In contrast, the Diamondbacks’ on-the-field performance has been consistently inconsistent ever since those heady early years. The team was a near-immediate contender for a world championship. Despite the Diamondbacks’ more recent struggles in the standings, the steadiness of its leadership transformed the franchise into one of the National League’s most respected almost immediately.

The National Anthem is played before the Arizona Diamondbacks game on April 6, 2015, at Chase Field in Phoenix, Arizona.

Metropolitan Phoenix’s Path to the Major Leagues

The arrival of major-league baseball in metropolitan Phoenix in 1998 was preceded by a half-century of close ties between the Valley of the Sun, as Phoenix and 9,200-square-mile Maricopa County are widely known, and the big leagues. The Arizona State University baseball program has been a national collegiate power since the mid-1960s. As of 2016 the Sun Devils have won five NCAA championships, appeared in 22 College World Series, and produced numerous major-league stars, including Reggie Jackson, Bobby Bonds, Dustin Pedroia, and Bob Horner. Since 1992, metropolitan Phoenix has hosted the six-team Arizona Fall League, which provides outstanding minor-league prospects with the opportunity to play in a highly competitive atmosphere once their Double-A and Triple-A seasons have concluded.

Metropolitan Phoenix’s most significant historical connection to the majors has been as the primary host of the Cactus League. Arizona has been home to major-league spring training since the immediate aftermath of World War II. In 1947, the Cleveland Indians began taking up preseason residence 120 miles southeast of Phoenix in Tucson, the winter home of the club’s new owner, Bill Veeck. Veeck persuaded New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham to join the Indians in Arizona. Stoneham placed his club’s spring-training camp in Phoenix. In 1952 the Chicago Cubs, who had previously trained on owner Phil Wrigley’s Catalina Island (California) estate, began training in Mesa, just to the east of Phoenix. The arrival of the Cubs and the off-and-on presence of other clubs helped to formalize the existence of the Cactus League, the Grand Canyon State’s spring-training counterpart to Florida’s Grapefruit League.1

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the Cactus League remained a small yet stable operation, growing slowly to an eight-team league as Major League Baseball expanded rapidly from 16 to 26 teams. Several of the Midwestern clubs in the Cactus League, particularly the Cubs, turned their spring-training homes into popular winter tourist destinations for their fan bases as well as homes away from home for seasonal residents or permanent transplants to Arizona.2

In 1989 the eight-team Cactus League was in danger of losing one of its founding members.

The Cleveland Indians announced plans to move their spring-training headquarters from Tucson to Homestead, Florida. The impending departure, which threatened the existence of the Cactus League, provoked immediate action from local political leaders, including US Senator John McCain, Governor Rose Mofford, and Maricopa County Supervisor Jim Bruner, who later played a major role in the arrival of the Diamondbacks in Arizona. In 1990 the Arizona Legislature passed legislation that created a Maricopa County stadium district governed by the county Board of Supervisors. The measure authorized the county to collect a $2.50 car-rental tax. The revenue from the tax helped revitalize existing spring-training facilities and build several new complexes, including one for the Indians, who chose to stay in Arizona, moving to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear in 1993. Four of the publicly financed facilities created by the legislation are each shared by two major-league clubs, including the Indians’ facility in Goodyear, which they share with the Cincinnati Reds. Arizona’s significant public investment in spring-training baseball helped lure a number of franchises to the Cactus League. As of 2016, 15 of the 30 major-league teams belonged to the geographically compact (every team but one is in Maricopa County) and virtually rainout-free Cactus League.3

The Maricopa County Stadium Authority, which was created to save the Cactus League, played a similarly decisive role several years later in the arrival of the Diamondbacks by providing the region with a public institution capable of financing a ballpark costing several hundred million dollars.

Making Phoenix Major league (1985-95)

The first concerted civic effort to secure a major-league franchise began as metropolitan Phoenix, with almost 2 million residents, became the nation’s 14th largest metropolitan area in the late 1980s. Martin Stone, the owner of the Phoenix Firebirds, the San Francisco Giants Triple-A affiliate, was the driving force behind the push. Beginning in the mid-1980s, he sought either an expansion team or a relocated franchise.

It was no secret that Bill Bidwill, owner of the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals, intended to move to Phoenix. Stone persuaded Bidwill to join him in building a stadium in the downtown area.

In April 1987 the city agreed to secure $150 million in bonding to build a 70,000-seat domed stadium on a 66-acre parcel of land in the southern section of downtown Phoenix. The stadium was to serve as the springboard to a $500 million downtown redevelopment plan that would include public and private investments in commercial and retail space, hotels, and housing. To pay off the construction bonds, Stone or any other prospective tenant agreed to turn over to the city the proceeds from the sale of 212 luxury skyboxes and 10,800 club seats. All of these plans would be executed once a major professional sports franchise signed a lease to play in the stadium.4

In January 1988 Bidwill won approval from the NFL to move his franchise to Arizona. But instead of becoming a tenant of Stone and the city in the planned domed stadium, Bidwill signed a long-term lease with Arizona State University to play the Cardinals’ games at the football-only Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, just east of Phoenix. That brought Stone’s plans for a domed stadium to an end. In May 1988 Stone backed out of his deal with Phoenix, arguing that he could no longer negotiate the terms of a stadium lease from a position of strength as he had neither a franchise in hand nor another tenant with whom to share the burden of selling premium seats to the public.5

Without Stone’s backing for the deal, stadium plans languished. In October 1989, nearly 60 percent of Phoenix voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have allowed the issuance of $100 million of the previously authorized bonds for a domed ballpark. Big-league insiders had made it clear to Arizona leaders that public support for a stadium was a prerequisite for serious consideration for a franchise. After the initiative failed, the Legislature passed a law allowing the city to bypass a referendum in their push for big-league baseball. The Legislature also authorized the county Board of Supervisors to impose a 0.25 percent sales tax to help finance construction of a baseball stadium if one of the county’s municipalities was awarded a franchise.6

Stone continued to pursue a major-league team for Phoenix into the early 1990s. Then in 1991, he abandoned his Arizona plans to become a partner in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to purchase the Montreal Expos. (There was little indication that Stone pursued a stake in the Expos to move the franchise. Montreal was less than a two-hour drive from his home in Lake Placid, New York.) Stone’s decision to withdraw his Arizona bid brought a de-facto end to Phoenix’s chances to get a team during that expansion cycle, when franchises were awarded to Denver and Miami.7

While Martin Stone spent a half-decade in single-minded pursuit of big-league baseball for the Phoenix area, the bid that actually brought a major-league team to Arizona came together more serendipitously. In early 1993, Maricopa County Supervisor and longtime baseball supporter Jim Bruner began discussing the idea of putting together a bid for a forthcoming new round of expansion with a friend, Phoenix sports attorney Joe Garagiola Jr., the son of the baseball personality, player, and commentator. Later in 1993, Bruner and Garagiola set up a meeting with Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo, one of the region’s most popular public figures and fervent boosters, to discuss their idea.

Colangelo’s Suns had engendered unprecedented enthusiasm in the region for professional sports with an exciting run to the NBA playoff finals that year. Bruner and Garagiola persuaded Colangelo to spearhead the effort to bring in a baseball team. Taking on this role required Colangelo to manage a $125 million fundraising drive to pay the anticipated franchise fee for the 1994 expansion. Moreover, Colangelo took on the responsibility of negotiating a public financing deal for a downtown baseball stadium.

Several years earlier, the Suns owner had experienced this process while seeking public funds in support of a new venue for the Suns. Colangelo later said that taking the lead in the baseball expansion effort fulfilled his desire to play a more prominent role in increasing the national profile of the Valley of the Sun. He was also playing a central role in negotiating the deal that led to the relocation of the National Hockey League’s Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix’s America West Arena, where they were rechristened the Phoenix Coyotes in 1996.8

Colangelo’s rags-to-riches story was well known to Arizonans with even a passing knowledge of professional sports. Born the son of Italian immigrants in a hardscrabble section of Chicago Heights, Illinois, Colangelo Colangelo made use of his athletic and intellectual abilities as well as his unparalleled work ethic to become a great success. A high-school basketball star, Colangelo gained an athletic scholarship to the University of Illinois, where he captained the basketball team and earned All Big-Ten status. After graduating in 1962 he eventually found work with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls and rose quickly through front-office positions. By the time he left the Bulls six years later, Colangelo was the franchise’s director of marketing and its chief scout.

In 1968, the expansion Phoenix Suns basketball franchise hired the 29-year-old Colangelo as their first general manager, making him the youngest in major professional sports. Colangelo transformed the Suns into one of professional basketball’s best managed and most consistently successful franchises. During his 35 years as a Suns executive, the team was a fixture in the Western Conference playoffs and played to large, boisterous crowds, first at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum on the State Fairgrounds and then at the downtown America West Arena. Despite never winning the championship, Colangelo earned numerous NBA Executive of the Year Awards, acknowledging both his franchise’s success and his status as a mover and shaker in league circles.9

In 1987 Colangelo headed a 10-member limited partnership called JDM Partners LLC that purchased the Suns for $44.5 million. The move came soon after a drug scandal that threatened the franchise’s squeaky-clean image. Colangelo cleaned house quickly and soon restored the Suns to on-court success; they put together a franchise-record streak of seven consecutive 50-win seasons between 1988-1989 and 1994-1995. Colangelo also negotiated a financing deal for a new arena to be built primarily with private money raised through JDM’s limited partners and corporate sponsorship deals. America West Arena, the Suns’ new downtown home, opened in June 1992. Bearing the name of a Phoenix-based airline, it was one of the earliest examples of stadium naming rights being sold to a corporation.10

In September 1993 Colangelo announced the formation of Arizona Baseball Inc., whose purpose was to bring a major-league baseball team to Phoenix. Colangelo’s insider status made Arizona’s bid an immediate frontrunner in the expansion chase. As an NBA executive, he ran in similar circles with MLB executives. More than just a known commodity, Colangelo had the added advantage of being close personal friends with Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who actively championed Arizona’s bid. More than two dozen limited partners bought into Arizona Baseball Inc., including executives at Bank of America, Circle K, and Phoenix radio station KTAR, trucking magnate and future Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes, comedian Billy Crystal, and Phoenix Suns All-Star Danny Manning.11

Colangelo set to work negotiating a financing deal for a downtown ballpark. His opposite number was Jim Bruner, a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, who also constituted the Maricopa County Stadium Authority. Despite his enthusiasm for bringing big-league baseball to the region, the fiscally conservative Bruner drove a hard bargain. He made it clear to Colangelo that there would be no increase in the 0.25 percent sales tax unless Maricopa County residents received a good deal on the facility. Colangelo agreed to a set of terms that saved Maricopa County taxpayers more than $40 million on the facility.12

The stadium financing deal Bruner and Colangelo worked out capped Maricopa County’s sales tax contribution at $238 million. It gave ownership of the ballpark to the county and guaranteed the county one-third of the annual earnings from naming rights. (In 1998 Bank One acquired the naming rights for 10 years at a cost of $70 million.) The financing deal provided the county with an escalating annual revenue guarantee based on ticket sales while requiring the Diamondbacks to pay for the maintenance of the ballpark. In return, the county granted the baseball team a 30-year lease and primary-tenant status. Despite some misgivings, Colangelo agreed to the deal. He realized that if he alienated an ally like Bruner, the political pressure that other county supervisors would face from a public that less than five years earlier had turned down a stadium financing referendum would likely push their votes into the “no” column.13

Maricopa County tax assessors projected that revenue from the 0.25 percent sales tax would reach its $238 million target in approximately 2½ years, and the tax would end around the time the ballpark was slated to open in March 1998. In fact, the target was reached four months earlier than expected, in November 1997, two years after construction began on the 48,500-seat domed stadium and four months before the first pitch.14

But even with the taxpayer-friendly amendments to the deal, widespread opposition emerged almost immediately to the public financing of a ballpark without voter input. Many opponents decried what they perceived as collusion between the city’s political and business elite. More than 800 residents, split roughly evenly between supporters and opponents, attended the February 1994 meeting at which the Board of Supervisors voted amid a heavy police presence on the stadium deal.15

After a contentious six-hour meeting, the Supervisors voted 3 to 1 with one recusal to impose the sales tax. Colangelo, the public face of the stadium project, skipped the meeting. His presence would likely have galvanized the already stinging criticism that he and pro-stadium legislators had already faced as a result of the deal. Long the darling of the Phoenix media, Colangelo had never experienced citizens referring to him in letters to the editor or public meetings as a “thief” or claiming that he was trying to “rape” the taxpayers. Jim Bruner, who both helped to develop the plan to pursue a baseball team and negotiated the terms of the financing deal with Colangelo, cast the deciding vote for the measure.16

The three supervisors who supported the tax faced serious consequences. After the vote, Bruner, as he had planned, resigned from the board to run for an open congressional seat. He lost in the Republican primary to attorney John Shadegg, who transformed the campaign into a virtual referendum on Bruner’s support for the stadium tax. Pro-sales-tax Supervisor Ed King lost his bid for re-election in 1996 in a campaign that focused heavily on his support for the tax.17

More than three years after the vote, in August 1997, Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, the lone Democrat on the Board of Supervisors, who voted to impose the tax, was shot in the lower back after a Supervisors meeting by a man described as mentally deranged. The attacker told the press, “I shot Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox to try to put a stop to the political dictatorship of Jerry Colangelo in pushing the baseball stadium tax.” Wilcox survived the attack, which she blamed on the harsh opposition to the tax that remained a fixture of Phoenix talk radio.18

Ballpark deal in hand, Colangelo made his expansion pitch to major-league owners in February 1994. He emphasized the booming population of metropolitan Phoenix, the region’s history of enthusiastic support for collegiate, spring-training, and Fall League baseball, and his history of managerial success with the Suns.19 A few days later the owners awarded Arizona Baseball Inc. an expansion franchise. (They also awarded a franchise to a Tampa-St. Petersburg-based ownership group led by businessman Vincent J. Naimoli.) They were to begin playing in the 1998 season.

After a 1995 “name the team” contest conducted by the Arizona Republic in 1995, the nickname Diamondbacks was chosen for the team. The Diamondbacks adopted a quintessentially late 1990s palette of team colors: purple, turquoise, black, and copper. The colors were marketed as evocative of the region’s cultural heritage. Collectively, the color scheme adopted by the Diamondbacks, or “DBacks,” as they were soon dubbed by the local media, looked similar to the colors of Colangelo’s other team, the Suns, whose stature in the region was then at its peak. Colangelo persuaded the other partners in Arizona Baseball Inc. to call the team the Arizona Diamondbacks rather than the Phoenix Diamondbacks to cultivate a statewide sense of pride and ownership. Moreover, the “Arizona” branding of the Diamondbacks was in keeping with the previous round of baseball expansion, which brought the Florida Marlins and Colorado Rockies into existence.20

As general manager the Diamondbacks in June 1995 hired Joe Garagiola Jr., one of the founding fathers of big-league baseball in Phoenix. Later that year, Colangelo and Garagiola hired Buck Showalter as the club’s first manager. Showalter came aboard just days after the New York Yankees fired him in the wake of the team’s playoff loss in its first postseason appearance in 14 years. Like many of his predecessors in New York, the intense Showalter butted heads frequently with the club’s domineering owner, George Steinbrenner. The Diamondbacks gave Showalter the additional responsibility of overseeing the development of its minor-league system. The Diamondbacks fielded their first affiliated minor-league teams in 1996. In subsequent seasons Showalter clashed with Garagiola over the direction of the club. Showalter preferred a steady player-development program through a farm system while Garagiola adopted the “win-now” (meaning sign free agents) approach favored by Colangelo. As a result, Showalter was fired after the 2000 season.21

The “win-now” approach was clearly the governing ideology of the Diamondbacks by the time of the November 18, 1997, expansion draft. Colangelo believed that taxpayers deserved an immediately competitive club in return for the investment they had made in Bank One Ballpark. Moreover, he believed that unless the Diamondbacks fielded an immediately competitive team, they would not gain a foothold in the increasingly tight market for Arizona sports fans’ dollars. By the time the Diamondbacks played their first game at Bank One Ballpark, metropolitan Phoenix was home to teams in all four major professional leagues. In the expansion draft, the Diamondbacks scooped up veteran starting pitchers Brian Anderson and Jeff Suppan with their first two picks. After the draft they traded several of the prospects they had selected for veterans like Detroit Tigers third baseman Travis Fryman and Florida Marlins center fielder Devon White. During the 1997-98 baseball offseason, the Diamondbacks acquired high-profile, high-priced free agent shortstop Jay Bell and traded for third baseman Matt Williams.22

The Diamondbacks doubled down on the “win-now” approach in their early years, signing pitching aces Randy Johnson in 1999 and Curt Schilling in 2000 to long-term deals that deferred the big payments until the latter years of their contracts. The Diamondbacks’ willingness to invest heavily in elite starting pitching put them on the fast track to the postseason. They finished first in the NL West in 1999, their second season in the major leagues. Never before had an expansion team reached the playoffs so quickly. Two years later, Johnson and Schilling anchored the team that won the 2001 World Series against the Yankees.23

The Diamondbacks’ success helped them draw large crowds even after the honeymoon of their first season. More than 2.5 million people attended games at the Bank One Ballpark (nicknamed the BOB) in each of the franchise’s first seven seasons. Initially, the BOB proved to be its own draw with an unprecedented array of amenities that appealed to spectators who were not especially interested in baseball: several playgrounds, a picnic pavilion, a day spa, and a swimming-pool party area (which could be rented for a group of up to 30 for $4,000 per game) were among the most popular attractions. The ballpark’s retractable roof allowed fans to enjoy the sun while sitting in air-conditioned comfort. Additionally, the BOB offered some of the most affordable prices in baseball. In the late 1990s, a family of four could attend a game for well under $50, including tickets, parking, and refreshments.24

On game days, thousands of suburbanites who would likely not have otherwise patronized downtown Phoenix brought their discretionary dollars to the BOB and its environs. The presence of the Diamondbacks hardly transformed commercial or residential patterns in Maricopa County. According to a 2015 study commissioned by the Diamondbacks, the franchise generated $8.2 billion in economic activity since it began in March 1998. This is less than 0.5 percent of the total economic activity in Maricopa County in that same time period. Nevertheless, Bank One Ballpark has contributed to the revitalization of downtown Phoenix. During the 1960s suburban shopping centers replaced downtown Phoenix as the region’s retail center. But the downtown area slowly emerged from its doldrums, becoming a destination to visitors outside of banker’s hours. The creation of a number of new institutions and attractions in downtown Phoenix added vibrancy to the once moribund area. In addition to the BOB, Maricopa County taxpayers subsidized municipal bonds that financed the construction of a number of other downtown attractions during the 1990s, including a new library, a science center, an art museum, and a museum of Arizona history.25

The success the Diamondbacks enjoyed during their early years came at a high price. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the franchise signed high-priced free agents to large contracts that deferred large amounts of salary. Between 1998 and 2000, the Diamondbacks more than doubled their payroll from $32 million to $80 million. The 2001 World Series-winning team had an $84 million payroll, of which $46 million was deferred. To pay off the deferred salaries, the Diamondbacks raised ticket prices sharply in the early 2000s and eventually traded Schilling to the Boston Red Sox in November 2003 and Johnson to the New York Yankees in December 2004 for prospects and cash. By the end of the 2004 season, the club owed more than a quarter of a billion dollars in deferred salaries.26

Displeasure with the direction of the franchise led to Colangelo’s ouster as managing general partner by the other four general partners in Arizona Baseball Inc. in August 2004. Garagiola followed Colangelo out the door in 2005. Ken Kendrick, who had been a managing partner since the franchise’s origins, took over as managing general partner. As of 2016 Jeffrey Royer, Michael Chipman, and Dale Jensen remained the other general partners.

