Having A Ball Without Billy

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When Wally Haas bought the Oakland A's in 1980 from Charlie O. Finley, the three-time world championship club was suffering from slipping attendance and an image tarnished by Finley's heavy-handed management style (See INC., June 1982, page 31). The new managers embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to woo back disgruntled fans, and spent millions of dollars to advertise the team's brand of baseball as "Billy Ball" -- named, of course, after the A's mercurial manager, Billy Martin.

Clever television commercials promised that Billy Ball was a unique blend of Martin's exuberance and feistiness, and they worked. Attendance in 1980, Finley's last year as owner, was approximately 842,000; the next year, despite a season drastically shortened by the players' strike, attendance burgeoned to about 1.3 million. In 1982, it approached 1.7 million.

When Martin was fired in October 1982, subsequently to be rehired by the New York Yankees, and Steve Boros took over the A's as manager, it meant the demise of Billy Ball -- but not, Haas insists, the end of the A's restored popularity.

"Nothing changes in 1983," says Haas, even though one of the team's major selling points was sent packing. "We'll try to stay aggressive in everything we're doing. Billy Ball can mean a lot of different things. To us, it meant having a lot of fun with the family at the park. We'll continue to market the idea of how much fun it is to be in the ball park and watch the Oakland A's. Our goal is to make the people in northern California feel that the A's are their team. Obviously, we won't call it 'Billy Ball' anymore."

Which means that Martin can concentrate on feuding again with his new boss, George Steinbrenner.