Charlie Finley and his Visually and Grip Enhanced Footballs

During Charlie Finley's time as the owner of the Oakland Athletics, he enjoyed challenging the norm, mainly when it came to uniform and equipment aesthetics. He was the first to have his baseball team take the field wearing white spikes rather than black, and he promoted the use of an orange baseball, which did not gain acceptance because hitters could not pick up the ball's spin.

Finley also owned the NHL's Oakland Seals and the ABA's Memphis Tams. His only foray into owning a professional football team was a proposal for a new league that was to combine U.S.-based teams and the CFL. He planned on owning the league's Chicago franchise, but the league did not move forward.

Somehow the football burr remained under Finley's saddle and led to him devising two changes to footballs, both of which he marketed through Wilson and Rawlings. Finley filed his patent application for the Visually Enhanced Football in May 1989 and the Grip Enhanced Football (aka the Double Grip) in September 1989, and by then he was knee-deep in his promotional efforts.

Visually Enhanced Football

Footballs earned their stripes in the 1930s because they helped players and the crowd see the ball during games played under lights that were often none too bright. Although there were variations in the location and number of stripes early on, the game settled on 1-inch wide transverse stripes applied between the laces and the tip at either end of the ball. Ol' Charlie had a better idea or, at least, a different one since he applied eight 1/2-inch longitudinal stripes, reasoning that his pattern helped everyone see the ball at night, particularly at the nation's high school stadiums he viewed as having inadequate lighting. Of course, he thought his striping pattern made sense for daylight games as well, so they produced a day version of the ball with white stripes while the night version had fluorescent yellow stripes.

The standard transverse-striped ball versus the Visually Enhanced Ball. ('New Footballs Add Color To Sport,' Indianapolis News, November 2, 1989.)