A native of West Virginia, Kendrick made his fortune in the software business as the founder of Datatel Inc., a Virginia-based company that provided high-tech services and software to colleges and universities. He and his wife, Randy, have long been conservative political activists. In recent years, they have worked closely with the Koch political organization. During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, the Kendricks made headlines in Arizona for their strident opposition to Donald Trump’s bid for the nomination. Like Kendrick, Jensen and Chipman earned their fortunes in the software industry. Jensen is the co-founder of Information Technology, which develops software for the banking industry. Chipman was the creator and original owner of TurboTax. Royer was an executive in the cable television industry.27

Colangelo’s tenure as managing general partner (1998-2004) coincided largely with Joe Garagiola Jr.’s term as general manager (1997-2005). Under Colangelo and Garagiola, the Diamondbacks won division titles in 1999 and 2001 as well as the pennant and World Series in 2001. Under Kendrick’s leadership, the Diamondbacks have enjoyed significantly less success on the field. But the franchise did succeed in getting a handle on its salary situation, and from about 2005 it has ranked near the bottom of the league in payroll most years. Such austerity did not breed a great deal of on-the-field success. The Diamondbacks won the NL West in 2007 and 2011, but more often than not have finished well out of contention, including at least three last-place finishes since 2009. The “win-now” approach of the Colangelo-Garagiola era can take some of the blame for the diminishing returns. The franchise’s financial situation and farm system were in difficult straits at the time of the original regime’s departure, but for for more than a decade this has been Kendrick’s franchise. Since 2005 the Diamondbacks have gone through five general managers: Bob Gebhard (2005), Josh Byrnes, (2005-2010), Jerry Dipoto (2010), Kevin Towers (2010-2014), and Dave Stewart (2014-). The leadership of former pitching ace Dave Stewart and Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa, has as of 2016 failed to turn around the fortunes of the franchise, finishing well out of contention in all three seasons of their tenure.28

Since Kendrick became managing general partner, the Diamondbacks have moved into a new spring-training facility, the architecturally striking Salt River Fields at Talking Stick, an 11,000-seat facility in Scottsdale that they share with the Colorado Rockies. Opened in 2011, the facility is on land owned by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community. Like Scottsdale itself, Talking Stick evokes the Old Southwest with its homages to mission revival architecture, sagebrush surroundings, and views of Camelback Mountain. Like other new spring-training facilities in Arizona, Talking Stick was subsidized in large part by the $2.50 rental-car tax that was put in place back in 1990 to revitalize the ballparks of the Cactus League.29

In 2005 Bank One merged with J.P. Morgan Chase, and Bank One Ballpark was renamed Chase Field. In 2016 Kendrick and the Diamondbacks organization were engaged in contentious negotiations with the Maricopa County Stadium Authority over the future of Chase Field. The Diamondbacks assert that Chase Field needs significant upgrades or replacement after nearly two decades of use. In March 2016 Kendrick made public his belief that the Diamondbacks needed a new ballpark, and presented a preliminary proposal to county officials. But the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors made it evident that they had no interest in supporting any such municipal investments, particularly when Major League Baseball deemed Chase Field acceptable to host its All-Star Game as recently as 2011. In the summer of 2016 the Diamondbacks asked Maricopa County for help in subsidizing $65 million worth of renovations to Chase Field, which county officials have also rejected.30

Last updated: November 28, 2017

CLAYTON TRUTOR is a history instructor at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. He is also a PhD candidate in US History at Boston College. He has participated in SABR’s Biography Project since 2012. He is a staff writer for “Down the Drive,” SB Nation’s University of Cincinnati athletics website. You can follow him on twitter @ClaytonTrutor.

Photo credits

2015 Chase Field photo by Jacob Pomrenke/SABR.

Jerry Colangelo photo on March 22, 2017, was taken by Gage Skidmore. Used by permission under Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Ken Kendrick photo courtesy of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Notes

The 1885 National League champion Chicago White Stockings. 1-George Gore, 2-Silver Flint, 3-Cap Anson, 4-Sy Sutcliffe, 5-Mike Kelly, 6-Fred Pfeffer, 7-Larry Corcoran, 8-Ned Williamson, 9-Abner Dalrymple, 10-Tom Burns, 11-John Clarkson, 12-Billy Sunday. (Photo: SCP Auctions/David Kohler)

Birth of the White Stockings

The success of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly, all-professional baseball nine, sparked imitators. One of them was in Chicago, where jealousy and a fit of civic pride spurred prominent citizens to start a subscription that very summer. While Chicago had grown in size, it did not grow in stature, at least from the viewpoint of the business community. Despite its standing as the fifth largest city in America, the business community had an inferiority complex, and felt that Eastern cities did not take it seriously. The Chicago business elite were anxious to change that, and a group of them decided that baseball was the avenue that would lead to that change.

Word went out that on October 1, 1869, there would be a meeting of all those “interested in securing to this city a base ball club which shall beat the world.”1 Some 50 of Chicago’s elite businessmen attended a meeting at the Briggs House that night for the purpose of forming a professional ballclub. Among those in attendance were Potter Palmer (hotel and real estate tycoon), who was elected president of the newly formed Chicago Base Ball Club, and David A. Gage (once and future city treasurer), who was elected treasurer. The plan as proposed “would be not to form a stock corporation, but instead to keep a record of subscriptions, and at the close of the season declare dividends, if any, pro rata.”2

By the end of the month the new club was searching for players. An ad was placed in the New York Clipper headlined “To Base Ball Players.” It read, in part: “All professionals desirous of connecting themselves with the Chicago Club are requested to address, stating terms as to salary, etc. … [A]s evidence of the soundness and reliability of the movement, it is only necessary to state that Potter Palmer is President and David A. Gage Treasurer of the new club.”3 Before the season began, Palmer stepped down as president, and Gage was elected in his place.

The first player signed by the new club was Jimmy Wood. By Opening Day of the 1870 season, the roster was filled, and players were outfitted in handsome new uniforms sporting white stockings, which would quickly become the moniker by which they became famous. The Chicago Tribune noted that “the snowy purity of the hose has suggested the name of ‘White Stockings.’”4 That first season the White Stockings claimed three locations spread around the city as their home turf, rotating between Dexter Park, Ogden Park, and Lake Front Park.5

The White Stockings achieved other firsts that year, including the ignominious distinction of being the first professional team to be shut out. In response, sportswriters coined the term “Chicagoed” to refer to such an outcome.6 The whitewashing was symptomatic of bigger problems for the local nine. The Chicago Republican called for an overhaul of the club from top to bottom, citing its “miserably poor record,” which it blamed on both the players and management, accusing the latter of inefficiency, and calling for “the immediate reorganization of the club, for the next season, under some vigorous management.”7

The Chicago Tribune noted the discontent, reporting that shareholders realized that while professional baseball was a business, it was not the same as running a store or a hotel. The shareholders finally put their frustrations into action. On August 8 they ousted President Gage and replaced him with majority shareholder Norman T. Gassette. The move paid quick dividends. “When the White Stockings were at their lowest ebb, scarcely superior to one of our amateur nines, Norman T. Gassette was called to the presidency, and, by unremitting exertion, and rare administrative ability, in a few short weeks, placed the club on its old footing. … [T]he disorganizing elements have been weeded out and replaced by capable and willing hands.”8

The highlight of the White Stockings’ first season came in early September when they traveled to Cincinnati and vanquished the Red Stockings by a score of 10-6. “The mission of the White Stockings has been accomplished,” crowed the Chicago Tribune under a headline bragging, “The Redoubtable Red Stockings Defeated by Chicago’s $18,000 Nine.” Acknowledging that it was an expensive undertaking, the Tribune rationalized it by noting that “the organization was effected with a direct view to beating the Red Stockings, and they have done it.”9 So giddy were Chicago fans over this triumph that some 3,000 gathered at Union Depot to greet their conquering heroes when they returned late the next evening. Proving it was no fluke, the White Stockings put an exclamation point on their season with a second victory over the Red Stockings in Chicago the following month.

Despite the success and ensuing enthusiasm, the Chicago Tribune encouraged the team to close up shop. “The Chicago Base Ball Club … was organized to take the honors from the Cincinnati boys … and accomplished it. It has beaten the Red Stocking [sic], and all the other clubs, and now stands at the head of the game. This is the best of all times to disband … the misfortune of greatness is, that it does not know the proper time to quit. The inglorious disbandment of the Red Stockings [who had disbanded the previous day] should admonish the White Stockings to avoid a demise under similar circumstances a year hence.”10

Unfortunately for Chicago, like Cincinnati the year before, success on the field did not translate to the front office. The White Stockings ended the season $3,000 in the red, half of which was player salaries in arrears. But the Chicago Tribune reported in November that “the stockholders have lost neither faith nor enthusiasm, and it need surprise no one, if, after the 1st of January, they announce a nine which will challenge comparison with any in the land.”11

The season was neither a financial success nor an orderly affair. It ended in chaos, predictable given the method of recognizing the champion of the unorganized competition that existed in 1870. The whip pennant, the symbol of the baseball championship, was awarded to the best team over the course of the season. The pennant was not awarded to the team with the most wins or the best overall record, but had to be won from its current holder in a best-of-three match. The Mutuals of New York laid claim to the honor on September 22 with their second triumph of the season over the Brooklyn Atlantics, the holders of the pennant at the time.

One month later, the White Stockings were in a position to steal the pennant when the Mutuals visited Chicago. If they could defeat the New York club – having beaten them in New York earlier, they could lay claim to the pennant. The Mutuals traveled to Chicago on October 30 for the match, which ended in a controversy, called in favor of the White Stockings. Chicago thus laid claim to the pennant. Citing the controversial ending of the game, and claiming that it was after all only an exhibition, and not a part of the championship season, the Mutuals refused to relinquish it. Adding to the confusion, the Red Stockings had lost fewer games than any other team, but had lost twice each to both Brooklyn and Chicago. So, while technically not able to claim the pennant, they did have grounds to argue they were the best team over the course of the season. And they were not alone in clubs claiming for one reason or another to be the rightful champions. This sort of confusion, born of a loose agreement between clubs, would play a part in the formation the next season of the National Association of Base Ball Players, the first formal organization of professional teams, of which the White Stockings were a charter member.

The National Association

Norman Theodore Gassette, majority owner and president of the first National Association Chicago franchise, was born in Townsend, Vermont, on April 21, 1839. His family moved to Chicago when he was 10. He served as a brevet lieutenant colonel in the Union Army in the Civil War, was clerk of the circuit court of Cook County from 1868 to 1872, and became a prominent lawyer and realtor in the city. He died in Chicago on March 26, 1891, a month shy of his 52nd birthday. While his interest in the club waned after the devastating fire in October of 1871, he did chair the meeting held the next year to revive the team.12 By the time it returned to the National Association in 1874, he had moved on to other endeavors, selling his shares in the team to William Hulbert in the fall of 1876.13 He was one of a number of prominent businessmen to invest in the resurrected franchise. Others included Potter Palmer and David A. Gage, as well as General Philip H. Sheridan, George M. Pullman, the industrialist and inventor, J.M. Richards, president of the Chicago Board of Trade, and Francis B. Wilkie, editor of the Chicago Times, as well as an up-and-coming businessman by the name of William Ambrose Hulbert.

Hulbert would go on to become the president of the White Stockings as well as the second president of the National League. Before baseball, he was a successful businessman. He was born on October 23, 1832, in Burlington Flats, New York, a country crossroads 15 miles west of Cooperstown. His family (he had two brothers) moved to Chicago in 1836. He briefly attended Beloit College, but his primary education was on-the-job training. He worked for his father’s grocery business and for a local coal merchant before establishing his own grain trading offices and obtaining a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade.14

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formally created at a March 17, 1871, meeting of 10 club representatives (the White Stockings among them) in New York City at Collier’s Rooms, a saloon on the corner of 13th Street and Broadway. The main purpose of the meeting was to bring order to the process of recognizing a champion among the professional base ball clubs in the country. Rules were discussed and a $10 entry fee was established for any team wishing to be considered for the championship pennant. There would be no set schedule. Each participating team was required to schedule a best-of-five series with every other participating nine. Teams were on their own to negotiate the time and place of such contests. The team with the most victories at season’s end would be awarded the championship pennant.

Much of Chicago’s 1871 roster was holdovers from the 1870 squad. Many of the players were from New York, and had been hired for their skill, not their ties to the Windy City, a fact that did not escape the notice of the New York Times, which referred to them as “the Chicago branch of the old Eckford Club.”15 Professional baseball was still a long way from a respected pastime in the eyes of many. In the minds of certain Chicago businessmen, however, it was a potentially lucrative investment.

The White Stockings abandoned Dexter Park for the 1871 season, citing the long commute as a detriment to attendance. Situated approximately six miles south of downtown Chicago, it was a solid 30-minute railroad ride and an hour by horse cart. In March of 1871 the city leased a section of Lake Park to the team for the construction of a new ballpark at Michigan and Randolph (the present-day Millennium Park) on the site of the Union Base-Ball Grounds at which they had played some of their games the previous year. It was referred to variously as Lake Front Park, White Stocking Grounds, and Lake Shore Park. Whatever the name, it was much easier to reach for the average Chicagoan. The Chicago Tribune reported that when completed, the park would have seating for 7,000 and that a full season ticket would go for $15. The White Stockings estimated the cost of the park at $5,000. The city set an annual lease of $200, despite some protestation. At least one alderman objected, presciently, that the city had no right to lease the land, since it belonged to the federal government. (The land was the site of the original Fort Chicago.) In addition, several businessmen who owned buildings on Michigan or Randolph objected. However, all concerns were overcome, the land was leased, and the ballpark built.16

By the end of September, Chicago’s first season of professional league ball could be considered a qualified success. The season was winding down and the White Stockings shared first place with Philadelphia, both sporting 18-7 records. In less than two weeks, Chicago would be embarking on its final Eastern swing, which included the fifth game of its series with Philadelphia, the teams having split the first four games. The fate of the team and, indeed that of the entire city of Chicago, were both about to take a drastic turn.

On October 8, 1871, the great Chicago fire began, and before it was over, 3.3 square miles of the city center were wiped out. An estimated 300 lives were lost along with 17,000 structures, leaving 150,000 homeless, including the ballclub and most of its players. The White Stockings lost their headquarters, equipment, uniforms, and ballpark, rendering them orphans for the remainder of the season, and ultimately leading to their exit from the league until 1874.

They gamely finished their Eastern tour, accepting free railroad passes and secondhand equipment and uniforms donated by opposing teams. “Not two of the nine were dressed alike. … [O]ne man wore a Mutual shirt and Eckford hose; another an Atlantic shirt, Mutual pants, and Flyaway hose, and so on; each man being obliged to borrow a shirt from anyone who was willing to lend.”17

Before the fire derailed their future, the White Stockings had already signed players for 1872.18 It was common in the early years of professional baseball for teams to sign players for the following season while they were still under contract, even with other teams. Clearly this was problematic, and would be one of the causes of the league’s eventual demise. At the conclusion of the season, Chicago released all players from their contracts, placing an announcement in the New York Clipper advertising their availability for the 1872 season.

Shortly after the conclusion of the season, the Chicago Base Ball Club canceled and surrendered its stocks. A committee was created to wrap up the details and close up the business. On November 12, less than a month after the fire, team secretary J.M. Thacher reported that some $1,500 had been disbursed in the past three weeks, most of it toward player salaries. Although the catastrophe had destroyed all of the club’s records and account books, Thacher reported that there was still $2,000 in the team’s bank account, which the stockholders later voted to divide evenly among the players. The ability to turn a profit under such dire circumstances was a glint of hope for the future of baseball, though the Tribune opined that “1872 will be a season of work in Chicago – hard, unceasing work for everybody, and we shall have little time to devote to an amusement. … Base ball is a luxury which we can dispense with for at least one year, and there should be no further steps toward the reorganization of the White Stocking nine.”19

Despite the fire and the Tribune editorial, baseball did not go away. On April 24, 1872, the Phoenix Base Ball Association was capitalized at $10,000 in shares of $100 each. A week later, the name was changed to the Chicago Base Ball Association. Among its 75 stockholders were several holdovers from the original franchise.20 The shares were widely distributed, with the majority stockholder, George Gage, owning only 10.21 The purpose of the association was to secure land in order to build a baseball ground, which it planned to lease to local amateur teams and visiting professional squads. An agreement was struck with a local businessman, Mr. Muhlke, to lease land on the south side, on Clark Street between 22nd and 23rd near the State Street car lines for $1,650 cash. The area was the location of the old Excelsior Grounds. It was estimated that construction of the grounds would cost $1,800 to $2,300. The grounds would seat 4,000 with room for another 1,000 standing. The new facility included a quarter-mile track and dressing rooms for the Chicago Athletic Club and visiting baseball players. The grounds were scheduled to be officially opened on May 25 with a series of sporting events hosted by the Chicago Athletic Club.22 The Chicago Base Ball Association was officially in business, even if the return of the White Stockings was still two years away. The Association lost $110 that year on revenues of $7,750, ending the year with $390 in the bank and assets valued at $4,890.23 All in all, a successful year for a base ball association that did not field a team.

On June 6, 1872, George W. Gage was elected president of the Chicago Base Ball Association, a position he would hold until his death three years later. The move returned direction of the team to its origins. Gage was the older brother of the team’s first president, David Gage. George Gage was born in Pelham, New Hampshire, on March 3, 1812, and made his fortune in the hotel business in Massachusetts before moving to Chicago in 1853, where he quickly established himself among the city’s business elite. He was the Republican nominee for mayor in 1869, and served as the city park commissioner for a number of years. Chicago honored his service by dedicating Gage Park on the city’s southwest side after his death on September 24, 1875.24

The plan to generate income through a ballpark was working. At the end of 1873, the Association had a cash balance in excess of $8,500.25 The funds were used to refurbish the park in preparation for the return of the White Stockings. The refurbished park sat nearly 7,000, and included 1,388 grandstand seats “furnished with comfortable settees … complimentary stand for the stockholders and other persons on the free-list.”26 A new side-track was constructed, connecting State Street to the entrance of the grounds, so that spectators could ride directly to the gates.

After a two-year absence, the White Stockings returned to the field in 1874. The 1874 Chicago White Stockings bore a strong resemblance to the 1873 Philadelphia White Stockings, Chicago having signed away seven of their players. Between 5,000 and 6,000 loyal fans turned out on May 13 to welcome the White Stockings back for their first home game in 2½ years. They were rewarded with a 4-0 “Chicagoing” of the visiting Athletics.27

Chicago’s return to professional baseball was underwhelming on the field. They finished the season with a losing record and a fifth-place finish, but did close the books with a positive balance. After spending $2,089 improving the grounds and paying nearly $18,000 in player salaries, the team turned a profit of $1,168 for the season. Revenue ranged from $5 in ice cream sales and $415 from rental of the grounds to a healthy $31,892 in gate receipts, one-third of which was paid out to visitors. The White Stockings were popular enough on the road to net $1,583.74 from their travels despite a financially disastrous early-season trip to Keokuk that earned them a paltry $56.28 The strength of their road performances came from their Boston trip in June, when the team took home over $5,600 from a three-game set.29 This rosy outlook would not last. The National Association was doomed, and the architect of its demise was rapidly rising in stature within the hierarchy of the White Stockings.

The future of the front office began to take shape that season when William Hulbert was elected secretary in August. Very quickly he made his presence felt, and began to take on a broader variety of tasks, including marketing, negotiating player contracts, and representing the team at the annual league meeting, where he was named to the rules committee. The Chicago Tribune, in announcing that Hulbert would represent the team, foreshadowed events under his leadership when it commented that he held “some very pronounced ideas on the punishment which should be meted out to ‘revolvers,’ and will make an excellent representative generally.” While attending the league meeting, he “saw that a radical reform should be effected, and an entirely new departure made, to place the national game on an enduring footing. The idea of a National League originated then and there … and before he left Philadelphia he had thought out the general plan.”30

The 1875 season witnessed several firsts for the White Stockings: 1-0 game (vs. St. Louis), no-hitter (vs. Philadelphia), and scoreless game at the end of nine innings (vs. Hartford).31 Unfortunately for the White Stockings, position in the standings was not included in that list. They suffered another losing season and finished sixth in an unwieldy 13-team league. The highlights of the season did not take place on the field. Rather, the excitement was in the front office, where dramatic changes were being made for 1876, when Chicago would debut a much-improved team in an entirely new league, all at the hands of William Ambrose Hulbert, who was promoted to team president after the death of George Gage in September of 1875.

