While Rudi would go hitless in that game, Fingers pitched three and a third innings to earn his ninth save of the 1976 season – on his way to a final tally of 341. The Athletics would finish with a record of 87-74 that year, finishing 2.5 games behind the American League West champion Kansas City Royals.

“I think if we had had the opportunity to play those two weeks, we would have won the pennant that year,” Fingers said to the Sporting News. But by the end of 1976, he and his fellow free-agent teammates were eager to put the Finley era behind them.

“Charlie Finley thought he was right, Bowie Kuhn thought he was right, and we were kind of just stuck in the middle,” Fingers said. “When I first found out [about the sale] I was happy to be away from Charlie. He was a pain in the neck – the only guy to not put a diamond in a World Series ring, the cheapest owner in the world. We won three straight world championships for him, and he wouldn’t do anything to make life easy for us.”

Joe Rudi was more emotional, crying in the Oakland clubhouse, when he had heard the news he would be traded to the Red Sox.

“We were ecstatic to be going to Boston. My wife had the whole house packed the next day,” he was quoted as saying in Charlie Finley. “But it was still an emotional day. I was an ‘A’ my whole life, and all of a sudden I’m on the Red Sox side.”

Rudi would finally play for the Red Sox in 1981, after a five-player exchange that saw him dealt from the California Angels for Fred Lynn.

In November of 1976, Charlie Finley’s attempt to outsmart free agency finally caught up with him, as his six star A’s players re-entered into the new free agent draft, and his franchise crumbled before his eyes. Don Baylor and Joe Rudi went to the Angels, Fingers and Gene Tenace to the San Diego Padres, Sal Bando to Milwaukee and Bert Campaneris to the Texas Rangers.

Finley did not take it well. “It’s horse manure,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s the worst thing that has ever happened to baseball – it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to baseball. It reminded me of a den of thieves – everybody out to cut each other’s throats. We spend millions developing these players. We give them a bonus. We nurse them through the minors. We develop them at a great expense over a period of maybe 10 or 12 years. Then, bang! Just like that, they are taken away.”

Rollie would go on to win a Cy Young Award and an MVP award in 1981 with the Brewers, and 17 years after he first suited up for the Oakland A’s, would leave baseball with the record for most career saves, three World Series titles, and in 1992, a Hall of Fame induction.

“[After being inducted] I yakked to Carl [Yastrzemski] about it once – when I was a Red Sox our lockers were right next to each other,” Fingers says. “I mentioned it to Carlton Fisk once too. The guys took me and Rudi in like one of their own.”

Forty years after it was taken, Doug McWilliams’ portrait of Rollie Fingers still emanates purity, amidst the impending legal battles and turbulent trade negotiations. He’s staring straight into the sun, almost as if he’s looking toward the next stage in his career. Complications and feuds aside, the bottom line was that Fingers wanted to be able to play the game he had devoted his life to.

“I don’t care where I go,” Fingers would say to the Associated Press, moments after he’d heard he would be returning to Oakland. “I just want to play. Oakland, Boston – it doesn’t make a difference. I’ll play baseball anywhere.”

Alex Coffey is the communications specialist at the National Baseball Hall of Fame