The Gortons and Slades - Washington Secretary of State

designAted hitteRs 137
to Everett on a change of venue because every prospective King County
juror had a financial stake in the case. McNaul has vivid memories of the
club owners arriving in the old blue-collar town “with their major egos
on their shoulders and their white bucks on their feet and lots of gold
necklaces.”
The first owner Dwyer put on the stand was heaven sent for the home
team. Charley Finley was a micromanaging maverick who ran the Oakland
A’s with an iron hand and kicked sand in the face of baseball traditionalists.
A Damon Runyon character come to life, “Charlie O” alienated the other
owners in the league, as well as the majority of his players, managers and
employees, despite presiding over three world championship teams in the
1970s. After Dwyer and McNaul took his deposition in Chicago prior to the
trial, Finley asked what they were doing for entertainment that night and
offered to rustle up a pair of call girls. The offer was declined.
“Finley treated the jury as he had treated Gorton and other Seattle inquisitors
over the years: He arrogantly talked down to them, and he repeatedly
disclosed strategies baseball didn’t want revealed.” It didn’t take
much prodding to get Finley to admit the league did zero to keep the Pilots
in Seattle. Jerry Hoffberger, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, conceded
that he and other owners should have done a better job of investigating
the finances of the Pilots’ ownership. When he left the witness
stand during a recess, Finley sauntered past Dwyer and said under his
breath, “You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you, pal?” 7
“Bill Dwyer just shredded the American League owners,” Gorton recalls
with awe and satisfaction. “We were about 20 days into the trial
when the American League lawyers realized that the jury was going to
vote for capital punishment. (Media interviews with several outraged jurors
attested to the sentiment in the jury box). Almost overnight, they
agreed to expand and give us a team if we’d drop our lawsuit.” Shrewdly,
Dwyer and Gorton didn’t dismiss the case immediately. “We provided in
the agreement that the trial would be recessed and continued for a little
over a year—until the opening of the 1977 baseball season, to make sure
a team was out there in uniform, playing baseball,” Dwyer recalled. 8
The expansion of the American League gave Seattle the Mariners and
Toronto the Blue Jays. Major League Baseball returned to Seattle on April
6, 1977, when the Mariners played the California Angels before a Kingdome
crowd of 57,762. The M’s were skunked, 7-0, and finished their
inaugural season with a 64-98 record. There’s always next year. Seattle
was back in the big leagues.