The reconstruction process began much earlier. At the July 3 board meeting, Hulbert read a letter from Albert Spalding, who at the time was in the midst of another dominant season for the Boston Red Stockings. Spalding was offering his services as “manager” of the Chicago club for 1876. The board acted quickly, appointing Hulbert to go to Boston to pursue the deal with Spalding and to engage any other players for 1876 that he and Spalding desired.32

Two weeks later Hulbert reported back to the board that his trip to Boston was a rousing success. Not only had he secured the services of Spalding, but also his teammates Ross Barnes, Cal McVey, and Deacon White, as well as Ezra Sutton and Adrian Anson, currently of the Athletics. Spalding agreed to a guaranteed salary of $2,000 plus 25 of net profits. These were the terms of the contract reported publicly. However, the board approved a secret contract, which actually gave Spalding 30 percent of the net profits. Furthermore, Spalding would be elected “manager” of the team, and “was to have charge of and conduct in his own person, all the detail business of the association – the supervision of the Directory to be general.”33

The team had also promised Barnes a $2,000 salary and 25 percent of the net profits. McVey was signed for $2,000, White got $2,400 plus a promise of another $100 “if the club proves financially successful.” Anson was to receive $2,000, of which $200 was paid in advance. Sutton agreed to $2,000 plus $400 up front,34 though he ultimately reneged on the deal and stayed in Philadelphia. Anson also tried to back out of his deal, but in the end moved to Chicago, where he became the first member of the 3,000-hit club and became a Hall of Famer in 1939, along with Spalding.

The White Stockings were going all out for 1876 in more ways than one. For beginners, the signings flew directly in the face of what Hulbert had forcefully argued for earlier that year at the annual meeting of the National Association, when he advocated harsher punishments in an effort to stop in-season signings of players by one team from another. Secondly, the financial gamble was enormous. They had just signed six players to a total salary of $12,500. The White Stockings’ entire 1875 payroll for 18 players was less than $18,000, and those preliminary figures did not include the profit bonuses (which would ultimately cost the White Stockings $4,131). But most importantly, Hulbert was not concerned about his hypocritical behavior because he knew something nobody else did: There was not going to be a next year for the National Association. He was already formulating his plan to scuttle the league and create a new one.

President William Hulbert had purchased a single share of stock in the team in 1870 and thereafter steadily rose in prominence within the organization. He joined the White Stockings board of directors in 1872, was appointed team secretary in 1874, and president in 1875. He was now on the cusp of creating an entirely new league, of which he would also become president. Both the new team and league were created with the same cunning business acumen, amid secrecy that led to his desired outcome, and likely the best outcome for baseball and the Chicago franchise in the long run. But both reorganizations sparked outrage by those left behind, cut out of what would prove to be very profitable ventures.

At the same meeting at which Hulbert was promoted to the presidency, Albert Spalding joined the front office. He was elected to the board of directors to replace George Gage and appointed to succeed Hulbert as secretary, in addition to his previously assigned managerial duties.35 Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Spalding’s remarkable playing career in Chicago was soon to be overshadowed by his front office role.

Albert Goodwill Spalding was born in Byron, Illinois, on September 2, 1850, to James Lawrence and Harriet Irene (Goodwill) Spalding. At the age of eight, Spalding lost his father. His mother then moved the family to nearby Rockford in 1863, where Spalding graduated from high school and enrolled in a local business college. Like his mentor, William Hulbert, Spalding began his career in the grocery business, taking a job as a clerk in Rockford. Unlike Hulbert, Spalding was a talented ballplayer, and joined the local Forest City nine as a pitcher.36

Harriet Spalding was well off, having inherited a good sum of money, so Albert was raised in a comfortable though not extravagant lifestyle. As was common for the time period, his mother was not happy with his interest in baseball and counseled him to pursue business, which he eventually did, to great success. But first he decided to give baseball a shot – another endeavor at which he experienced great success. He signed his first professional contract with the Excelsiors of Chicago in September of 1867 for $40 per week. He went on to a Hall of Fame playing career with Boston and Chicago, retiring while still in his prime to begin building his sporting-goods empire, which exists to this day.

Word began circulating that fall that the National Association was considering expelling the players Chicago had signed away from Boston and Philadelphia. Hulbert, however, was one step ahead of the league. After only five years in operation, the National Association was in trouble. It was weak and unable to control the player jumping, rowdy behavior, and gambling. Attendance declined each year of the league’s existence.37 As a businessman, Hulbert recognized an opportunity for profit and the shortcomings of the current structure in attaining that profit. The time was ripe for a stronger, centrally governed league.

Hulbert convened secret meetings during the winter of 1875-76, to which he invited representatives of seven clubs to join his Chicago franchise in the formation of an exclusive new league. He appealed to the owners, businessmen all, by using some simple economic logic. If businessmen ran the teams and players played ball, each party could concentrate on doing what they did best and everyone would be better off. The geographic exclusivity he promised to each club appealed to the owners as well. Exclusivity meant monopoly, and monopoly meant profit. The meetings concluded with the eight clubs abandoning the National Association and forming the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs.38

William Hulbert served as president of the National League in its inaugural season in 1876. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

The National League

In preparation for the 1876 season, Hulbert obtained an upscale clubhouse for his team on the southeast corner of Wabash and 23rd, just a block from the 23rd Street Grounds where the team would play the next two seasons. The White Stockings opened their 1876 home season on May 10 with a 6-0 blanking of the Cincinnati Red Stockings in front of 5,000 to 6,000 people who stood in line and had to “go through all sorts of troubles to get tickets and seats for Chicago’s opening game.” The Chicago Tribune boasted the following morning that “it looks as if the Chicago club management had done it at last – had selected a club to fitly represent this city, and therefore to excel all other clubs in the West, if not in the country.”39

The season was a success on a number of fronts. The White Stockings won the pennant, the first of six they would capture in the first 11 years of the league’s existence, and turned a profit. The league itself survived, and would weather major scandals in its early years to validate Hulbert’s foresight. He was a visionary, a master of organization and persuasion, and a stealthy operator. Under his leadership the White Stockings and the National League both thrived, and continued to do so long after his premature death. And he wasn’t done. Perhaps the biggest success of the season was his reorganization of the team charter – another event that was accomplished largely in secrecy.

On July 30 the Chicago Tribune addressed fan concerns regarding the White Stockings’ lack of activity in securing their players for the 1877 season: “Mr. Hulbert is doing just what is wisest under the circumstances; and, as he should be given the credit for assembling the only first-class team Chicago ever had, so he should be let alone in his movements for 1877. He will do just what is best, no doubt.”40 But best for whom, was the question that should have been asked.

There was a very good reason that no players had yet been signed for 1877. For on July 30, there was no White Stockings franchise. The team’s charter had quietly expired some months before, and was not legally allowed to conduct any business other than the dissolution of the now expired Chicago Base Ball Association. Unbeknownst to the Tribune, and also unbeknownst to some of his co-owners, Hulbert was hard at work creating a new organization, which would field a White Stockings team in 1877. This new charter would be leaner and more top-heavy in control, with Hulbert in charge.

In the summer of 1876, Hulbert reorganized the team, buying out the shares of the now defunct Chicago Base Ball Association from several stockholders, who by then numbered 59 and held 70 shares among them. The majority shareholder among these 59 was George Gage with five shares. Nobody else held more than three shares. Hulbert had one. Between July 24 and October 30 a total of 35 shares were transferred to Hulbert, leaving him with 36 of 70 shares now held by a total of 30 people. Thus, Hulbert held controlling interest of the expired association, and set about closing it down.

The newly created charter was called the Chicago Ball Club, which was capitalized on August 26th with 200 shares of stock at $100 each. Those 200 shares were initially subscribed by 32 people. William H. Murray (50); Albert Spalding and Ross Barnes, both active players on the White Stockings at the time (30 each); Hulbert (22); and J.B. Lyon (20) were the majority stockholders.41

About a dozen of the disenfranchised stockholders hired an attorney to fight for their ownership rights. The issue was resolved by Hulbert, who “was obviously just scuttling some individuals he considered undesirables.”42 While perhaps behaving unethically, Hulbert did nothing illegal in shutting out most of the previous association’s stockholders. They were paid their due and summarily uninvited to participate in the new venture. Literally, out with the old and in with the new – and some of the favored old. Seven of the stockholders who were left holding stock from the old corporation joined Hulbert in the new corporation. Six of them (including Hulbert) were original charter members from 1872.43

One cannot help but wonder if Hulbert, shrewd executive that he was, deliberately let the association’s charter lapse so that he could rid himself of meddlesome stockholders who did not share his vision for the White Stockings.44 The Chicago Tribune praised the reorganized club, saying it “contains within its small number of stockholders all the best elements of the support of the game in this city.”45

The National League debuted in 1876 with eight teams. It would enter the next season with six, after the expulsion of New York and Philadelphia during the league’s winter meetings. William Ambrose Hulbert added the title of league president to his résumé when he was elected to succeed the retiring Morgan Bulkeley in December. He would continue to preside over both the White Stockings and the National League until his death on April 10, 1882.

Under Hulbert’s steady hand, both the league and the White Stockings flourished. The league survived a hippodroming (intentionally throwing games) scandal, the expulsion of another franchise (Cincinnati in 1880), and a revolving cast of members.46 It instituted the reserve clause and fixed schedules, clamped down on gambling, and begat stability from the chaos of the National Association. In short, while not without its growing pains, it became everything that Hulbert predicted. And that was to the great benefit of the White Stockings, who finished every season of Hulbert’s presidency in the black, won four of the first seven league titles, built a new ballpark, and produced three of the league’s first five presidents.

On April 1, 1880, Adrian C. Anson purchased Edwin F. Dexter’s five shares, and on August 24 the White Stockings purchased the 30 shares held by Ross Barnes. Cap Anson’s ownership of stock in the Chicago club was credited as a powerful influence in keeping him from abdicating for the Players’ League a decade later.47 The result of the reshuffling meant that by the fall of 1880 the majority stockholders were William H. Murray (50 shares), Albert Spalding (30), Hulbert (26), and J.B. Lyon (20), who between them held 74 percent of the 170 shares outstanding.48

The magnates of the National League surely appreciated Hulbert for creating a profitable monopoly and allowing them to share in its riches. His players also appreciated him. During the final home game of the 1881 season the players presented Hulbert with a ‘“massive” gold watch chain and locket “as a token of their respect and esteem.” One side of the locket featured the initials ‘W.A.H.’ while “From the boys of ’80 and ’81” was inscribed on the other side. Inside the locket were small ovals for portraits of the 12 donors of the nearly $200 it cost for the memento.49

Albert Spalding, a great pitcher and an even greater entrepreneur, began serving as president of the Chicago White Stockings in 1882. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

From Hulbert to Spalding

William A. Hulbert died on April 10, 1882, after a long illness. The future of the team was never in doubt. Just two weeks after the funeral, Albert Goodwill Spalding was unanimously elected president of the White Stockings. His ascendency to the position corresponded with a consolidation of stock. On April 26 the board met and unanimously voted to purchase Hulbert’s stock at par value from his widow, though at the time of his death Hulbert had paid in only 40 percent of the par value. Spalding became one of the two principal owners, along with John L. Walsh, president of the Chicago National Bank.50 Spalding financed his additional shares from the considerable wealth accumulated in his sporting-goods business, which was on the verge of monopolizing the industry – in the following year he would buy out his chief competitor, Al Reach. He had already scored a coup when Hulbert named his company the official supplier of National League baseballs and the printer of the league’s annual guide.

Walsh was connected to the team through Spalding. He had been a benefactor of Spalding’s when he first opened his sporting-goods company. At the time, Walsh was president of the Western News company. When Spalding opened his first store in Chicago in February of 1876, Walsh bought 10,000 baseballs from him for the news company, placing Spalding’s business on firm ground.51

After a spectacular, though brief (seven-year) pitching career, Spalding retired after the 1877 season to attend to his burgeoning sporting-goods business. He continued to act as secretary of the team, a position he had assumed while still a player. Spalding was in name the secretary, in practice arguably the first general manager. He put together the roster that dominated the early years of the league, winning championships in 1876, 1880-82, and 1885-6.

Spalding displayed his business acumen in the way he ran his ballclub. He made it clear by his actions that baseball was a business, not a game – a distinction that has not always been appreciated. He was a marketing genius. In addition to winning valuable endorsements from organized baseball for his company, he also used the White Stockings to promote baseball and further promote Spalding Brothers Sporting Goods when he took players on a world tour during the winter of 1888-89.

Spalding also recognized opportunities to improve his team. He initiated the practice of spring training to get his players in peak condition for the beginning of the season, taking the club to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the first time in 1886. He was also a pioneer when it came to employing scouts, in an attempt to keep the pipeline full of future players.52

He ran his club relentlessly, demanding the best from his employees. This was particularly evident in his approach to alcohol. Like Hulbert before him, Spalding was adamant about promoting player sobriety. He used his annual league Guide to rant against the evils of high salaries, home-run hitters, and alcohol, comparing the evils of drink to the throwing of games. “Temperance in the ranks during the summer championship season has become a necessity if only for financial reasons. … Players are paid excessive salaries for the labor they perform, and the man [with] … an unnatural appetite for intoxicating liquor, is as much a violation of his contract, as would be his conspiring to sell a game. … Thousands of dollars in loss of public patronage was one of the results of the past season’s mistake of the condoning of the offense of drunkenness in the ranks.”53

In order to enforce his convictions on temperance, Spalding employed detectives to trail his players to determine who among them was breaking their sobriety pledges. In the midst of the 1886 season, he leveled $25 fines on seven of his stars for “keeping too late hours and flirting with beverages not calculated to keep an athlete in good form.”54 Star outfielder Mike “King” Kelly’s propensity toward excessive drink eventually drove Spalding to dispose of his most popular player, selling him to Boston for the princely sum of $10,000 that winter.

By January 1882, Spalding had already re-signed the core of the 1881 champions for the new season. In March of that year, just weeks before Hulbert’s death, he signed an even bigger contract – this one with the National League and its new competitor, the American Association. Spalding secured an exclusive agreement with both leagues for his sporting-goods company to be the official provider of baseballs for all league games. The contract was a five-year deal, granting Spalding the option of renewing for an additional five years.55

The White Stockings won their third consecutive pennant in 1882. That December the National League elected Abraham G. Mills to succeed Hulbert as league president.56 Mills was a close associate of Spalding’s. The two had worked together in the White Stockings front office for six years. While he never held a major position on the club, Mills sometimes represented the team at NL meetings, and had worked closely with both men for several years. His election secured the strong connection between Chicago and the league office, which would extend into the twentieth century.

The White Stockings opened the 1883 season in a ballpark renovated to the tune of $10,000.57 Seating capacity was more than doubled to 10,000, with “comfortable” seating for 8,000, including 1,800 reserved seats. “The whole interior of the park has been remodeled, and there are certainly no grounds in America to equal them.”58 Harper’s crowed that they were “indisputably the finest in the world in respect of seating accommodations and conveniences.”59 Eighteen private boxes with privacy curtains, comfortable armchairs, and a telephone and gong for President Spalding were added on top of the grandstand for the use of club officers, reporters, and “those who may wish to pay the extra charge for occupying them. … Chicago has the champion club and now possesses the champion grounds.”60

The White Stockings played only two seasons in their newly remodeled park. After the 1884 season they were forced out by the city. In May of that year, the US government, owner of the property on which the Lake Front grounds were located, sued the city and team, alleging that the city violated the intended use of the grounds as open and public, and had no authority to allow its use for private or commercial purposes. US Circuit Court Judge Henry Blodgett ordered the city to desist from leasing the grounds and gave the team until November 1 to vacate them, at which time the city was instructed to clear all buildings and fences.61

The 1884 season was a tough one for the White Stockings. Their payroll was reportedly the highest in the National League, but their attendance plummeted more than 30 percent to 88,218, due to the competition from the rival Union Association franchise, located on the south side of town.

Spalding, determined to reverse the attendance slide, decided that a great ballpark was the way to go. The new ballpark, built at a cost of $25,000, was erected on the west side of the city, near three trolley lines, and easily accessible by “a larger population than the North and South Sides combined.” It was designed to be used for a variety of sports, including cricket, lacrosse, lawn-tennis, and bicycle racing, with a bicycle track built around the interior of the walls. The White Stockings signed a five-year lease on the lot, bounded by Congress, Harrison, Throop, and Loomis Streets. An enthusiastic Spalding announced that “no pains or expense will be spared to make these the finest base-ball and athletic grounds in America.” Sporting Life agreed, calling it “the finest and best in the world.” In lieu of an “unsightly board fence … a substantial, stone-capped brick wall twelve feet in height will be constructed, to extend entirely around the grounds.” Sunday games, alcohol, and gambling of all types were prohibited at the new ballpark (never mind that they were already prohibited by the National League) in an effort to curry “the encouragement and patronage of the better class of people.”62

The White Stockings christened the new ballpark on June 6, 1885. “The game played upon the new grounds of the Chicago Club between the St. Louis and home teams yesterday attracted one of the largest audiences ever assembled at a ballfield in this city, the turn-stiles showing the registry of 10,327 people,” noted the Tribune. “The grand-stand was packed, as were also the open stands, and in addition 500 chairs which President Spalding ordered sent to the ground were sold, and 2000 people stood upon the bicycle track upon each side of the diamond. … Every housetop and window commanding a view of the grounds was occupied by spectators, and at a rough estimate fully 2000 people must have witnessed the game in this way. The east end of the grounds was filled with carriages, and quite a number of vehicles for want of room were compelled to stand outside on Congress, Throop, and Loomis streets.”63 According to the White Stockings’ own attendance records however, the actual crowd that day was 6,477.64

There were reports of the White Stockings drawing crowds in excess of 10,000 on multiple dates during the season.65 However, team records indicate that the biggest crowd of the year was 7,752 for the morning game of a July 3 split doubleheader versus New York. The second game attracted 5,473. In total, attendance exceeded 5,000 only seven times in 58 home games for a season total of 119,318.66

The Chicago Daily News reported in early October that the White Stockings took in approximately $300,000 in revenue against expenses and salaries of $40,000.67 This is another example of reporting hyperbole. In order to earn this kind of revenue they would have had to draw an average of over 8,000 per game both at home and away. In fact, they averaged 2,057 per home game, and historically were a much better draw at home than anywhere on the road.68 Whatever the exact figure, the players benefited from the successful season. The 1885 postseason series between the NL champion White Stockings and the St. Louis Browns of the American Association ended in a tie. Players from both teams split the $1,000 prize pot, sponsored by the two teams. The postseason series was neither well attended nor followed, interest in baseball having faded at the conclusion of the regular season. White Stockings players were also promised cash bonuses for having honored the temperance pledges they signed in April before they left Chicago for spring training.69

In the midst of the postseason series, the two leagues met in New York City and inked a new national agreement that provided, among other things, that no player contracts would be written for a period to exceed seven months, no contracts would be made for the following season prior to October 20, and that for the first 10 days after his release, a player could only be signed by other teams in his original league. Only after this 10-day period could teams from the other league sign him. Each league promised to recognize the other’s reserve clause, with no team able to reserve more than 12 players. The agreement also provided geographic monopolies for all clubs in both leagues. The most important move, however, was the new salary cap. Immediately, it provided cost control for clubs by limiting salaries to a range of $1,000 to $2,000 per season and prohibiting advance payments except for train fare to join the club in the spring.70

Spalding showed his appreciation for a pennant-winning effort again in 1886. After the team clinched the title on October 9 in Boston, he sent a telegram congratulating them for having “clinched the pennant in great style. … Now come home and win the world’s championship. As a token of my appreciation of your work I herewith tender each man of the team a suit of clothes, and the team collectively one-half the receipts in the coming series with St. Louis. Accept my hearty congratulations.”71 Alas, the Browns won the series and with it the prize of the total gate receipts, as previously agreed upon by Spalding and Chris Von der Ahe, the St. Louis owner. There are no records indicating whether Spalding honored his pledge to award half the gate to his players.

Perhaps due to the disappointing series loss, Spalding’s appreciation for the pennant-winning White Stockings was fleeting, and he began to break up the team that winter. After the disappointing showing, he refused to pay temperance bonuses to several players, accusing them of backsliding on their promise, and hinting that drink played a part in the loss to St. Louis. In one of the most famous baseball transactions of the nineteenth century, Spalding shipped Mike Kelly to Boston for $10,000. He followed that by sending Jim McCormick to Pittsburgh for George Van Haltren and $2,000, and George Gore to the Giants for a reported $3,500. The next year he sold John Clarkson to Boston for another $10,000,72 ending the Chicago dynasty. It would be 20 years and several team nicknames before they would win another pennant.

The following spring, Spalding turned his attention to leaguewide matters, floating a plan to form a single major league from the AA and the NL. His plan called for eliminating Cleveland and the New York Metropolitans from the AA and Indianapolis and Washington from the NL, and combining the remaining teams into a single 12-team league. This plan went nowhere, but presaged the events of five years thence, when the collapse of the American Association resulted in four AA teams being absorbed into a new 12-team NL.

