>
<contributor>
<username>Wesley</username>
<id>63</id>
</contributor>
<comment>this redirect is probably closer to what was expected</comment>

[[Category:Algebra]]

[[Category:Mathematical identities]]

[[es:Identidad de Brahmagupta]]

[[fr:Identité de Brahmagupta]]

[[it:Identità di Fibonacci]]

[[sl:Brahmaguptova enakost]]</text>

</revision>

</page>

<page>

<title>Charles O. Finley</title>

<username>Mike Selinker</username>

</contributor>

<text xml:space="preserve">'''Charles Oscar Finley''' ([[February 22]] [[1918]] - [[February 19]] [[1996]]) was an [[United States|American]] businessman who enjoyed a tenure as the flamboyant owner of the [[Oakland Athletics]] [[Major League Baseball]] team. Finley was a semi-pro [[baseball]] player in [[Indiana]] who had his career cut short in [[1946 in baseball|1946]] by a bout with [[tuberculosis]] that nearly killed him. Finley then made his fortune in the [[insurance]] business, being among the first to write group medical insurance policies for those in the medical profession.

==Finley's Follies: the Kansas City and Oakland Athletics==

[[Image:cof.JPG|thumb|right|Charlie Finley]]

Finley's first attempt to buy the then-Philadelphia Athletics came in [[1954 in baseball|1954]], but [[American League]] owners instead approved the sale of the team to [[Arnold Johnson]], who moved the A's to [[Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City]] for the [[1955 in baseball|1955]] season. He later made an unsuccessful bid to buy the expansion [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] AL franchise in 1960. (The franchise was purchased by [[Gene Autry]] and named the [[Los Angeles Angels]].)

On December 19, 1960, Finley purchased a controlling interest in the Kansas City Athletics from Johnson's estate (Johnson died in March of that year); he 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]] and searching for unheralded talent. After being told by manager [[Ed Lopat]] about the Yankees' success being attributable to the dimensions of [[Yankee Stadium]], he built the "K.C. Pennant Porch" in right field, which brought the right field fence in [[Municipal Stadium (Kansas City)|Kansas City Municipal Stadium]] to match Yankee Stadium's dimensions exactly. League officials forced him to move the fences back after two exhibition games. Finley then ordered a white line to be painted on the field at the original "Pennant Porch" distance, and ordered the public address announcer to tell the crowd, "That would have been a home run in Yankee Stadium" whenever a fly ball was hit past that line. The practice was quickly abandoned after the announcer was calling more "would-be" home runs for the opposition than the A's.

He also started [[micromanagement|micromanaging]] the team, ordering players to change their style of play and firing any [[manager (baseball)|manager]] or releasing any player who publicly disagreed with him. He replaced the A's traditional [[elephant]] [[mascot]] with "Charlie O," a live [[mule]], and paraded him about the outfield and even into [[cocktail]] parties and hotel lobbies, and into the press room after a large feeding to annoy reporters. When third baseman [[Sal Bando]] departed the team as a free agent and was asked if it was difficult to leave the Athletics, Bando responded, "Was it hard to leave the [[RMS Titanic|''Titanic'']]?" The mule died in [[1976 in baseball|1976]], at age 20.

Finley also made changes to the team's uniforms. In 1963, Finley changed the team's colors to "Kelly Green, [[Fort Knox]] Gold and Wedding Gown White." In 1967, he replaced the team's traditional black cleats with white ones. In 1970 (after the move to Oakland) he added an "apostrophe-s" to the traditional "A" logo, and began phasing out the team name "Athletics" in favor of, simply, "A's."

Finley moved his franchise from Kansas City to [[Oakland, California]] in [[1968 in baseball|1968]] and quickly turned the new Oakland Athletics into a dynasty, winning three straight [[World Series]] from [[1972 World Series|1972]] to [[1974 World Series|1974]] and five straight division titles from [[1971 in baseball|1971]] to [[1975 in baseball|1975]]. A major embarrassment for baseball resulted from Finley's actions during the [[1973 World Series]]. Finley forced player [[Mike Andrews]] to sign a false [[affidavit]] saying he was injured, after the reserve infielder committed two consecutive [[error (baseball)|errors]] in the 12th inning of Oakland's Game Two loss to the [[New York Mets]]. Other A's, and manager [[Dick Williams]], rallied to Andrews' defense, and [[Commissioner of Baseball|Commissioner]] [[Bowie Kuhn]] forced Finley to reinstate Andrews. Williams resigned after winning the Series, and Finley replaced him with [[Alvin Dark]].

In 1976, after losing [[Catfish Hunter]] to free agency, Finley started dismantling his club, attempting to sell [[Joe Rudi]] and [[Rollie Fingers]] to the [[Boston Red Sox]] and [[Vida Blue]] to the Yankees. [[Bowie Kuhn]] decided to invoke the rarely-used "best interests of baseball" clause in order to void Finely's sales. Finley, in turn, hired famed sports attorney [[Neil Papiano]] and proceeded to file a a $10 million dollar restraint-of-trade lawsuit against Kuhn and Major League Baseball. This lawsuit is widely recognized as one of the most famous, influential and precident-setting sports-related cases in the history of American [[jurisprudence]].

