Baseball is good, books are better.
Former Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim pitcher, Chuck Finley, had a long and prolific career on the mound, but his next chapter in life could be in the library.
Over the span of a 17-year MLB career, the left-hander was a five-time All Star, had a 3.85 ERA and recorded 2,610 career strikeouts. He apparently also read 2,361 books last year.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, a person by the name of "Chuck Finley" checked out over 2,000 books during a nine-month period in 2016 at the East Lake County library in Sorrento, FL.
Among the list of books that the former southpaw reportedly "read," was "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck and "Why Do My Ears Pop?" by Ann Fullick.
Nobody knew Finley was such a bookworm, but the only problem to this story, is it's a complete farce. Finley currently resides in Newport Beach, CA and the account in his name was created by the library's staff in order to keep books from going into extinction.
The Sentinel reports that two employees who work at the library created the fake account including attaching a fake address and driver's license number in order to keep books on their shelves.
Sports
Get today's sports news out of Los Angeles. Here's the latest on the Dodgers, Lakers, Angels, Kings, Galaxy, LAFC, USC, UCLA and more LA teams.
The farce is currently being investigated by the Lake County clerk of courts' inspector general's office, and the employees in question, including George Dore, the library's branch supervisor, admitted to using the former baseball player's name in order to "save" books, something he says other libararies across the country do as well.
According to the staff, books that are not checked out for long periods of time, are sometimes discarded and removed from the library. In order to keep these books on the shelves, they created a "reader" after former pitcher, Chuck Finley, who would check them out and bring them back, therefore guaranteeing the books stay in circulation and on the shelves.
We have yet to reach out to Finley himself to see what he thinks of the whole thing, but we're confident he would encourage people to read, even if it is about the history of the Angels.