The NL made big news at its fall meeting in November of 1888. The league unilaterally decided to opt out of the maximum-salary schedule they had agreed to three years earlier and replace it with a classification system. The system was to take effect on December 15 and would exempt any contracts in place before that date. Thereafter, however, players were to be paid based on their classification. Owners would assign each player to a class, ranging from A to E, according to skill and off-field deportment. Salaries would range from $2,500 for Class A players down to $1,500 for those in Class E. All players in a given class would receive the same salary.73 The classification system helped spur the formation of the Players’ League in 1890.

A hot rumor floating around the meeting hotel was that a majority of the clubs favored the formation of a baseball trust. The purpose of the trust would be to provide financial assistance to the weaker clubs from the wealthier clubs.74 Details were not provided, but the basis of such a system was already in place, with some owners holding stock in more than one club. In 1890 John T. Brush owned the Cincinnati club and the minor-league Indianapolis club, as well as stock in the New York entry in the National League, which also counted as stockholders Arthur Soden (who held 33 percent of Boston’s stock), Spalding, and Ferdinand Abell, who also owned 40 percent of both the Brooklyn and Baltimore franchises. Harry Von der Horst also owned 40 percent shares of Brooklyn and Baltimore. Ned Hanlon and Charles Ebbets each held 10 percent of the stock in both Baltimore and Brooklyn. And Frank Robison owned the St. Louis (AA) and Cleveland (NL) franchises.75 It wasn’t the single-entity trust rumored two years earlier, but the interlocking interests of the franchises were enough to question the independence of any team. This sort of relationship was certainly characteristic of Spalding’s approach to base ball as a profit-maximizing business, no different than his approach to the sporting-goods industry.

The Players’ League

Spalding worked diligently behind the scenes to prevent an American Association team from locating in Chicago in 1890, using the press to spread propaganda about the inability of Chicago to support two professional teams.76 He was right. While he succeeded in fending off competition from the AA, he was not successful in monopolizing the market. That year saw the debut (and farewell) of the Players’ League, which placed franchises in seven NL and AA markets, including Chicago, with disastrous financial results. Attendance at the West Side Grounds plunged 31 percent to 102,536.77 The PL Pirates, who played across town from the White Stockings, drew 148,876. They were only one of six Players’ League teams that outdrew their NL and AA crosstown competitors.78 The attendance victories were short-lived, however. The increased competition from the upstart league resulted in the NL reportedly losing $231,000, with the White Stockings alone losing $35,000. The red ink extended to the Players’ League, which allegedly lost $125,000, with the Pirates responsible for $16,000 of that amount.79

The Players’ National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (PL) had been organized over the previous winter by the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players, the first player union. Disenchanted by the salary classification system and reserve clause, players leapt at the opportunity to join a league in which they would be partial owners of the franchises for which they played. The PL attracted many of the game’s stars, and filled its rosters with players who had defected from the National League and American Association.

Spalding’s penurious reputation and his hard-driving, inflexible style, particularly when it came to alcohol, cost him dearly. When faced with the option of playing for Spalding or fleeing for a new league, the White Stockings players voted with their feet. Spalding lost 13 of the 19 players from his 1889 roster to the Players’ League, seven of whom moved south to 35th and Wentworth to play for the Pirates. In addition, three other players departed, leaving the White Stockings with only three returning players for the 1890 season. Spalding rebuilt his roster with younger players, leading sportswriters to refer to the team as the Colts.

As bad as things were in Chicago, they were no match for the crisis faced by the NL’s New York entry, which was nearly bankrupted by the competition. In a desperate attempt to rescue the franchise, Spalding organized a consortium of owners to back John T. Brush in his purchase of the team from John B. Day. Spalding and Soden (Boston) each matched Brush’s $20,000 investment, and the other $20,000 of the total $80,000 purchase price was put up by Reach (Philadelphia), Ferdinand Abell, and Charles Byrne (the latter two owned stock in the Brooklyn National League and New York American Association franchises).80

Spalding was elected by his peers to lead the NL’s “war committee” against the Players’ League. His primary weapon was to employ a divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting the Players’ League athletes against the financiers by offering the latter a chance to buy into the NL. But he also planned to fight in the courts, in the newspapers, and at the gate. In order to control the flow of information, Spalding took a page from his own playbook. He took control of the media by purchasing the Reach Baseball Guide and the New York Sporting Times. He hired O.P. Caylor to edit the sporting paper and used the publication as the NL’s mouthpiece.81

Spalding planned a scorched-earth approach to the battle, calculating that the NL owners could afford to lose more money in the short run than their PL counterparts would be willing to lose, declaring in March of 1890, “I want to fight until one of us drops dead.”82 The key to victory lay in the recognition that businessmen are in business to make profits and, when faced with the prospect of large losses or the possibility to buy into a profitable monopoly, the PL owners quickly chose the latter. The league, and hence competition, was vanquished, but its strengths, the monied men behind it, became part of the National League.

National League teams purchased and merged their PL competitors in Pittsburgh, New York, Brooklyn, and Chicago. Spalding bought out his competitor for $25,000.83 The purchase included the lease on their ballpark, known then as Brotherhood Park but eventually called South Side Park, which had a capacity of nearly 11,000 plus standing room for another 5,000. Streetcar lines provided convenient access to the park, located at 35th and Wentworth (the same intersection now occupied by Guaranteed Rate Field). But the White Stockings had a loyal following at West Side Park and feared fan outrage if they abandoned those Congress Street grounds. Their solution was to use both ballparks, scheduling half their home games at each in 1891. Brotherhood Park was leased for $1,500 per year, a far cry from the $7,500 the White Stockings were paying for West Side Park. In addition, the club was leasing a plot at the intersection of Lincoln (present day Wolcott) and Polk, just a few blocks from West Side Park, for $6,000.84

John Addison (for whom the street bordering the south side of Wrigley Field is named) was a prominent Chicago architect and the principal financial backer of the Chicago Players’ League franchise. As part of the settlement, he exchanged his shares of the Pirates with Spalding for shares in the White Stockings and New York Giants. The deal was not without some drama, however, as his co-owners threatened a lawsuit, temporarily holding up the exchange. In the end, Addison sold his shares, dividing $18,000 between nonplaying shareholders at 60 percent of par value, and the Pirates players, who received a settlement on their unpaid salary balances. In addition, the six players who held stock were paid off at 50 percent of par value.85 In the end, his involvement with the team was minimal, and his last known connection was when he built the second iteration of West Side Park in 1893 on the lot being leased by the club. It remained home to the team until the Cubs moved into Wrigley Field.86

The second iteration of West Side Grounds opened in 1893 and was the Chicago Cubs’ home through the 1915 season. (DOUG PAPPAS COLLECTION)

A Change of Leadership

In April of 1891, after an exhausting offseason, Albert Spalding turned in his resignation as president of the club in order to devote more time to his sporting-goods business. He “washed his hands of the Chicago club’s affairs and turned the entire business over to James Hart, who was unanimously elected President of the club for the ensuing year.” Spalding explained that he had intended to retire upon returning from his world tour, but put it off due to the Brotherhood revolt. “Now that this matter has been settled and the National League reestablished on a good, firm basis, I feel that I can quietly retire from active base-ball management without being accused of deserting the old organization in time of adversity,” Spalding said. He retained stock in the ballclub, and expressed his confidence in Hart, “a man thoroughly competent and well qualified.”87

Hart had recently joined the White Stockings front office as club secretary. He had a history with Spalding, having managed the team of all-stars facing the White Stockings during the 1888-89 world tour as well as serving as the tour’s business manager. Hart was an experienced manager at the time and also had success touring baseball teams. His managerial career began with his college team, the Grand River Institute in Ohio, in 1874. For the next several years he managed a variety of amateur teams before purchasing stock in the Louisville franchise of the American Association, where he was named vice president in 1884. The next year he was named manager. He led his team on a postseason tour to the West Coast after the season and managed the team again in 1886. He sold his stock and left Louisville in the spring of 1887 when he bought the Western Association’s Milwaukee franchise, which he managed until he sold it after the 1888 season.88 During the winter of 1887-88, Hart took three National League teams, including the White Stockings, to California on tour and “through the most careful management prevented the scheme from being an utter failure.” Slight praise for a trip that was a financial success.89

Hart was born in Girard, Pennsylvania, on July 10, 1855. Prior to his baseball connections, Hart had been a successful businessman, owning retail stores in four states at various times. He also dabbled in the theater, as half-owner of a venue in Milwaukee. After working with Spalding on the world tour, he spent the 1889 season managing the Boston National League team, and then returned to England in 1890 to start the British Base Ball League, organized by Spalding. The league failed after one season, sending Hart back to the US, where he joined the White Stockings.90

Chicago’s decline in the standings paralleled the ascent of James Hart to the club presidency. The transition was not a smooth one. Anson was not happy to have been passed over for the presidency. Despite conciliatory words from Spalding, who assured him that Hart was merely a figurehead, the incident opened a rift between Spalding and Anson.91 Anson also had problems with Hart, and the two began to butt heads almost immediately. “Hart regarded Anson as a relic of the past who was unwilling to change with the times. Anson countered by calling Hart a usurper who undermined his authority by encouraging rebellion among the players.”92

Hart’s conflicts stretched beyond the White Stockings. He capped his first season as president by accusing New York of throwing its games against Boston late in 1891 in order to deny the pennant to the White Stockings. He claimed to have information that there had been “either downright dishonesty on the part of the New York club, or gross incompetency on the part of those in control of the team in the games played in Boston.”93 He insisted that the league investigate the matter. The Giants executive committee met with the players on October 8 and exonerated them of any wrongdoing. A few years later Hart went after one of his own, accusing pitcher Jack Taylor of throwing games to the crosstown White Sox in the postseason city series. In this case, it appeared that Hart was correct in his suspicions. Taylor was reported to have been overheard saying something like “Why should I have won? I got $100 from Hart for winning, and $500 for losing.” Things got worse for Taylor, who was hauled in front of the National Commission on charges of throwing games, and was fined, though he avoided any harsher penalties.94

Hart’s most dramatic confrontation came during league meetings in March of 1899, when he tangled with Philadelphia owner John Rogers. During a dispute about enforcing fines, Hart “tried to land a knock-out blow on Colonel John I. Rogers of Philadelphia, and Rogers in turn made an effort to draw his pistol.”95 Quick thinking by President Young, who jumped between the two would-be combatants, prevented any injuries beyond personal pride.

At the conclusion of the 1891 season, National League champion Boston refused to play the American Association champions from the same city. By the following spring, the AA folded and the NL absorbed four of its franchises.96 In so doing, the NL bowed to the popular 25-cent ticket, a hallmark of the American Association, directing all teams to dedicate a portion of their seats for the lower priced admissions. Ever the businessman, Spalding rejoiced at the elimination of another competing league, predicting lasting peace and prosperity. He firmly believed that profitability and contentment were a function of monopoly. Peace, if not prosperity, lasted the rest of the decade, before the National League finally met a foe it could not vanquish.

The dramatic decrease in the number of available jobs for ballplayers was quickly exploited by the National League, which cut salaries by as much as 40 percent for the 1892 season. Hart described the cuts as “only the natural consequences of baseball history,” asserting that “the same thing is done every day in other lines of business, only no talk is made of it.”97

Before the 1892 season, President Hart announced that the White Stockings would play all their games at the South Side Park, temporarily abandoning West Side Grounds.98 The move seemed practical for a number of reasons. The team had drawn more fans at the south side location in 1891, Hart was looking forward to the anticipated 1893 World’s Fair crowds spending their afternoons at the nearby South Side grounds, and the team was planning to build a new ballpark at a west side location, announcing that “it is probable that we will play there next year, as the West Side is the best part of the city for ball games.”99 Beginning in 1892 the NL allowed Sunday games, but the Colts’ lease at the south side grounds prohibited Sunday ball.

It was the potential profits of Sunday ball that eventually led to a major reorganization of the White Stockings franchise. President Hart believed in the future of playing on the Sabbath, but majority stockholders Spalding and Walsh were not interested in pursuing the opportunity. However, they were not against selling their shares to someone who was. So, in the fall of 1892 Hart, along with Charles M. Sherman, an attorney, and Thomas Barrett, a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, purchased the White Stockings.

The sale involved creating a new stock company, the Chicago League Ball Club, capitalized at $100,000. It took over the franchise and the lease on the south side grounds. The original stock company was still held by Spalding, Walsh, and Charles T. Trege.100 It no longer had any direct control over the team. Instead, the old corporation managed real estate. It owned a large parcel of property at Polk and Lincoln (later Wolcott), not far from the West Side Grounds, where a new ballpark was to be built at an estimated cost of $30,000. The site was large enough to also accommodate other building lots. Among other real estate held by the old corporation was the property in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where the team held its spring training. Hart’s new corporation, of which he was president, signed a 10-year lease to play ball on the yet-to-be-built west side grounds, owned by the old corporation. The new corporation was chartered by Hart, Sherman, and Barrett, but all of the original stockholders had the opportunity to buy into the new corporation.101 Spalding, Walsh, and Anson all took advantage of the opportunity, and Anson stayed on as field manager.

The reorganization was finalized on December 17, 1892, and when it was done A.G. Spalding, his brother Walter, and John R. Walsh together held 640 shares; the estate of J.W. Brown held 132 shares; Anson owned 130 shares; and Hart held 83 shares. The remaining 15 shares belonged to Frank Andrews.102 Hart increased his holdings over the next decade, assuming majority ownership in 1902. Spalding incorporated his holdings of real estate, his sporting-goods business, and his White Stockings stock in New Jersey with capital stock of more than $4 million. He also purchased the Reach Sporting Goods Company for $100,000 after Reach defaulted on an 1887 loan he had obtained from Spalding.

Spalding stood at the peak of the sporting-goods industry, with offices in 23 US cities, stores in 65, and a payroll numbering 3,500 employees, who turned out more than one million baseball bats a year.103 After the new incorporation, he still had a substantial financial interest in the White Stockings, but stepped back from active involvement with the club, and over the next decade reduced his financial interests in the club as well, selling his remaining shares in 1902.

Spalding eventually moved to California and made an unsuccessful run for the US Senate. Through his sporting-goods company he continued to publish the annual official NL guide and he wrote America’s National Game, part memoir, part history, in 1911, which, despite its many shortcomings, was the first true effort to tell baseball’s history. Spalding remained a force in the game until his death in 1915. Referred to as the Father of Baseball by the early twentieth century, Spalding used that respect to help promote his desire that baseball be recognized as a purely American sport in origin. That overzealous desire led to one of his more dubious “contributions” to the game: the propagation of the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball.

Spalding died of apoplexy at age 65 on September 9, 1915, at his home in Point Loma, California. He was survived by three children and his second wife, to whom he left the bulk of his estate, valued at $600,000.104

In 1893 Hart moved the team again, to the newly built West Side Park,105 which was regarded as the finest baseball edifice of its day. He had a telephone installed in his box seat so he could conduct business while watching games. The field was huge, 540 feet to left and right (150 feet longer than the old west side grounds). The grandstand contained 3,000 folding chairs and 500 opera chairs. For the gentler class, 500 armchairs occupied 56 private boxes. There were 4,500 seats in the covered pavilion and another 8,000 in the open bleacher seats. Two bathrooms were located on the top floor of the brick building used by the ticket sellers. The ground floor also featured a directors room and the ladies retiring room. Dressing rooms with hot and cold water, showers, and closets were provided for each team.106

On August 5, 1894, a fire broke out during a game at West Side Park, causing $15,000 in damage. While there were no deaths, a reported 500 people were injured, mostly while trying to escape through a barbed-wire fence that separated the bleachers, where the fire originated, from the field. “The wires were strung with hair and strips of skin and flesh.” The tightly wound barbed-wire fence, which reached to a height of eight feet and extended along the length of the 25-cent seats, had been erected to “keep the ardent 25-cent crank from getting down in the field and killing the umpire. Its necessity had been suggested from a little incident that happened on the South Side grounds two years ago when the crowed swarmed out into the field to curse the umpire and stopped a game that Chicago stood sure to win.”107

Quick thinking by some of the players and President Hart probably saved the lives of the 1,600 patrons seated in the bleacher section. “The imperiled and fear-crazed crowd bucked against the barbed fencing. Their mad rush to get away from the advancing flames resulted in the injury of scores.” Players Jimmy Ryan and Walt Wilmot helped fans escape through the barbed-wire fencing by “using their bats like blacksmiths” to create a gap. Hart directed the destruction of a 50-foot section of the fence to allow access to the field. “Five minutes after the last spectator had got out of reach of the flames every seat was being consumed.” A cigar stub tossed into rubbish in the stands was blamed for the fire.108

“Four hundred feet of the buildings extending from the grand stand along Lincoln Street was burned to cinders. … Nearly one-half of the stands of the park [were] either completely destroyed or badly damaged.” The damage extended outside the ballpark to the sidewalks and street. During the blaze, many onlookers gathered outside, and as many were interested in the fires and casualties as wanted to know “how the game between Chicago and Cincinnati had been going when interrupted. And even in the presence of calamity there were many expressions of satisfaction that Chicago was so well ahead [they led 8-2 in the seventh inning] that the game had been practically won before the fire king called it off.”109 Despite the disaster, nary a game was missed. The damaged section of the ballpark was roped off, and the park was ready for play the next day.

First baseman and team captain Adrian “Cap” Anson played for Chicago’s National League club for 22 seasons from 1876 to 1897, recording more than 3,000 career hits. He also played an instrumental role in enforcing baseball’s segregated color barrier against Black players. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Adieu to the Captain

James Hart and Adrian “Cap” Anson had a strained relationship stemming from Anson having been passed over for president in favor of Hart. Anson was also bitter over a failed attempt to buy the club, and he blamed both Hart and Spalding for impeding him in those efforts. He publicly blamed Hart for the team’s struggles on the field, complaining that he was miserly and refused to obtain good players because he didn’t want to pay the salaries they would command. This was merely a continuation of the budgetary penury practiced by Spalding, under whose stewardship the team developed a reputation for cheapness. As president, Spalding frequently sold off high-priced players, replacing them with younger and cheaper talent.

Anson’s long-term contract expired in January of 1898 and Hart did not renew it, almost certainly with the blessing of Spalding, even though, as president, Hart did not need Spalding’s approval. By this time Spalding was no longer the majority shareholder, having sold shares to Walsh, who became the majority shareholder by the end of 1897.110 Perhaps to console Anson for his dismissal, Spalding offered to sell him controlling interest in the team at $150 per share and gave Anson 60 days to raise the funds. But at the April 15 deadline, Anson did not have the money and the deal fell through. An incensed Anson accused Spalding of duplicity, charging that “there was never any intention on the part of A.G. Spalding and his confréres to let me get possession of the club.”111 Anson was probably right, in that Spalding certainly realized the likelihood of Anson’s coming up with the necessary cash was highly unlikely. For his part, Anson was more likely speaking out of frustration, as he was genuinely angry at having been denied for a second time an opportunity play a significant front-office role with the club. The end of the Anson era in Chicago was bitter and ugly, hardly becoming the career of a legend. The Chicago Tribune estimated that since he began to play ball as a teenager in Marshalltown, Iowa, he had piled up 7,000 hits.112

Hart maintained that the decision to let Anson go was made by the stockholders, who felt that the fans desired a change of management. He praised Anson’s long and faithful service to the club, wishing him the best in his future endeavors, and said, “There is not now, and never has been, friction between Captain Anson and myself.”113 Hart and Anson belied this “lack of friction” in a contentious exchange of letters published in the Chicago Tribune later that year.

Seeking to defend his motives, Hart explained Anson’s financial connections to the White Stockings. His contract called for a fixed salary plus a percentage of net profits each year. However, according to Hart, for a variety of reasons, there were no profits in any year from 1890 to 1893. Nevertheless, in two of those years Anson was paid a sum “nearly double that called for in his contract.” And in a third, a debt to the club in the amount of $2,600 for previously purchased shares of stock was forgiven. In 1897 Anson once again took an advance from the club, this time in the amount of $2,400, “which at the present time stands charged to him on the books of the club, and it has never been paid.”114

Anson rebutted, claiming that Hart overstated losses in the years 1890-93. Regarding the corporate reorganization, he asserted that Spalding had offered him the chance to “swing the deal myself.” While he was unable to take over the club, he did purchase 130 shares in the new corporation. “When I took the extra shares of the stock … I was guaranteed that my contingent fees should pay for the stock that was assigned to me. I deny emphatically that I owe the club $2,400. … I worked for the club for a period of time extending over twenty-two years, my contract calling for a stated salary and 10 per cent of the net profits … but I have never been allowed to see [the books], and whether I have had all that was coming to me or not is an open question in my mind.”115

After Anson was released, the sportswriters began referring to the team as the Orphans, which was just as well, since Hart changed the team uniform to maroon stockings to better hide the dirt.116 They were never to bear the moniker White Stockings again, as three years later the upstart American League christened its Chicago team the White Stockings, shortened by writers to White Sox, forever co-opting the name.

