After Charles Finley’s sale of the A’s to Walt Haas Jr. in 1981, Haas immediately appointed Roy Eisenhardt, a San Francisco lawyer, and his son Walter J. Haas, known as Wally and who had been director of community affairs at Levi Strauss, to assist with rebuilding the team. They brought in Sandy Alderson to be the General Manager, (a lawyer in Mr. Eisenhardt’s firm) and the Andy Dolich (recruited from the Madison Square Garden Corporation) to be Vice President of business operations.
Rather than spend a lot of money to buy players who would not be around long, the Athletics new front office decided to try research and development to build their own products.