Finley was in the process of rebuilding the team again in [[1981 in baseball|1981]] when he sold the team to [[Walter A. Haas, Jr.]], president of [[Levi Strauss & Co.]].

Finley was fond of gimmicks, dressing his players in non-traditional green and gold uniforms and offering his players $300 bonuses to grow [[moustache]]s. For star relief pitcher Rollie Fingers, the [[handlebar moustache]] he grew for Finley became a trademark. After signing pitchers Jim Hunter and [[Blue Moon Odom|John Odom]], he nicknamed them "Catfish" and "Blue Moon", even fabricating boyhood stories about Hunter to give him press appeal. Finley refused to sign then-prospect (and future Hall of Famer) [[Don Sutton]] to a contract, simply because Sutton didn't have a flashy nickname. He introduced ball girls (one of whom, the future Debbie Fields, went on to found [[Mrs. Fields' Original Cookies, Inc.]]), and advocated night games for the World Series to increase fan interest. Finley also was an outspoken advocate of the [[designated hitter]] rule, which he pushed until it was adopted by the American League. He suggested many other innovations that were tried and rejected for various reasons, including:

*Orange baseballs - Tried in a few exhibition games, hitters found it too hard to pick up the spin.

*A three-ball [[base on balls|walk]] and two-strike [[strikeout]] - Tried in spring training one year, he thought it would lead to games with more action. Instead the result was more walks and longer games.

*A mechanical [[rabbit]] that would pop up behind home plate and deliver new balls to the umpire - Finley installed one, which he named "[[Harvey (play)|Harvey]]," at the A's home ballparks in Kansas City and Oakland, but the idea never caught on anywhere else and was dropped by the A's after 1969.

*A designated runner - This idea was rejected for several reasons by Major League Baseball, but it didn't stop Finley from experimenting on his own in [[1974 in baseball|1974]], hiring a college sprinter named [[Herb Washington]] exclusively to pinch run and [[stolen base|steal bases]]. Washington stole 29 bases, but was caught stealing 18 times and frequently picked off by opposing pitchers. He was let go after only one season.

Depite these gimmicks and various other promotions during Finley's ownership of the Athletics, the A's were a mediocre draw at best during the 20 years of his ownership, both in Kansas City and in Oakland, despite winning five divisional championships and three World Series in the latter venue. Average yearly attendance for Finley-owned teams was just under 743,000. The high-water mark for attendance came in 1975, when 1,075,518 came through the turnstiles. Four years later, in 1979, only 306,783 fans bothered to attend.

The Finley era in baseball came to an end after the 1980 season. His wife sued for a divorce, and would not accept part of a baseball team in a property settlement. After a deal to move the Athletics to [[Denver, Colorado|Denver]] fell though, he sold the team to San Francisco clothing manufacturer [[Walter A. Haas, Jr.]], then president of [[Levi Strauss & Co.]].

==Other sports ventures==

Finley purchased the [[Oakland Seals]] franchise in the [[National Hockey League]] in 1970, renaming the team the '''California Golden Seals'''. He sold the Seals in 1974. In 1972, Finley purchased the [[Memphis Pros]] of the [[American Basketball Association]], changing the team's name to the '''Memphis Tams''', the name being an acronym for '''T'''ennessee, '''A'''rkansas and '''M'''ississippi. The Tams were taken over by the ABA in 1974 and renamed the Memphis Sounds. In both cases, the team's colors were changed by Finley to Kelly green and gold. Both teams were abysmal failures, both at the box office and on the ice or court, respectively.

==Indiana legend==

Finley maintained his homes in [[Chicago, Illinois|Chicago]] and [[LaPorte, Indiana]], a small town 60 miles east of Chicago, even as he owned the Oakland A's. Even though he would make frequent trips to Oakland, he would run the team from the Midwest, earning more derision as an absentee owner. Still, Finley was popular in his hometown of LaPorte, where he remained involved in the community late into his life.

While Finley was building a championship team in Oakland, the LaPorte High School baseball team was becoming a powerhouse. Finley would send the team equipment every season, including the white shoes the Oakland A's made famous and that the LaPorte High School team would use until the late 1990s.

Finley would occasionally throw a party whenever the A's would be in Chicago to play the [[Chicago White Sox|White Sox]]. He bused the players to LaPorte ("[[God]], we hated that," Bando told ''[[Sports Illustrated]]'' in 1999) and his local friends would mingle with the likes of Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter.

==Quote==

* ''Sweat plus sacrifice equals success.''

==External link==

*[http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/F/Finley_Charles_O.stm BaseballLibrary] - profile and career highlights

[[Category:1918 births|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:1997 deaths|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:Baseball executives|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:Oakland Athletics|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:Kansas City Athletics|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:People from Indiana|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:National Hockey League executives|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:Chicagoans|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:American Basketball Association executives|Finley, Charles O.]]

[[Category:Memphis Sounds|Finley, Charles O.]]</text>

</revision>

</page>

<page>

<title>Feast of the Dormition</title>

<username>Mikkalai</username>

</contributor>

<text xml:space="preserve">#REDIRECT [[Dormition of the Theotokos]]</text>

</revision>

</page>

<page>

<title>Dormition</title>

<username>Wesley</username>

</contributor>

<comment>this redirect is probably closer to what was expected</comment>