Spalding planned a testimonial dinner for Anson, raising $50,000 for a tribute to the longtime star. “It seems a pity,” said Spalding, “that a man like Anson should be allowed to drop from sight without the people being given a chance to show their high esteem of him.”117 Anson, however, refused the honor, saying, “I don’t know as I am yet ready to say that I am out of baseball. I am neither a pauper nor a rich man, and prefer to decline. The public owes me nothing. … [T]he kind offer to raise a large public subscription for me … is an honor and compliment I duly appreciate. … At this hour I deem it both unwise and inexpedient to accept the generosity so considerately offered.”118

In the fall of 1899, Hart made a costly error when he granted Charles Comiskey the right to relocate his St. Paul franchise to Chicago’s south side, where Comiskey erected a ballpark just north of the South Side Grounds the White Stockings had abandoned just a few years earlier. At the time the American League (née Western League) still held minor-league status, and did not seem a threat to Hart’s business. However, when the new team adopted the nickname White Stockings, no longer used in reference to Hart’s club, and the American League declared itself a “major league” the following year, the situation took on a whole new light. And when one-third of the 30 players who donned the NL Chicago uniform fled to the new league in 1901, and another eight the following year, it became apparent that the interlopers were far more threatening than Hart had assumed. Chicago lost so many players in the early days of the AL-NL war that sportswriters dubbed them the “Remnants.”

Al Spalding briefly returned to active involvement in league affairs at the winter meetings in December of 1901. He had not been publicly involved since he turned over control of the franchise a decade earlier, but was determined to head off John Brush’s proposal to turn the league into a trust consisting of eight franchises. The battle was played out in the contest for league president. Spalding ran against his old pal Nick Young, who was nominated by the Freedman trust faction. The vote was deadlocked at 4 each for 25 rounds of balloting, at which point “the Young faction left the meeting room, whereupon Col. Rogers, acting as chairman, declared Mr. Spalding elected. Mr. Spalding then assumed charge of the league’s records, but the Young faction refused to acknowledge Spalding’s election and secured an injunction, to which Mr. Spalding filed a demurrer.”119 The case dragged on for three months before the Spalding demurrer was overruled. The league then met on April 1, whereupon Spalding resigned his challenged presidency, declaring, “I am prompted in this action solely by the belief that prolonging a factional political warfare into the playing season would be distasteful to the public, injurious to the National League in particular and to professional base-ball in general.”120 Young was elected secretary-treasurer, and the executive duties were turned over to a three man commission consisting of Brush as chairman, Soden, and Hart.

James A. Hart succeeded Albert Spalding as the Chicago Cubs president in 1891 and then took over majority control of the team from 1901 until 1905. (A.G. SPALDING COLLECTION)

James Hart

In the summer of 1901, rumors abounded that Cap Anson was on the verge of making a comeback by purchasing the team.121 But the rumors proved unfounded. Instead, it was his nemesis, Jim Hart, who took over majority control.

Hart prospered financially, despite the war with the AL, and in 1902 he bought out Spalding and Walsh, assuming majority ownership. He then hired Frank Selee as manager, whose emphasis on youth led the sportswriters to dub the team Cubs, shorter and easier to work into headlines than Orphans or Remnants. It did not catch on instantly, however. During the first decade of the new century sportswriters variously referred to them as Colts, Orphans, Remnants, Cubs, Chicagos, Nationals, Sprouts, Seedlings, Recruits, Hartites, Microbes, Seleeites, Selee’s Colts, and the Tribe of Selee.122 Selee fell ill and had to step down midway through the 1905 season, by which time he had assembled the parts of what would become the next great Chicago dynasty. The Cubs won pennants in 1906, 1907, 1908, and 1910, and back-to-back World Series titles in 1907-08. Hart himself departed in 1905, just before the reign of dominance, selling out to Charles W. Murphy, who also succeeded him as president, for $105,500.123

After selling his interest in the team, Hart left baseball and turned to his business interests. He died of heart disease on July 18, 1919, in Chicago at age 64, leaving a widow and two children. At the time he was president and part owner of the Chicago Gravel Company. He was cited as a baseball pioneer in his New York Times obituary. As chair of the rules committee, he was largely responsible for the foul strike rule, the abolition of the foul bound, confining coaches to boxes, altering the shape of home plate to its current form, and instrumental in changing the pitching box to a rubber fixed at its present distance of 60 feet 6 inches. He was an innovator, having first suggested putting numbers on player uniform backs in 1894, and a savvy businessman who served on the committee that hashed out peace terms with the AL.124

Charles Murphy

Charles Webb Murphy was born on January 22, 1868, in Wilmington, Ohio, where he played ball on a local team, prior to moving to Cincinnati to attend pharmacy school. He landed a job with Keenan’s Drug Store before switching careers and entering the newspaper business. He began his newspaper career at the Cincinnati Enquirer, allegedly after being fired by Keenan for skipping work to attend a ballgame between the hometown Reds and the visiting White Stockings. He built a reputation as an authority on the intricate points of baseball, his lifelong passion. He eventually rose to the position of editor of the sports department before accepting a position as city editor for the rival Cincinnati Times-Star, owned by Charles P. Taft, the older brother of future President William Howard Taft.125

Murphy’s newspaper career introduced him to two men who would prove instrumental in his eventual entrance into major-league baseball. During his days at the Enquirer, Murphy got to know John Brush, who owned the Reds at the time. And Charles Taft, his boss at the Times-Star, would eventually become his bankroll and co-owner of the Chicago Cubs. In 1905 he was hired by Brush as press agent (the first in baseball history) for the New York Giants.126 Despite working in New York, Murphy’s heart was in Chicago, his wife’s hometown. They maintained a residence there, in Austin, on the west side of the city.

Charles Murphy was owner of the Chicago Cubs from 1906 to 1913. (CHICAGO DAILY NEWS / CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM)

Putting Together a Deal

In July of 1905, Brush informed Murphy that James Hart was looking to sell the Cubs. He went to Chicago and got an option on the team from Hart, then went to Cincinnati and enlisted the aid of Taft in financing the purchase price. The deal was announced in the press on July 16 and closed on July 31. Murphy did not have the funds, and so required someone with deep pockets to front him the money. Enter his current employer, Charles Phelps Taft.

By July 1905 Hart was nearing 50 and being pulled in multiple directions with his various business interests. It was no secret that he had been looking to get out of the baseball business for some time. The Chicago Tribune reported that “in addition to being the president and treasurer of the Chicago Gravel company, from which it is said he has reaped quite a fortune, he has invested in gas and oil interests in the south that are regarded as most promising.”127 The growing legal and financial troubles of his main financial backer, John R. Walsh, provided the impetus to pull the trigger, and on July 16, Hart sold all 1,000 shares of the Chicago League Ball Club to Charles P. Taft, who on paper was purchasing the club for his wife, Annie Sinton Taft. In practice, he was purchasing it for Charles W. Murphy. The total amount of money that changed hands was $105,500, though it was variously reported as amounts ranging from $100,000 to $165,000.128 Taft put up $100,000, with Murphy contributing an additional $5,500. However, Mrs. Taft took possession of only 53 percent of the stock. Murphy purchased 250 shares,129 Charles Schmalstig, a business associate of the Tafts, purchased 100.25 shares, Mary Walsh, Mrs. Taft’s secretary, bought 20 shares, and Frank Chance purchased 100 shares. All of these purchases were made on credit, with the understanding that Taft would be repaid out of team profits. Murphy was named vice president of the club and was scheduled to take over most of the duties that had been Hart’s.

But there was one more scrape for Hart to get out of before he left baseball. Shortly before the sale of the club went through, Hart was accused of disorderly conduct and assault by two fans he had accosted at West Side Park. During a game, a foul ball landed in the box occupied by August Schultz and F.W. Scott. This was in the days when it was not customary for fans to keep balls hit into the stands, Hart accused the pair of stealing the ball, and allegedly called them thieves. He had Scott arrested at the ballpark, but did not carry through with pressing charges. Then the pair countersued. The assault charge was dropped, but Hart was fined $10 for disorderly conduct plus court costs after admitting that “a boy told me the ball was stolen,” and “I may have used the term ‘thief,’ but I did not address my remarks to anyone in particular.” In assessing the fine, Judge Roth admonished Hart that “a man wants to be careful whom he calls a thief.”130

Though Murphy “made enemies from the start and added to them every year he was in the game … he also … put over deals that were considered impossible and strengthened his club until it was a winner. … His idea was ‘give ’em a winner and they’ll flock to your ball park. Hand ’em a loser and you can’t drag them there.”131 The Cubs dominated the league for the first five years of Murphy’s tenure, and the bottom line was as impressive as the victory tally. Three World Series appearances in his first three years of ownership led to soaring profits. In 1906 alone, the profits were enough for Taft to recoup his entire investment with enough left over for Taft and Murphy to purchase the West Side Grounds, home turf of the Cubs.132 Over the next seven years the stockholders realized dividends of a staggering 810 percent.133 Murphy was acutely aware of the link between on-field and box-office performance, noting that “all the personal popularity in the world gets the club owner nothing if his club is a loser.”134

Sportswriters initially referred to the team as Murphy’s Spuds.135 The players were young, but obviously talented. They were so successful under Murphy that he talked about building a new ballpark that would rival the best in the league to show off his team. Baseball Magazine gushed, “He is one of those few who have made the game the gigantic proposition it is to-day.”136 As true as that may have been, it didn’t win Murphy many friends among his fellow magnates.

Formal transfer of the Cubs franchise was announced on November 1, 1905. Hart officially retired his position as president and severed his active connection with the team. Murphy was promoted from vice president to president and controller of the club. Charles Taft replaced him as vice president, and minority shareholder Charles Schmalstig was appointed secretary-treasurer. In his first official pronouncement as president, Murphy said all the right things: “I shall try to carry out Mr. Hart’s well defined policy regarding clean baseball and do all in my power to uplift the game. I shall always be for the general good of the sport, which appeals to the best in American citizenship.”137 Murphy’s first official duty was to renew Frank Chance as manager for the 1906 season. He also announced that Hart had agreed to stay on for a short time as an adviser.

Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance were the defensive heart of the 1906-10 Chicago Cubs dynasty. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Murphy’s Troubles

Murphy’s tenure as Cubs owner, while wildly successful on the field and at the box office, was otherwise an acrimonious affair. The most frequent criticism leveled against him was the insincere accusation that he was in it for the money. “Charles Murphy, president of the Chicago club, has no sentiment for baseball, only for the money there may be in it for him,” accused Sam Crane of the New York Evening Journal.138 Crane made this accusation toward Murphy as if it distinguished him from this group of men who maintained one of the country’s great monopolies, strangled competition by dominating the minor leagues through the National Agreement, and kept costs down by exploiting players via the reserve . The more likely source of their complaints about Murphy was that he was better at it than they were. The Cubs were perched atop the league standings during his ownership and practically printed money while appearing in four World Series and never finishing lower than third place. Murphy certainly saw it that way, claiming that “people generally envy the successful man.”139

But he was not an innocent victim. Murphy did his part to contribute to his problems. At various times he was accused of tampering with Philadelphia Phillies star Eppa Rixey, got into public disputes with two of his biggest stars (Frank Chance and Johnny Evers), refused to provide a clubhouse for visiting teams at West Side Park, accused Cardinals manager Roger Bresnahan of throwing games, and was caught scalping World Series tickets. He battled the press, whom he accused of mistreating him, but got his revenge by relegating them to the last row of the grandstand.140

It didn’t take Murphy long to start antagonizing his fellow owners. After the Cubs won 116 games in 1906, he began to parade the players around in carriages, festooned with banners and bells, while on the road, despite league rules forbidding such ostentatious displays. He was described as “freewheeling, impulsive, turbulent, contentious, and loud mouthed,” was considered antagonistic and cheap, and was not well respected by his colleagues. Barney Dreyfuss referred to him as a rat and a sneak, and Cardinals manager Bresnahan called him a windbag.141

Murphy claimed he got “walloped” in the press because he was not a friendly, publicity-seeking drinking buddy with other owners and reporters. Instead, he focused on putting a winning team on the field. The result was the stellar record of his teams and the large attendance at his ballpark. He claimed he was unpopular on the road because the Cubs regularly beat the opposition. But because he won, the fans at home appreciated him. “It is different with the heads of perennial second division clubs. People will say of one of them: ‘So-and-so is a nice fellow. It is too bad his club is last.”142 A generation later, Leo Durocher would express a similar sentiment.

On occasion, he had foresight. Murphy, “the restless president of the Chicago Cubs,” proposed dumping the National Commission. In its place, he proposed an independent commission of three to five men not connected with any minor- or major-league baseball club. He mentioned as possible candidates retired judges with impeccable reputations as an example of the type of person ideal for the commission, or retired ballplayers with good reputations. He argued that the National Commission was a fine emergency body when needed after the recent war between the National League and the upstart American League, but in its current format was inefficient, in that it could not make impartial decisions due to its makeup of club owners and league presidents.143

In 1911 Murphy and Cardinals manager Bresnahan got into a feud that started with the Cubs’ attempt to waive first baseman Vic Saier to the International League. Bresnahan claimed him, blocking the transfer, which led to an exchange between the two. The animosity boiled over and led to Bresnahan bringing charges to the National Commission that Murphy “openly impugned his motives in the performance of an official act and branded him as a liar in a hotel lobby.”144 Murphy, in turn, accused Bresnahan of conspiring to throw games to help his old pal John McGraw win the pennant that year. Neither accusation gained traction, but resulted in Murphy’s being the target of scorn from the other owners.

In late September of 1912 Murphy engaged in a public feud with his manager, Frank Chance. Just as Chance was being released from a hospital in New York, Murphy announced that he would not return as manager in 1913, though his announcement made it sound as if Chance had initiated the change by resigning. Murphy announced, “[N]o one realizes the value of Mr. Chance to the Chicago club as much as I do. … [T]he loss of … [him] is a big one, and his decision to retire was not pleasant for me to hear, but I could not urge him to enter into another contract.” He went on to say that he had promised that Chance could manage as long as he wanted to. Chance responded that “it is up to Murphy to say whether I shall manage the Cubs next year or not.” While admitting that he told Murphy in August that because of his ill health, he would not manage the next year, he claimed that Murphy had refused to accept any resignation until after his medical problems were behind him and the season was over.145

Murphy only made matters worse by publicly accusing his players of drunkenness as an explanation for the team’s slide to third place in 1912. Chance vehemently denied this accusation and denounced Murphy as an ingrate, who was focused only on winning championships. “If I do continue to manage the Chicago team,” he said, “I shall protect my ball players just as I did when they were champions.”146 The next day his rebuttal was even stronger; he declared, “I have not resigned; I never will resign.” He said the first he heard of his “retirement” was from the newspapers on the day he was released from a two-week hospital stay, and that “I want to see it in writing if I’m fired, and if I was going to resign, I would put it in writing and send it to him.”147

Whether he was actually fired or resigned was never determined, but after 15 seasons, Frank Chance was done in Chicago. The Cubs waived him, and in December he signed with the New York Highlanders, where he would finish his career. He sold his 100 shares of stock to Harry Ackerland for $40,000, a handsome capital gain on his $10,000 investment.148 On his way out of town, Chance fired back in the press, accusing Murphy of being too cheap to continue to field a winning team. There was some truth in this. After their fourth World Series appearance, in 1910, Orval Overall, winner of 85 games, including three World Series victories, since coming over to the Cubs in a trade with Cincinnati in June of 1906, left the team over a contract dispute. He would return in 1913, only to become one of the final parts of a selloff that saw Murphy discard 10 players who had guided the Cubs to four World Series in five years.149 But the worst was yet to come.

After the Frank Chance fiasco, Murphy tried to placate the fans by hiring Johnny Evers to manage the Cubs in 1913. While Evers took on additional duties as manager, Murphy kept his salary fixed at $6,000, though he did give Evers a four-year contract. Evers guided the Cubs to another third-place finish in 1913, but with three fewer wins than the previous season. During the offseason he was approached by the Federal League, and used the offer to try to negotiate a raise from the Cubs. Instead of a raise, Murphy fired him as manager, traded him to the Boston Braves, and hired former umpire Hank O’Day to replace him. Evers refused to go, threatening to jump to the Feds, bringing on a crisis that led to Murphy’s exit.

During the winter of 1913-14, the Federal League was making serious inroads to pilfering major-league rosters. League officials and owners were anxious that Evers, an established star, not join in the exodus. They were sufficiently concerned that Murphy had so alienated Evers that they intervened in the matter, negotiating a deal that sent Evers to the Braves on February 11 for Bill Sweeney and cash.

But that did not end the crisis. Chicago fans were so incensed by Murphy’s roster demolition project that they began organizing “Never Again” clubs, pledging to boycott Cub games until Murphy was gone. Some owners were so serious about ousting Murphy that they suggested forming a new league without Chicago.150 Another plan involved finding a local buyer to purchase the team from Murphy, but he rejected the offer from a syndicate headed by James. A. Pugh of the Columbia Yacht Club.151

The call for Murphy’s head intensified. Persistent offers to buy him out were ignored, despite pressure from Ban Johnson, Barney Dreyfuss and Garry Herrmann, among others. In February of 1914, Murphy defiantly pledged that the Cubs would not be sold. “These fellows have been trying to throw me out of baseball for a long time, but they only make me laugh. I shall pay no attention to them until they try to injure my property rights. Then we will see how far they will go.”152

The stakes were raised when Ban Johnson, the American League president, arrived in Chicago on February 14 and announced, “I have absolute authority to expel any club owner in our league if in my judgment he is a detriment to the game. I have sent word to the members of the National league that they must confer that authority on Governor Tener.” (Tener, former governor of Pennsylvania among other offices, was president of the National League.) Johnson claimed that most of the owners favored ousting Murphy, and boasted, “[W]e will go to the extreme in eliminating him from organized baseball.”153

Johnson and several NL owners pressured Tener to act, and on February 21, a meeting was convened in Cincinnati for the express purpose of forcing Murphy out of the league. In attendance were Johnson, Tener, Cubs stockholders Taft and Ackerford, and John Conway Toole, a director of the Boston Braves and legal adviser to the NL. Tener persuaded Charles Taft to buy Murphy’s 53 percent share of the stock for a staggering $500,000. Taft agreed when he realized failure to do so could have resulted in a huge financial loss. Murphy accepted, but denied that he was forced to sell. “Mr. Taft offered me more money for my 53 per cent of Cubs stock than I ever thought was in the world. … I’m the happiest man in the world tonight,” Murphy crowed.154

The nuclear option of ostracizing the Cubs from the league would have financially devastated the club and Taft’s investment in it. In order to prevent such a result and to protect the value of his stock, Taft was forced to overpay Murphy, who was not looking to sell. Ten years earlier, he had purchased the entire franchise for just over $100,000, and now he paid five times as much for half the stock. Admittedly, the value of the team had increased due to its success through the 1910 season, but since then Murphy had sold off all the players responsible for that success, and the number of wins and fans had been declining. And the impending Federal League war would only reduce the value of the stock .

Charles H. Thomas was named president to replace Murphy. He had been Murphy’s assistant, but was widely panned by other owners, who thought it was a ruse. They were afraid Murphy was still involved and Thomas was merely his mouthpiece. Taft reassured them that Murphy was completely out of the picture,155 and that Thomas was merely an interim appointment until he had time to sell the team, which he planned to do as soon as possible. At the end of the season, Thomas fired Hank O’Day, who managed a gutted team to a winning record, and replaced him with Murphy’s antagonist, Roger Bresnahan, for 1915. Bresnahan’s Cubs fared even worse, and attendance was negatively affected by the presence of the Federal League Whales, who played in a nice new ballpark on the north side of town.

