When MLB Took Over the Boston Bees in 1936
From The Common Man at PlatoonAdvantage.com on April 20:
TCM leapt backwards almost 75 years to the 1936 Boston Bees (Braves). And, appropriately enough, he found a MLB owner leveraged to the hilt, unable to cover his debts, and a league that had to step in and assume control of a financially troubled franchise.
The Braves were one of the more interesting teams in baseball history. In 1935, under owner Emil Fuchs’, the Braves signed Babe Ruth and became a 115 loss traveling freak show of terribleness. The team actually still has the second worst winning percentage of any club since the American and National Leagues merged. Fuchs’ Braves were actually profitable (by roughly $20,000 according to one report), thanks to the Babe and his fans, but Fuchs’ was heavily in debt to grocery store magnate Charles Adams, who also owned the mortgage on the Braves’ ballpark and was the team’s vice president, and could not meet his obligations by mid-summer.
So effective August 1, Emil Fuchs resigned as the owner and President of the Boston Braves and left Adams in control. The trouble was that Adams had no use for a baseball team; he didn’t want the club. So he looked around to find a new owner and found Boston NFL owner George Marshall. Adams and Marshall arranged to have the team run by a separate management corporation, pending the approval of Boston bankers. Unfortunately, that money never came through, and Adams continued to end up short of cash for the rest of the season, as none of the other investors in the club was moved to offer up an infusion of cash. News reports from September are rife with concerns that the Braves couldn’t pay their bills, including their payroll obligations.
Read the full article here: http://www.platoonadvantage.com/2011/04/random-thursday-1936-braves-and-2011.html
Originally published: April 24, 2011. Last Updated: April 24, 2011.