Freed of Murphy, the NL owners turned their attention to the Federal League. Taft turned his attention to finding a buyer for the 900 shares of Cubs stock he managed.156 The remaining 100 shares were still held by Harry Ackerland. The problems were solved after the 1915 season. The Federal League surrendered, and as part of that deal, Taft sold the Cubs to “Lucky Charlie” Weeghman, owner of the Chicago Whales, for the same $500,000 that he had paid Murphy. Despite the Federal League war, the Cubs had been profitable during the two years of Taft’s ownership, and he was able to distribute more than $60,000 in dividends as a parting gift to the stockholders.157

Murphy, meanwhile, retired from baseball and returned to his hometown, Wilmington, Ohio, where he concentrated his energies on his other entertainment industry interest – the theater. He built a grand new palace, the Clinton Theatre, at a cost of $250,000.158 The theater still stands, but was renamed the Murphy Theatre in his honor.

Murphy eventually moved back to Chicago, where he died of a stroke at home on October 16, 1931. He left an estate valued at $2.25 million, fully half of which represented his 50 percent share of the Baker Bowl in Philadelphia. Taft and Murphy had purchased the ballpark from Phillies owner Horace Fogel when he was forced out of the game in 1912.159

Charles Taft

Charles Phelps Taft was a successful businessman and one of Cincinnati’s leading cheerleaders and philanthropists, but he is perhaps most famous for being the older brother of President William Howard Taft.160 Charles, born on December 21, 1866, in Cincinnati, was the eldest son of Judge Alphonso Taft, onetime United States attorney general and secretary of war. Charles attended Yale, earned a law degree from Columbia, studied in Europe, and then returned to Cincinnati and formed a law partnership. His law practice did not last long, but since his two partners became an Ohio legislator and the governor, Taft established important and powerful connections. He entered the political arena himself, serving one term in Congress (elected 1894). He was asked to join the McKinley ticket as the vice presidential candidate in the 1896 election, but turned it down to return to Cincinnati and his business interests.

In 1879 Taft purchased the Cincinnati Times, and quickly improved its moribund financial picture. He then purchased the Evening Star and merged the two papers, forming the Cincinnati Times-Star, which became one of the foremost afternoon papers in the Midwest. For a time he also owned a German language daily, the Cincinnati Volksblatt. He also had interests in a large ranch in Texas, and various transportation and public utilities in Cincinnati.

Taft became involved with baseball only when Murphy approached him about a loan for the team. Now that he controlled most of the stock, he was not much more than a caretaker for two years between buying out Murphy and selling to Weeghman. He never moved to Chicago, so he was viewed suspiciously by Cub fans as an absentee landlord. Taft was a businessman, not a baseball fan, though he had played at Yale during his college days. His primary interest in baseball had been purely financial, and he had done well with the Cubs, but was now looking to get out. The team was still profitable, but sagging, due to both Murphy’s gutting of the on-field talent and the Federal League competition.

Charles P. Taft died at home on December 31, 1929, after a long illness. He was an internationally renowned patron of the arts, and at the time of his death, his collection was considered to be among the finest in the world. He left it, and after his wife’s death, their stately home in which to display it, to the city of Cincinnati.161 It is to this day the centerpiece of Cincinnati’s Taft Museum of Art.

Negotiations for the transfer of the Cubs from Taft to Charlie Weeghman had been ongoing for several weeks by the time the sale was officially announced on January 6, 1916, after Taft returned from an extended trip to Texas. Weeghman and William Walker were the reported buyers, but the pair had several minority shareholders as well, most notable among them one William Wrigley.162 The deal called for a $100,000 down payment on January 5, with the remaining $400,000 due on January 20. As part of the deal, Weeghman agreed to assume the Cubs’ lease on West Side Park for a period of two years. “The owners, under the present agreement, will get their rent money for two years, during which time they will either dispose of the property or prepare it for some other purpose than a baseball park.”163 The agreement broke a 99-year lease the Cubs had signed 11 years earlier with the ballpark’s landlords, Mrs. Taft and Murphy. The issue of the lease would come up later and prove to be Murphy’s final baseball battle.

The first thing Weeghman did as the new owner was to accept the resignation of the entire office staff. He installed himself as president, named Walker vice president, and his business associate and minority shareholder Al Plamondon, secretary-treasurer. Despite paying the lease on the West Side Grounds, Weeghman had no intention of using the ballpark. He was moving the team into newer, friendlier confines, recently abandoned by his Federal League Whales, on a small plot of land at the intersection of Clark and Addison on the north side. It would be the last move the Cubs ever made.

When the new owners went to the West Side Grounds to oversee the move, they discovered that thieves had broken in and stolen uniforms and equipment. It was not a good start. Worse, it could be seen as an omen of the difficulty that lay ahead for Weeghman.

Federal League President James Gilmore, left, and Charles Weeghman, circa 1914, helped lead a war against organized baseball. By 1916, the Federal League was gone and Weeghman became majority owner of the NL’s Chicago Cubs. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Charlie Weeghman

Charles Henry Weeghman was born on March 8, 1874, in Richmond, Indiana. He was one of three sons born to an American mother and German immigrant father, who ran a blacksmith shop. Weegham attended public schools in Richmond. After graduation he took a job as a jewelry store clerk and went to business college at night. His first visit to Chicago was for the 1893 World’s Fair. He liked it so much that he moved there, taking a $10-a-week job at Charlie King’s eponymous restaurant in Chicago’s Loop district. He was hired as a night manager, eventually working his way up to the day shift and assistant manager at a weekly salary of $35. In 1899 he married Bessie Webb, a cashier at the restaurant. Together they had a daughter.

In January 1901 King added his life savings of $300 to a consortium of buyers who invested a total of $2,800 in a counter lunchroom near King’s. The restaurant opened the day Charlie King died. The business was a smashing success from the beginning, setting a pattern for Charlie’s restaurant career and giving birth to his nickname: Lucky. In the first month of business, Weeghman drew a salary of $50 a week as manager and took home his share of $1,500 in profits. It was at this lunch counter that he met William Walker. Walker was a fishmonger and sought the lunch counter’s business. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful business relationship. Six years after opening their first establishment, Weeghman and partners had seven lunch counters. Weeghman then sold out to his partners, turning his original investment of $300 into $50,000, which he immediately used to open his own restaurant, of the 24-hour quick-lunch variety. On average, he turned over its 108 chairs every 30 minutes to serve 5,000 people each day, generating profits of $11,000 per week. Those profits were quickly reinvested into another seven lunch counters, all in the Loop area. By 1914, Weeghman was known as Chicago’s lunch-counter king, overseeing an empire of eight “hurry up” restaurants, a movie theater, and a billiard room, all located in the Loop district.164 At his peak, the “Quick Lunch King” owned 15 restaurants and numerous other businesses bearing his name, and his net worth was estimated to be $10 million.165

Weeghman was eager to own a professional baseball team. He tried to buy the Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals to no avail. In 1913 he was approached by James Gilmore, president of the Federal League, who persuaded him to invest his seemingly unlimited bankroll in the league’s Chicago franchise. As his partner, Weeghman chose William Walker. The partners paid $25,000 for the franchise and spent $250,000 to build a modern steel and concrete ballpark on the grounds of an old seminary on the north side of the city.

Weeghman turned his park into a destination in and of itself, promising that it would be an upgrade from the poor conditions fans were used to at the rickety old wooden West Side Grounds, which the rival Cubs had called home since 1893. He provided comfortable restrooms, polite ushers, and clean seats and aisles. He sold concessions from behind the stands to cut down on vendors blocking fan views (his was the first ballpark to have concession stands), and cleaned the park before every game (another novelty). Weeghman was also well ahead of his time in regard to promotions. Every Friday was ladies day, and he was the first to give away items to fans. For the home opener each fan received a cap and pennant with the ChiFed logo. But his most popular innovation was allowing fans to keep balls hit into the stands.

“To Charley Weeghman is due the honor of being the first baseball magnate to permit the spectators to keep all the balls that are hit into the grand stand or bleachers,” it was written of Weeghman. “This is an innovation that others will have to follow. … It is a small matter with the club owners … and in the end it does not cost much. … Fans … want a ball that some player has fouled or hit, and in securing that particular ball they will take it home as a trophy.”166 To this day, catching a home run or foul ball at the ballpark is one of the most prized treasures a fan can take home.

Opening Day at Whales Field featured a 50-piece band, a giant American flag, a 21 gun salute, speeches, flowers, parades, a (staged) bullfight, and eventually even a ballgame. He packed an estimated 25,000 fans into the ballpark, which he had to close 30 minutes before the festivities began due to the excess capacity crowd. Fans who had been denied tickets clambered to the top of apartment buildings across the street to gain a vantage point, beginning a tradition that exists to this day.167

When Weeghman took over the Cubs, he moved them to Whales Field and more than doubled attendance. Of course, there was one less team to compete with in Chicago after the dissolution of the Federal League. He was determined to build a winner, and spent the money to do it, pulling off one of his best deals in December of 1917 when he brought Grover Cleveland Alexander and Bill Killefer to the Cubs for $55,000 and two players, and, in a smaller deal, landed veteran pitcher Lefty Tyler. These moves proved to be crucial the following the season in bringing the Cubs their first pennant since 1910.

Charles Murphy made one final appearance on the baseball scene. Before the 1920 season, he filed suit against the Cubs, their owners, and the rest of the National League, and sought an injunction on releasing the 1920 schedule, as part of a dispute regarding the lease on the West Side Grounds. Murphy was suing for the balance due him on the 99-year ballpark lease, seeking to set aside the agreement Weeghman had signed with Taft that freed the Cubs from the lease after 1918. The suit was only the latest in a series filed by Murphy in his attempts to collect on his west side parcel. Like those prior, it was for naught, and it was the final curtain call for Murphy on the baseball stage.168

Lucky Charlie’s fortunes sank as quickly as they had risen. He had lost $3 million on the Federal League, and the war years devastated his restaurants and his ballclub. Expanding into nightclubs and theaters stretched his finances even more thinly, and he began to borrow from two of his Cubs partners, William Wrigley and Albert Lasker, putting up his stock as collateral. By 1917 Wrigley already owned $180,000 in and by 1919 he owned all of Weeghman’s shares, and would soon be the majority shareholder.169 By 1920 Weeghman was out of Organized Baseball.

Weeghman’s fortunes continued to sink after he lost the Cubs. In 1920 Bessie filed for divorce, though he did win custody of his daughter. That same year his restaurant chain declared bankruptcy and went into receivership. He would lose it all in 1923, after which he moved to New York, remarried, and tried, with little success, to restart a restaurant empire. He died of a stroke at the Drake Hotel in Chicago on November 1, 1938.170

The ownership structure in the years immediately following Weeghman’s departure are shrouded in uncertainty. We know that by early 1919 Weeghman no longer had a financial stake in the club. But it is not entirely clear who owned most of the stock. It may have been Wrigley, or it could have been Albert Lasker. There are conflicting accounts,171 but it is clear that by 1925 Wrigley was the majority, if not sole, owner. His name had been most prominently associated with the club since 1918. After cycling through three owners in five years, the Cubs ownership would reside with the Wrigley family until 1981.

MICHAEL HAUPERT is Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He is co-chair of the SABR Business of Baseball Committee, editor of the newsletter “Outside the Lines,” and a 2020 recipient of the Henry Chadwick Award.

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Burk, Robert F. Never Just a Game (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Caillault, Jean-Pierre, ed. The Complete New York Clipper Baseball Biographies (two vols) (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2009).

Chadwick, Henry, ed. Spalding’s Official 1890 Base Ball Guide (Chicago: A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1890), Chicago Cubs Collection, Chicago Historical Society.

Chicago Cubs Collection, Chicago Historical Society.

Chicago Republican, various issues.

Chicago Tribune, various issues.

Cincinnati Sun, various issues.

Cruikshank, Jeffrey L., and Arthur W. Schultz. The Man Who Sold America: Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2010).

Deveney, Sean. Before Wrigley Became Wrigley (New York: Sports Publishing, 2014).

Di Salvatore, Brian. A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

Doherty, Paul. “The Why and Wherefore of Forfeit Games,” Baseball Research Journal, Society for American Baseball Research, 1978.

New York Evening World, various issues.

Gattie, Gordon. “The Legacy of the Players’ League: 1890 Chicago Pirates,” The National Pastime, 2015, https://sabr.org/research/legacy-players-league-1890-chicago-pirates, accessed January 2020.

Gelzheiser, Robert P. Labor and Capital in 19th Century Baseball Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006).

Haupert, Michael. Baseball Franchise Sales Database, private collection, accessed January 2020.

Haupert, Michael. “The Final Foe: The End of the Federal League,” Outside the Lines, 21, no. 2, Fall 2015, 10-15.

Haupert, Michael. “William Hulbert and the Birth of the National League,” Baseball Research Journal 44, no. 1, Spring 2015, 83-92.

Haupert, Michael. “The Construction of Wrigley Field,” Outside the Lines, 20, no. 2 (Fall 2014), 15-20.

Hershberger, Richard. “Chicago’s Role in Early Professional Baseball,” Baseball Research Journal 40 (Spring 2011), 9-11.

Holtzman, Jerome, and George Vass. The Chicago Cubs Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997).

Jacobsen, Lenny. “Charles Murphy,” SABR Biography, http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/e707728f, accessed September, 2016.

Koszarek, Ed. The Players League: History, Clubs, Ballplayers and Statistics (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006).

Kush, Raymond D. “The Building of Chicago’s Wrigley Field,” Baseball Research Journal, Society for American Baseball Research, 1981, vol 10.

Lamb, Bill. “New York Giants Team Ownership History,” SABR Team Ownership History Project, https://sabr.org/research/new-york-giants-team-ownership-history, accessed February 2020.

Lowenfish, Lee, and Tony Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond (New York: Stein and Day 1980).

MacDonald, Neil W. The League That Lasted (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2004).

McMahon, Bill. “Al Spalding,” SABR Biography, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/al-spalding/, accessed September 2016.

Melville, Tom. Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2001).

Morris, Peter, William J. Ryczek, Jan Finkel, Leonard Levin, and Richard Malatzky, eds., Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012).

Murphy, Charles W. “My Idea of a Magnate’s Popularity,” Baseball Magazine, March 1919, 294-96.

Murphy, Charles W. “The True Story of Why I Left the Game,” Baseball Magazine, February 1919, 205-6.

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, various player files.

National League Meetings, Minutes, Conferences and Financial Ledgers, February 10-11, 1920, BA MSS 55, BL.2018.2004, folder 5/8, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Nemec, David. The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012).

Nemec, David. Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, volume 2 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2011).

New York Clipper, various issues.

New York Times, various issues.

Orem, Preston D. Baseball (1845-1881): from the newspaper accounts (Altadena, California): Preston D. Orem, 1961.

Porter, David. “Cap Anson of Marshalltown: Baseball’s First Superstar,” The Palimpsest 61, no 4 (July/August 1980), 98-107.

Rankin, C.T. “Charles Murphy: A Growing Power in Organized Baseball,” Baseball Magazine, June 1912, 43-44.

Reach’s Official American Association Base Ball Guide 1890 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach Co., 1890).

Richter, Francis C. “Heroic Figure Passes from the Stage,” The World of Baseball, September 18, 1915.

Rothe, Emil H. “Was the Federal League a Major League?” Baseball Research Journal, Society for American Baseball Research, 1981.

Ryczek, William J. Blackguards and Red Stockings, revised edition (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2016).

Ryczek, William J. When Johnny Came Sliding Home (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1998).

Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Spalding, Albert G., America’s National Game (San Francisco: Halo Books, 1991). Revised and re-edited by Sam Coombs and Bob West.

Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide, various issues.

Sporting Life, various issues.

The Sporting News, various issues.

Tarr, Joel A. “J.R. Walsh of Chicago: A Case Study in Banking and Politics, 1881-1905,” Business History Review 40, no. 4 (Winter 1966), 451-66.

Voigt, David Quentin. American Baseball: From Gentleman’s Sport to the Commissioner System (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966).

Voigt, David Quentin. The League That Failed (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1998).

Wilmington (Ohio) Daily News, various issues.

Notes

1 “Sporting,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1869.

2 “Base Ball: The Professional Club Project,” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 1869.

3 New York Clipper, October 30, 1869.

4 “Sporting Matters,” Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1870.

5 Dexter Park was located well south of the city center, at 47th and Halsted Streets, two miles south of the site of the present Guaranteed Rate Field. Ogden Park, a popular site for ice skating, used in the summer for baseball games, was located on the near north side at the intersection of what is today Ontario and Michigan Avenues. Lake Front Park, also known as Union Base-Ball Grounds, was located in downtown Chicago at the intersection of Michigan and Randolph avenues, now part of Millennium Park. In 1869 the lake was much closer to Michigan Avenue than it is today.

6 Bales 2019: 28.

7 “Base-Ball,” Chicago Republican, July 25, 1870.

8 “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, September 12, 1870.

9 “White Above the Red,” Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1870.

10 “$10,000 for Charity,” Chicago Tribune, November 28, 1870.

11 “The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1870; “The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, January 17, 1871, first edition.

12 Nemec 2012, 287; Allardice, 2016.

13 Cash Book 1876-1881, Chicago Cubs Collection.

14 Haupert, 2015.

15 “Base-Ball,” New York Times, May 30, 1871.

16 “The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1871; “Common Council,” Chicago Tribune, March 7, 1871; “The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1871.

17 “Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1871.

18 According to the New York Clipper (October 21, 1871), the White Stockings had signed 12 players for 1872 for a total of $22,600.

19 “Games and Pastimes,” Chicago Tribune, November 13, 1871; “City Affairs in Brief,” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1872.

20 Subscription Stock Book, Chicago Cubs Attendance Book 1882-1889 of the Chicago BB Association, Chicago Cubs Collection.

21 Norman Gassette and two others held three shares each, and Ferd Erby held five shares. Nobody else held more than two shares. William Hulbert held one.

22“The Sporting World,” Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1872; “Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, April 8, 1872; “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1872; “Games and Pastimes,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1872; “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, May 5, 1872.

23 “National Game,” Chicago Tribune, January 14, 1873.

24 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection; Allardice, 2016.

25 Chicago Base Ball Association Ledger 1874 and 1875, Chicago Cubs Collection.

26 “Local Miscellany. Base-Ball Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, April 5, 1874.

27 “Sporting Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1874.

28 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection,

29 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection,

30 Haupert, 2015.

31 Bales, 2019, 77.

32 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection.

33 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection.

34 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection.

35 Board of Directors 18 August, 1874-27 October, 1875, Expense & Other Data 1874-1875, Chicago Cubs Collection.

36 “Spalding Enters Game’s Valhalla,” September 16, 1915, unidentified source, Albert Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

37 Allen, 1965, 3.

38 The original eight NL franchises were located in Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Hartford.

39 “Sporting News,” Chicago Tribune, May 11, 1876.

40 “Pastimes,” Chicago Tribune, July 30, 1876.

41 White Stocking first baseman Cal McVey (5), and holdovers from the old corporation, James Barrett (5), Edwin Dexter (5), and Norman Gassette (4), were the other stockholders with more than three shares. Two months later Gassette sold his shares to Hulbert, giving him 26. McVey never paid for his shares, and the following April one was sold to a new stockholder and the other four were recapitalized by the team. Stockholder lists are available in various documents in the Chicago Cubs Collection.

42 Orem, 1961, 259.

43 Those six were James Barrett, Charles Bartlett, Edwin Dexter, Hulbert, Louis Viele, and Philip Wadsworth.

44 Bales, 2020.

45 “Field and Turf,” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1877.

46 In the first six years, 17 different franchises called the National League home. Only Boston and Chicago were continuous members.

47 Seymour, 1989, 233.

48 Cash Book 1876-1881, Chicago Cubs Collection.

49 The 12 donors were players Cap Anson, Tom Burns, Larry Corcoran, Abner Dalrymple, Silver Flint, Fred Goldsmith, George Gore, Mike Kelly, Hugh Nicol, Joe Quest, and Ned Williamson, and Hulbert’s personal secretary, W.H. Finley. Bales, 2019.

50 “The City,” Chicago Tribune, April 27, 1882.

51 “Sporting Gossip,” Cincinnati Sun, November 22, 1885.

52 Seymour, 1989, 193.

53 Spaldings Official 1890 Base Ball Guide, 12-13.

54 The seven players fined were McCormick, Kelly, Flint, Gore, Williamson, Flynn, and Ryan. “Punished Champions,” Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1886.

55 Contract between AA and NL and Spalding Brothers Sporting Goods, dated March 16, 1882, Albert Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

56 Technically, Mills replaced Arthur Soden, who had been named interim president upon Hulbert’s death in April.

57 The investment paid off. According to the Reach Base Ball Guide of 1890, the White Stockings earned profits of $20,000 in 1883.

58 Seymour, 1989, 195.

59 Seymour, 1989, 195.

60 “Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1883.

61 “The Lake Front,” Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1884; “The Lake Front,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1884.

62 “Sporting Notes,” Chicago Times, March 1, 1885; “Sporting,” Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1885.

63 “Sporting Affairs,” Chicago Tribune, June 7, 1885.

64 Chicago Cubs Attendance Book 1882-1889, Chicago Cubs Collection, 20-21.

65 Bales, 2019, 147.

66 Attendance Book. 1882-89, Chicago Cubs Collection.

67 Bales, 2019, 148.

68 Chicago Cubs attendance book 1882-1889, Chicago Cubs Collection.

69 Bales, 2019, 148.

70 “The Baseball Convention,” New York Times, October 18, 1885.

71 “Chicagos Grandly Win,” Chicago Tribune, October 10, 1886.

72 Baseball-reference.com individual player pages.

73 “Angling for Ward,” New York Evening World, November 22, 1888.

74 “Angling for Ward,” New York Evening World, November 22, 1888.

75 Seymour, 1989, 304.

76 December 27, 1890, unidentified newspaper, Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

77 Chicago Cubs attendance book 1882-1889, Chicago Cubs Collection; https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/, accessed January 2020.

78 Gattie, 2015.

79 Bales, 2019, 175.

80 Spalding Guide 1895, 123; Haupert, private collection, accessed January 2020; Lamb, accessed February 2020.

81 Voigt, 1966, 162.

82 Lowenfish and Lupien, 1980, 43.

83 Only $10,000 in cash was exchanged. The remainder was in the form of White Stockings stock. The deal also included season passes for the Pirates ownership group. “Sale of a Baseball Club,” New York Times, November 14, 1890.

84 “To Play Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1892.

85 Seymour, 1989, 244; Koszarek, 2006, 52.

86 Nemec, 2012, 28.

87 “Hart Is President Now,” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1891.

88 Caillault, 2009, 298.

89 New York Clipper, undated from James Hart file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

90 Nemec, 2011, 127.

91 “Anson Replies to Hart,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1900, 17.

92 Ahrens 1991, 141.

93 “President Hart Is Angry,” New York Times, October 4, 1891, 7.

94 Ahrens, 1976, 93.

95 “Hart Attacks Rogers,” Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1899.

96 Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis, and Washington.

97 Seymour, 1989, 267.

98 They would return in 1893, to the newly built structure designed by James Addison, also to be referred to as the West Side Grounds.

99 “Chicago Gleanings,” Sporting Life, April 22, 1893.

100 The original capital of the Chicago ballclub (the old organization) was $20,000, in shares of $100 each. Some time prior to 1890, the capital stock was increased to $100,000. “Hart Writes of Anson,” Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1899.

101 Stockholders in the old corporation were invited to surrender their stock in the old company at the rate of five shares of the old for one share of the new, and were privileged to buy four shares for each one share so received at the rate of $25 per share. “Hart Writes of Anson,” Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1899.

102 “Chicago Club Sold,” Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1892; “New Owners for a Ball Club,” New York Times, December 18, 1892; “Walsh Sells His Stock,” Chicago Tribune, May 21, 1902.

103 Voight, 1996, 217; Di Salvatore, 1999, 225; Seymour, 1989, 352.

104 Unidentified newspaper, October 2, 1915, Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library; “Spalding Enters Game’s Valhalla,” unidentified source, September 16, 1915, Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

105 Bounded by Polk, Taylor, Wood, and Lincoln (later Wolcott) Streets.

106 “Chicago’s New Park. It Is Located on the West Side and Is a Hummer. Something About the New Buildings and New Grounds,” The Sporting News, April 22, 1893.

107 “Panic at a Fire,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1894.

108 “Flames Stop a Ballgame,” New York Times, Aug 6, 1894.

109 “Two Theories as to Fire’s Origin,” Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1894.

110 Bales, 2019, 191; Tim Murnane, “Anson’s Future,” Sporting Life, November 20, 1897.

111 Porter, 1980, 106.

112 “Played 3000 Games,” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 1898.

113 “Good-By to Anson,” Chicago Tribune, February 2, 1898.

114 “Hart Writes of Anson,” Chicago Tribune, December 31, 1899.

115 “Anson Replies to Hart,” Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1900.

116 Bales, 2019, 193.

117 “Tribute to Anson,” Chicago Tribune, February 4, 1898: 4.

118 “Anson Won’t Take It,” Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1898.

119 Richter, 2015, 3.

120 Letter to NL and AA Base Ball clubs from Spalding, March 8, 1902, Spalding file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

121 “Anson May Get in Games,” Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1901.

122 Bales, 2019, 198.

123 The Chicago Tribune originally reported a sale price of $165,000 in “Hart to Retire Oct 15,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1905. Three months later Sporting Life reported the price as $105,000: “The New Magnate” Sporting Life, November 11, 1905. A lawsuit in 1916 revealed documents that showed the actual price was $105,500; “Nifty! Fat Dividends Paid,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 18, 1916.

124 “Baseball Pioneer Dead,” New York Times, July 19, 1919.

125 “Murphy Takes Up Hart’s Burden” Chicago Tribune, Jul 16, 1905; uncited clipping from National Baseball Hall of Fame Library file on Murphy, dated October 16, 1931.

126 Jacobsen; uncited clipping from National Baseball Hall of Fame Library file on Murphy, dated October 16, 1931.

127 “Murphy Takes Up Hart’s Burden” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1905.

128 In a 1916 lawsuit, the financial details of the 1905 and 1916 sales of the Cubs were revealed. See “Nifty! Fat Dividends Paid,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 18, 1916.

129 Murphy had an option to purchase additional shares from Taft, which he did over time, eventually holding 530 shares by the time he sold out to Taft in 1914.

130 “Baseball Magnate Is Fined,” Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1905.

131 Bailey.

132 Joe Vila, “Setting the Pace,” New York Sun, November 1917, from Murphy file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

133 “Nifty! Fat Dividends Paid,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 18, 1916.

134 Murphy, 1931, 294.

135 Ahrens, 1991, 144.

136 Rankin, 1912, 44.

137 “Local Baseball Deal Ratified,” Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1905.

138 Jacobsen, 2016.

139 Murphy, 1931, 296.

140 Jacobsen, 2016.

141 Holtzman and Vass, 1997, 299.

142 Murphy, 1931, 294.

143 “Murphy’s Mind,” unidentified newspaper from Murphy file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, January 20, 1913.

144 “Scalper Verdict Ready Tomorrow?” Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1912.

145 “Chance’s Career as Cub Manager Ends This Year,” Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1912.

146 “Chance’s Career as Cub Manager Ends This Year.”

147 Sam Weller, “I’ve Not Resigned, Declares Chance,” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1912.

148 “Murphy Retires from Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 22, 1914.

149 Beginning in the spring of 1911 and continuing through February of 1914, Murphy gutted the team, which had won four pennants, releasing, trading, or selling Harry Steinfeldt, Jack Pfeister, Johnny Kling, Solly Hofman, Three Finger Brown, Frank Chance, Joe Tinker, Jimmy Sheckard, Ed Reulbach, and Johnny Evers.

150 The plan called for eliminating Chicago, St. Louis, and Brooklyn and adding three Federal League franchises.

151 Other prominent members of the syndicate included Charles A. McCulloch, general manager of the Parmelee Transfer company, and William Hale Thompson. “Murphy Out; Taft Now Owns His Cub Stock,” Chicago Tribune, February 22, 1914.

152 “Cub Owner Loses Evers Outright,” Chicago Tribune, February 13, 1914.

153 “‘Never Again’ Clubs Formed as Protest Against So-Called ‘Murphy Tantrums,’” Chicago Tribune, February 22, 1914.

154 “Murphy Out; Taft Now Owns His Cub Stock.”

155 This was not quite true. While Murphy no longer had a role with the club, he still owned the West Side Grounds, where the Cubs were his tenants until their move to the new Federal League park two years later.

156 Taft, through his wife, held controlling interest in the club, and had the permission of Schmalstig and Walsh to sell their shares as well.

157 “Nifty! Fat Dividends Paid,” Cincinnati Enquirer. March 18, 1916.

158 Joe Vila, “Setting the Pace,” New York Sun, November 1917, Murphy file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

159 “Murphy Returns to Find No Threat from Frank Chance,” Chicago Tribune, January 26, 1913. At the time of the purchase, Murphy defended himself by claiming the deal was purely a real estate venture, and he held no financial interest in the Philadelphia ballclub.

160 Charles and William were actually half-brothers. Charles’s mother, Fanny Phelps Taft, died in 1852, and his father remarried.

161 “Charles P. Taft Passes Away; Life Ebbs Slowly for Days,” Cincinnati Enquirer, January 1, 1930.

162 Other stockholders, besides Wrigley and the 10 percent owned by Harry Ackerland, included Al Plamondon and Adolph Schuttler, both business associates of Weeghman. Some of the wealthiest businessmen in Chicago also purchased shares, among them Albert Lasker, C.A. McCulloch ($5,000), J. Ogden Armour, and an unnamed “leading” banker who came through with $78,000 at the last minute when another investor backed out. Even one of Weeghman’s business rivals, John R. Thompson ($25,000), got in on the act. “Rivals in Loop Now Partners in New Cubs,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1916; “Armour, Wrigley and Banker Cub Stockholders,” James Crusinberry, Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1916.

163 “Chicago Feds Buy Cub Team from C.P. Taft,” Chicago Tribune, January 6, 1916.

164 Harvey T. Woodruff, “Lucky Charley Weeghman, President Chicago Feds,” Chicago Tribune, April 26, 1914.

165 “Half Million in Cash on Deadline! And Cubs Are His: Weeghman Tells Inside Story of How He Acquired Cubs in 1915,” Chicago Tribune, January 4, 1936.

166 “President Weeghman of Chicago Makes Big Hit with the Fans, Permits Them to Retain Baseballs,” unidentified source noted as Vol II No. 115, August 12, 1916, Weeghman file in the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

167 Haupert, 2014.

168 National League Minutes.

169 Deveney, 2014, 240.

170 “Lucky Charlie Weeghman Is Dead at 64,” Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1938.

171 “Armour, Wrigley and Banker Cub Stockholders,” James Crusinberry, Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1916; Irving Vaughan, “Owner of Cubs Dies Without Attaining Goal,” Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1932; Cruikshank and Schultz, 2010.

From its beginnings in the 1880s, the franchise now known as the Los Angeles Dodgers has provided a parade of well-known players and managers, 23 pennant winners, and six World Series victories. Off the field, it has been associated with some of the most recognized front-office talent in the game’s history. Names such as Charles Byrne, Charles Ebbets, Larry MacPhail, Branch Rickey, Buzzie Bavasi, and Walter O’Malley have been posted on Dodger offices.

Yet, the standard works on the team are riddled with mistakes and misconceptions about who really owned the team as opposed to who ran it. For, in over 130 seasons, only once has one man owned the Dodgers completely, and then for only about 4½ years.

Born in Brooklyn — Ferdinand Abell, Joseph Doyle et al.

The Dodgers began modestly, and in Manhattan. In the fall of 1882, George Taylor’s doctor had suggested he find a less stressful line of work. The 30-year-old Taylor was night city editor at the New York Herald.1 A baseball fan, Taylor decided he’d like to try his hand at running a team and he felt the New York area was ripe for one.

There hadn’t been a major league baseball team in New York since 1876, when the city’s entry had been kicked out of the National League for refusing to complete its schedule with a Western road trip. Six seasons later, the National League was looking to get back into the country’s premier city. And the National League had been so successful that another group of entrepreneurs was considering a second major league, to be called the American Association. The Association also wanted a franchise in New York, giving Taylor two opportunities. Taylor’s eyes focused on Brooklyn, where real estate for a ballpark was less expensive than in Manhattan.

Taylor’s initial plans hit the rocks when his unidentified financial angel backed out, leaving Taylor with only a lease on some open land just east of the Gowanus Canal. Taylor spoke to an attorney, John Brice, and Brice mentioned Taylor’s plans to a 39-year-old real-estate agent named Charles H. Byrne, who shared Brice’s office.2

Byrne’s brother-in-law was Joseph J. Doyle, and the two men were partners in a gambling house on Ann Street in Manhattan.3 After investing $12,000 in equipping the team and grading the Gowanus ballpark site, Doyle paled at the cost of erecting a grandstand.4 He told Byrne to go ahead worrying about how to spend the money while he raised it. Doyle’s gambling connections led him to the man who would be the franchise’s financial mainstay for two decades.

Ferdinand A. Abell came from one of the older and more established families in the country. His uncle had founded the Baltimore Sun, which was then being run by Abell’s first cousin. Abell himself ran a casino in the fashionable Newport, Rhode Island, area, a casino frequented by Vanderbilts. He had other business interests throughout the Northeast.5 When the team took out its incorporation papers in March of 1883, Abell’s name was listed first among the partners, although Byrne was the president of the team.6

The ownership breakdown within the group is fuzzy. Neither The Sporting News nor Sporting Life existed while the team was being organized. Most of what is known about ownership during this period comes from interviews done decades later and with at times conflicting details. In retrospect, it seems clear Abell and Doyle kicked in most of the money, Byrne a small amount of money and Taylor the lease. But Byrne, the team’s president, and Taylor, its manager, were the men in the public eye and Abell’s importance was not clear to the public for almost a decade.

While Taylor was trying to round up financial backers, the National League and the American Association had found their New York connections. Byrne’s group settled on joining the Interstate Association, a minor league operating mostly in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and began play May 1, 1883. Their home debut was delayed until May 12 while they waited for the grandstand at what they called Washington Park to be completed. It was at the southern corner of 3rd Street and 4th Avenue near the Gowanus Canal in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as Red Hook. It was a working-class Irish neighborhood, well served by trolley and street-car lines.7

As president, Byrne performed all the jobs a team’s front-office staff would do today. He supervised tickets, concessions, ballpark acquisition and maintenance, sometimes delegating duties to a young employee named Charles Ebbets who joined the club the day of its first game at Washington Park. In addition, Byrne had significant input on trades and purchases, a job he shared with the team’s manager.

Byrne was a small man, a Napoleon to his admirers. Sporting Life described him as “a nervous little man, full of life and grit, a good talker, very earnest and aggressive…” Byrne was to grow into one of the most influential voices in the American Association and, later, the National League.8

But for the moment, he was leading a team that was going nowhere in the Interstate Association. Then, in July, the league-leading Merritts of Camden, New Jersey, folded. Byrne snapped up five of their best players and the Dodgers surged to the pennant. Flushed with this success, Byrne talked his way into the American Association for the 1884 season.

In the Association, Byrne’s team was clearly outclassed, falling to ninth place in a 13-team league in 1884. Byrne realized that to compete at this higher level, he would need to be aggressive about acquiring better, and presumably more expensive, players. Taylor was replaced as manager before the 1885 season, and left the partnership around the same time.9 Abell and his money took a more prominent role in the team. Byrne scooped several players out of the National League’s Cleveland franchise when it collapsed. He picked up more from the American Association’s original New York Mets when that team disbanded after the 1887 season. By 1889, Byrne’s strengthened team won the American Association.

In 1890 Byrne moved the Dodgers into the National League and into a highly competitive race of attendance. The New York metropolis boasted five major-league teams in 1890. The new Players League, grown out of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, had created franchises in both Brooklyn and Manhattan. And the American Association had cobbled together a Brooklyn team to replace the Dodgers.

Adding the Players League Magnates

While other National League magnates refused to match Players League salary offers, Byrne paid. It was to be his salvation. With the 1889 American Association pennant-winning lineup virtually intact, Brooklyn swept to the National League flag in 1890, edging Chicago by six games. The victory enabled the team to lose less money, $25,000, than any of the other New York teams.10 It also left Byrne’s group in a strong negotiating position when the Players League magnates began to sell out the Brotherhood that winter.

Chauncey and his fellow Brooklyn Brotherhood owners had more ready cash, but that was their only asset. Byrne’s group had the franchise in the more stable league, the better players and the better prospects.

Eventually, a deal was cut. The Chauncey group agreed to pay Abell, Byrne, and Doyle $30,000 in cash and to give them another $10,000 out of future profits. This implied a value for the franchise of approximately $80,000, although it now was capitalized at $250,000. A new corporation was created, with Abell, Byrne, and Doyle controlling 50.4 percent of the shares initially. Byrne remained as president and three of the five directors slots went to this triumvirate. Chauncey’s group got the other two seats on the board and the remainder of the stock. In addition, Chauncey won the transfer of the Dodgers to Eastern Park on land he owned in the East New York section of Brooklyn, land served by trolley lines in which other members of the Chauncey group owned interests.11

As if setting a pattern for Dodgers ownership for the next quarter-century, the Players League group didn’t fulfill its part of the merger agreement. They paid only $22,000 of the $30,000 cash, and then began ceding stock to Abell and Byrne.12 When baseball profits weren’t forthcoming in subsequent years, they ceded more stock to Abell rather than come up with the unpaid balance. Over the next few years, several smaller members of the Players League group would sell out to Abell.

Abell’s dominance was also cemented by the withdrawal of Doyle from the partnership. Doyle’s previously close relationship with Abell had deteriorated over the years. Ebbets said Doyle was frustrated by the poor attendance caused by Eastern Park’s location even though the Dodgers were the reigning National League champions. Doyle wanted out and came up with an offer from two men The Sporting News identified only by their last names, Marx and Jolly, and their occupation, gamblers.13

Abell the casino operator said he was dismayed at the idea of gambling men coming into baseball. More believably, he also was reported to be worried that Doyle would persuade his highly esteemed brother-in-law, Byrne, to go with him and start another American Association team in Brooklyn. Abell persuaded Doyle to sell out to him in January 1892. Byrne also sold some shares to Abell during the early 1890s.

These years perhaps also saw the first appearance of the name Charles Ebbets on the rolls of the franchise’s owners. Chauncey reportedly took a shine to Ebbets and sold him a small piece of his own shares.14 It must have been a very small piece. By the mid-1890s, Abell told a reporter, he owned 51 percent of the team, Byrne 12 percent, and the Chauncey group 37 percent.15

The Gay Nineties weren’t for the Brooklyn team. Attendance, which had hit 353,690 in 1889, averaged 184,000 during the 1890s.16 Ebbets in later years made it clear he thought the major problem was the location. East New York was just too far for most people. The mediocre quality of the team didn’t help much either.

The team lost money virtually every year. Appeals were made to the shareholders to make up the deficits, but only Abell responded. Ebbets called him “the human war chest.”17 The Rhode Island financier slowly hiked his share of the team. It wasn’t as if he wanted to. Abell had a standing offer to his partners that he would either buy them out or sell to them, but only a few of the smaller investors took up his offer, and then only to sell out.18 By 1897, Abell said, he had lost $100,000 on his investment in the team.19 Almost all of the losses had occurred beginning with the Players League competition, but he had lost $25,000 in the 1896 and 1897 seasons alone.20

Abell is a somewhat vague figure. Reporters of the period loved to call him Chesterfieldian, a term that conveyed upper-class English regard for manners, rectitude, and a gallant attitude toward women. The source of most of his wealth was referred to coyly. Ebbets skated around it by saying that when Abell joined team ownership he “knew a great deal about some sports, but nothing whatever about baseball.” He developed a reputation of being hard to deal with, but Ebbets said that once you knew his ways, you could get yours.21

The Emergence of Charles Ebbets

Charles Ebbets was taking a larger role in Brooklyn management. Born in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village on October 29, 1859, of an old Dutch family, Ebbets was the son of a bank president and an associate of Alexander Cartwright, whose Knickerbocker Baseball Club had played an important role in codifying baseball’s early rules.22 Charles had left school early, joining an architectural firm where he worked as a draftsman on the Metropolitan Hotel and Niblo’s Garden, a famous amusement center. He later went to work for publishing houses, selling cheap fiction and keeping the books. All these skills were to stand him in good stead when he ran the Dodgers.23 At first Ebbets was a bookkeeper but he pitched in doing whatever Byrne needed. Soon, Byrne was delegating substantial tasks.

Ebbets was a marketing campaign all by himself. He was a joiner, founding the Old Nassau Athletic Club among others. He was active in the Masons, bicycling and Democratic Party politics. He participated in at least four bowling clubs and many secret societies. He had been elected a state Assemblyman and a city alderman and lost an 1897 race for city councilman by literally the narrowest of margins, 23,183 votes to 23,182. He also lost a 1904 race for the state Senate when Democrats were buried in the Theodore Roosevelt landslide.

With the Dodgers’ losses mounting in late 1897, Ebbets made his move. He arranged to borrow money to buy the Chauncey group’s shares. The reported purchase price of $25,000 implied a value of around $70,000 for the whole team.24 Ebbets then secured an option on Abell’s shares. On January 1, 1898, he invited the reporters who covered the Brooklyn team to a dinner and announced that he now controlled 85 percent of the team. The remaining shares were owned by Byrne, who was on his deathbed. Three days later, on January 4, the man who had run the team since it was founded 15 years before died.

The results for Ebbets were mixed. On the positive side, he quickly assumed Byrne’s role. With Abell’s backing, he was elected president. He would exercise control over the team until his own death in 1925, while his stable of financial backers and partners changed several times.

But Ebbets didn’t gain ownership. He didn’t come anywhere near it. His option to buy Abell’s controlling shares ran out February 1 and Ebbets conceded he hadn’t been able to raise the money to exercise it. Abell decided not to sell out to anyone else and continued to invest in the team.25 What happened to Ebbets’ purchase of the Chauncey shares isn’t clear, but by the next winter Ebbets owned only 18 percent of the team, although Chauncey would later claim he’d been paid in full and on time.26 Presumably Abell picked up some of these shares as well.27

However, Ebbets’ management was already bearing fruit. He moved the team back from Eastern Park to a location diagonally across the corner from the old Washington Park. It was a location much more convenient for fans. Ebbets’ problem was finding $25,000 to build a new ballpark. He’d hocked himself to buy out the old Players’ League magnates and Abell was reluctant to sink any more money.

Ebbets’ white knights were trolley-car magnates, including Al Johnson, once president of the Players League. Johnson’s Nassau Railroad and the Brooklyn Heights Railroad companies bought the site, graded it, and built what became known as the New Washington Park for about $15,000. In addition, they agreed to charge only $5,000 in annual rent, $2,500 less than the team had paid in Eastern Park.28

But Ebbets also needed a better club than the one that finished a dismal 10th in 1898. He saw the potential for what was called syndicate baseball. Essentially, syndicate ownership was control of more than one team by one management group. The owners would then move all the best players to the team in the better market, leaving the other team to languish.

Perhaps Ebbets realized its potential because Abell was looking at other ways to cut his losses. One New York newspaper reported that Abell was in talks with Cleveland owners Stanley and Frank Robison, and also with streetcar magnate Albert Johnson. Importing players from Cleveland and $20,000 from Johnson would leave a Brooklyn franchise split among Abell (50 percent), the Robisons (30 percent), and Johnson (20 percent). Ebbets would have been cut out and the Brooklyn Eagle suggested that there was no substance to the rumor.29 The Robisons eventually struck a syndicate deal with the team now known as the St. Louis Cardinals.

Looking elsewhere, Ebbets and Abell got in touch with Harry Von der Horst. Von der Horst was a Baltimore brewer who had owned the Orioles since they had been in the American Association with Byrne’s teams. But even in the early and mid-1890s, when the Orioles were winning National League pennants and establishing a reputation as a cradle of managers and one of the great teams of all time, they hadn’t made much money.

Ebbets and Von der Horst decided they could put Baltimore’s better players — Wee Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Joe McGinnity, and Dan McGann for example — with Brooklyn’s population of fans and come up with a winner on and off the field. In early 1899, the two camps struck a deal to split ownership of both franchises. Baltimore manager Ned Hanlon would come to Brooklyn as manager and part-owner. Ebbets would remain as team president. Von der Horst and Hanlon would own 50 percent, as would Abell and Ebbets. Ebbets’ share was variously reported as 9 percent and 10 percent. Hanlon’s was 10 percent.30

The deal was an initial success in Brooklyn. The team won the 1899 National League race and drew 269,641 fans, 120 percent more than a year before. They won again in 1900, although attendance slumped to about 183,000 and Ebbets had to fend off rumors that the team would be moved to Washington.31 Then the team fell on harder times. Brooklyn lost stars such as Keeler and McGinnity to the new American League, which had proclaimed itself a major league in 1901. Attendance fell. Ebbets’ partners were skittish.

Von der Horst had become unhappy with Hanlon for reasons that remain obscure. His confidant on the team was now Ebbets. Early in 1905, Ebbets was able to persuade an ailing Von der Horst to sell him virtually all of his shares. Ebbets newest financial angel was an old friend, Brooklyn furniture manufacturer Henry W. Medicus.32 The two had been extremely active in Brooklyn bowling circles for years. Medicus was elected an officer of the team and kept some shares in his name, but he was willing to remain even further in the background than Von der Horst.33 This gave Ebbets effective control of the team, although his personal holdings were well under 50 percent.34

By the end of 1906, Von der Horst had died and Hanlon had signed to manage the Cincinnati Reds. It wasn’t until November of 1907 that Ebbets got rid of Hanlon completely. At that time, he and Medicus bought out Abell, Hanlon, and the tiny holding of Von der Horst’s estate. Ebbets announced that he controlled 70 percent of the team, including 10 percent owned by Charles Ebbets Jr., while Medicus had the rest. Medicus again provided most of the cash, although the shares were in Ebbets’ name.35 The transaction didn’t go smoothly. Abell and Hanlon had deferred payment for some of their shares and had to sue Ebbets to get their money back.36 It was later reported that Medicus had paid $30,000 for his shares, putting the franchise value at around $100,000.37

The team entered a period of relative prosperity. Attendance was steady (averaging about 238,000 over the decade of the 1900s), and even if the team wasn’t performing very well on the field, it was apparently providing modest profits. In 1909, at a postseason banquet, the long-winded Ebbets reviewed the history of baseball and concluded that the sport was still in its infancy. The audience dissolved in catcalls and Ebbets was nearly heckled off the stage. But he believed what he said, and was emboldened to try his most enduring venture.

The general prosperity led Ebbets and other major-league owners to deal with one of their most persistent problems — the quality of their facilities. Wooden grandstands were cheap to erect, but they crumbled, collapsed, and burned. (A fire that destroyed the old Washington Park grandstand in May 1889 had occasioned the first appearance in the New York Times of the name Charles Ebbets, misspelled Ebbitts).38

The second Washington Park was a wooden firetrap in an often smoky industrial area near the malodorous Gowanus Canal. Ebbets had added so many seats that he’d severely restricted foul territory. Its main advantage was its central location, but Brooklyn’s center was moving south and east. Ebbets had to choose his site carefully. He had put much of the blame for the Dodgers’ bad decade in the 1890s on their move to Eastern Park — too far from the center of downtown Brooklyn. But now it was almost 20 years later and the city had grown enormously. The 1890 census, taken the year the Dodgers won their first National League pennant, showed 806,343 people in the city of Brooklyn. By the time of their sixth place finish in 1910, there were 1,634,351 people in the borough of Brooklyn.39

Over a dozen years, Ebbets bought up plots of land in an area known as Pigtown It was relatively cheap because of its population of squatters, but it was also along the path of rapid growth. His site, as Ebbets noted excitedly in a letter to August Herrmann, chairman of the National Commission, the three-man body that oversaw baseball before the commissioner system, was served by nine mass-transit lines. “Between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 people can reach the new site by surface, subway or elevated in thirty to forty five minutes,” Ebbets wrote. It was within easy reach of the older neighborhoods but poised to be in the middle of the borough’s future expansion.40

In January 1912 Ebbets announced that he had put together the parcel and intended the Dodgers to have a modern ballpark on the site. Asked what he would call it, Ebbets said he didn’t know, but the reporters began calling it Ebbets Field. Modest Charlie didn’t object. The new stadium was a focus of civic pride for Brooklyn. In a magazine article, Ebbets crowed that his stadium would fill “all demands upon it for the next thirty years.”41 Just to show he was on the cutting edge, he planned a parking garage capable of holding a few hundred automobiles or carriages.42

Enter the McKeever Brothers

Ebbets began construction in March 1912. His public cost estimate was $750,000 including land.43 But in his letter to Herrmann, he gave a construction budget of about $325,000 plus almost $200,000 for the land, $100,000 of which had already been paid. He estimated that the money would be raised from a bond sale of $275,000, a bank loan for $100,000 that he would secure personally, and the team’s $50,000 profit from 1912. He was probably closer with the public estimate.

The 18,000-seat ballpark was supposed to be finished by June, or maybe August, 1912.44 It wasn’t. Excuses were given about undelivered materials and labor troubles. Apparently, though, the real trouble was money. Ebbets really hadn’t put together a realistic financial plan. In late August he announced that he had bought out Medicus and taken new partners. They were two politically-connected brothers, Ed and Steve McKeever, who were in the construction business.45 Ebbets wouldn’t say how big the brothers’ stake was, but subsequent events proved that they each had received 25 percent for their investment. The breakdown of stock blocs created by this transaction was to persist for almost 50 years.

The brothers McKeever had textbook careers on how the nineteenth-century Irish got ahead. Steve was born in 1854 and Ed in 1859, both in Brooklyn, sons of a cobbler. Both received minimal education, Steve’s being interrupted when he ran away in an unsuccessful attempt to join the Union Army as a Civil War drummer boy. He went to work as a horse boy for a trolley line near the Fulton Street Ferry and was eventually apprenticed to a plumber. One of Steve’s first contracts was for plumbing work on the Brooklyn Bridge. Ed also left school at 14, first working for a brass wholesaler and then joining with Michael J. Daly to form the Hudson River Broken Stone Company.46

Within a few years, the brothers combined their expertise in plumbing and stonework to form the E.J. & S.W. McKeever Contracting Company. They had also learned well from Daly, who got government contracts through his excellent (Republican) political contacts. When Steve McKeever married in 1892, one of his ushers was Hugh McLaughlin, boss of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. The McKeevers built their company with lucrative government contracts to install sewers and water mains and pave streets. Steve, the more gregarious of the two, was a former city alderman. Ed was more the businessman. With New York’s growth, filling government construction contracts was an excellent business. In the early twentieth century, the brothers moved into homebuilding. And they had a lucrative city contract to take Brooklyn’s garbage out to sea and dump it. When the McKeevers’ identity was revealed, sportswriters outdid one another suggesting which of the Dodgers should be given one-way rides on the brothers’ fleet of scows.47 The sale of the garbage contract, for over $1 million, provided the brothers with the cash to buy into the Dodgers.

Ebbets Field, circa 1920s. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

How much the brothers paid for their shares isn’t clear. Most of the contemporary sources say $100,000, but The Sporting News obituary of Steve McKeever said it was $250,000 and Robert Creamer’s biography of Casey Stengel lists it as $500,000.48 The Ebbets heirs said Ebbets had borrowed $150,000 from the McKeevers and pledged 50 percent of the stock as collateral.49 When the cost of building the stadium caused him to miss payments, they took over the stock and turned some of their construction expertise to finishing the new stadium on time and at less cost.

The stadium was done in time for the 1913 season. Attendance rose 43 percent to 347,000. With more income and the McKeevers’ bankroll behind him, Ebbets brought Wilbert Robinson in as manager and began to invest in ballplayers. Casey Stengel arrived during the last year in Washington Park, joining Zack Wheat. In the next couple of years, Ebbets, Robinson, and scout Larry Sutton added Jeff Pfeffer, Larry Cheney, Sherry Smith, and Rube Marquard, the nucleus of the pitching staff that would win the 1916 pennant.

The pennant-winning season portended a prosperous era, which would leave Charles Ebbets with an estate worth over $1 million. The improvement started with the quality of the team. A second pennant was added in 1920 and an unexpectedly fine team in 1924 led to a tight pennant race and another attendance record. It was helped by the new ballpark, which was expanded to 22,000 seats for the 1917 season.

The second boost was the collapse of the Federal League after the 1915 season. The Federal League lasted two years and had little success either on or off the field. Ebbets had to compete with a Federal League franchise in Brooklyn, but did so successfully at the gate. He even managed a $30,000 profit in 1914 despite attendance falling by two-thirds, while the Brooklyn Federals lost $800,000 in 1915.50 But, he also had to compete with the Feds on salaries. In 1916 many of those salaries persisted because of multiyear contracts granted to tie up the better players.

The most important factor that helped Ebbets was the final victory of Sunday baseball. In New York state, the ban on Sunday baseball was generally an upstate, rural, Republican, Protestant imposition on a metropolitan, Democratic, Catholic city. Nationally, it was a battle that had gone on for 30 years, with New York one of the last holdouts. In a day when many working people still labored six days a week, the ability to stage a game on their day off was a tremendous shot in the arm for attendance. Sunday baseball was finally legalized in 1919.51 Beginning that year, Ebbets Field attendance would never again fall below the 300,000 Ebbets estimated he needed to break even.

The fourth factor was sheer population growth. By 1920 Brooklyn’s population had hit 2 million, an increase of 23 percent for the decade. By 1930 Brooklyn had passed Manhattan as the city’s most populous borough. The South and East Brooklyn communities — Flatbush, Borough Park, Brownsville, Gravesend, Bensonhurst, New Lots, Bay Ridge, Brighton Beach — were leading the way. Perhaps more important, the percentage of foreign-born Brooklynites had peaked at the 1910 census. The children of the immigrants were a growing percentage of the population and were starting to turn to baseball as part of their pledge of allegiance to their country. In the pennant-winning year of 1916, the Dodgers had drawn more than their share of National League fans for the first time since 1901. They wouldn’t do it again until Sunday baseball arrived in 1919 but then did it every year but two until Walter O’Malley uprooted the team.

Ebbets’ Death and Ownership Deadlocks

Ebbets died near the peak of his success as an owner. He fell ill early in 1925 and died of heart failure in April in the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that he now could afford. His funeral was held on a raw day and when the cortege got to Green-Wood Cemetery, it was discovered that the grave had been dug too small for the oversized casket. The funeral party, including Ed McKeever, stood in the rain for an hour while gravediggers widened the muddy hole. McKeever caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia and killed him only 11 days later.

The team’s ownership was thrown into turmoil and a pattern was set that was to last for 13 years. The Ebbets heirs and the McKeever interests fell to feuding and with ownership split equally, decisions were often deferred rather than made. Management was weak, and when the Depression hit, the losses mounted, putting the team effectively under the control of its lenders.

Even with their fans, who were more vociferous than numerous, the Dodgers had fallen on exceedingly hard times by the end of the 1937 season. Phone service had been cut off because the bills weren’t being paid. The team’s office was crowded with process servers seeking payment.52 Ebbets Field was a mass of broken seats, begging for a paint job. Charles Ebbets’ pride, the beautiful rotunda, was covered with mildew.53 The heirs had borrowed heavily against the value of their Dodgers stock, and the stock was worth less and less.

The Brooklyn Trust Co. was the team’s bank, and also served as trustee of the Ebbets and Ed McKeever estates. Its president was George V. McLaughlin. By late 1937 the Dodgers owed $700,000 to the bank, $470,000 on a refinanced mortgage for Ebbets Field.54 It had lost $129,140 in 1937 and hadn’t turned a profit since 1930.55 New York bank examiners were pressuring McLaughlin about overdue loans to the team.56 National League President Ford Frick was threatening to take the franchise back for unpaid bills.57

The board remained divided. McLaughlin, anxious to get repaid, cut off any future advances to the team unless the board found a strong executive. Thrashing around for a solution, Jim Mulvey, husband of Steve McKeever’s daughter and heir, Dearie, approached Frick. He thought Cardinals vice president Branch Rickey might be interested. Rickey said no, but suggested he might have someone who wanted the job, Leland Stanford “Larry” MacPhail. McLaughlin consulted Frick and got the go-ahead.58

When he came to Brooklyn, the 47-year-old MacPhail carried a large and speckled reputation.59 In Columbus, Ohio, after World War I, MacPhail was refereeing college football games while moving from glass manufacturing to car sales to construction. He was making money but remained restless. He formed a group to buy the minor-league team in Columbus after the 1930 season. He ran the team for three seasons, making it profitable and selling it to the Cardinals as a farm club. He had impressed Rickey despite a clash that got MacPhail fired. In late 1933, when the National League was casting around for someone to run the struggling Cincinnati Reds for the team’s bankers, Rickey had suggested MacPhail.

In three years with the Reds, MacPhail turned the team into a profitable franchise. He was one of the game’s first marketing innovators, from such seemingly obvious things as keeping the ballpark nicely painted and the seats in good repair to touches such as spiffy uniforms for ushers and pretty young women wandering the stands selling cigarettes. There were fireworks and bands.

But MacPhail also broke new ground. He greatly expanded the reach of the Reds’ radio network. Not the least of the reasons for radio’s success in Cincinnati was MacPhail’s use of a young announcer from Florida named Walter “Red” Barber. His most spectacular promotion was night baseball. While night games had been used in exhibitions as far back as 1883, they had gained wide acceptance only with the Depression, when they proved the savior of many minor-league teams. Still, nobody had done it in the majors until MacPhail’s Reds hosted the league doormat Phillies on the night of May 24, 1935, in front of 20,422 fans. With the team itself, he added farm clubs and built the nucleus of the clubs that would win pennants in 1939 and 1940.

But he also wore out his welcome. “There is no question in my mind but that Larry MacPhail was a genius,” said Leo Durocher, who managed the Dodgers for him. But “there is that thin line between genius and insanity, and in Larry’s case it was sometimes so thin you could see him drifting back and forth.” MacPhail was an abrasive man whose abrasiveness was made worse by a drinking problem. “Cold sober he was brilliant. One drink and he was even more brilliant. Two drinks — that’s another story,” said Durocher.60 He would look for scapegoats on his staff, get into fights with one and all and offend many. By the end of the 1936 season, Cincinnati owner Powel Crosley had had enough and MacPhail spent 1937 with a family business in Michigan.

As the 1938 season loomed, MacPhail began the first steps toward creating the solid franchise the Dodgers are today. Some of those changes were cosmetic, but others were fundamental. The cosmetics began with $200,000 McLaughlin had agreed to provide before MacPhail would take the job. Ebbets Field, a monument to peeling paint and mildew, was cleaned and painted turquoise. Its many broken seats were repaired. The infamous corps of usher/thugs was weeded out and retrained. The baseball moves began with his new manager, a loud-mouthed, light-hitting, clotheshorse who was playing shortstop for the team. Leo Durocher was one of MacPhail’s noncosmetic moves. Another was using an additional $50,000 from McLaughlin to buy first baseman Dolf Camilli from the even more hapless Phillies.

MacPhail began to spend money on other players. With Durocher as manager in 1939, the team moved into a competitive third-place finish and the fans started to come back. He scheduled Brooklyn’s first night game, and was rewarded when the fates tossed up Cincinnati left-hander Johnny Vander Meer as the opposing pitcher. Vander Meer’s last outing had been a no-hitter, and under the lights that night, he became the only major-league pitcher ever to throw consecutive no-hitters.

MacPhail also broke the gentleman’s agreement among New York teams not to broadcast their games on the radio. He imported Barber from Cincinnati and locked up a powerful channel and a strong sponsor before the Yankees or the Giants moved. It took Brooklyn fans a while to get used to Barber’s Southernisms such as the catbird seat and the rhubarb patch, but once they did, he became a valuable tool for building interest in the improving product on the field.

With the ballpark fixed up, the team improving, and the Depression finally being dispersed by the onset of World War II, the results quickly showed at the box office and in the team’s books. Attendance was up 37 percent in 1938, despite a drop in the standings from sixth to seventh place. In 1940 the Dodgers led the National League in attendance for the first time. The next year, with a pennant-winning team, attendance hit a franchise-record 1.2 million.

After the team’s steep losses from 1931 through 1937, MacPhail cut the loss to a paltry $3,751 in 1938 and began making profits the next year. And all that financial improvement came despite MacPhail’s buying ballplayers left and right. The club owed Brooklyn Trust $230,000 when MacPhail arrived, with another $470,000 owed on the Ebbets Field mortgage. Spending money on players and paint, he ran the club’s debt to $501,000 by early 1939. By mid-July 1941, the deficit was gone as attendance turned into profits.61 The mortgage remained, but was down to $300,000 and the team had $300,000 in the bank, MacPhail told reporters.62 The team’s bookkeeper would tell MacPhail’s replacement that there was $143,768.99 in the bank and $358,000 still owed on the mortgage.63

That wasn’t as much money as the board thought there should be, however. When Mulvey had sought Rickey’s advice on hiring MacPhail, Rickey had warned that MacPhail would not pay the heirs dividends. And MacPhail’s whole record was a long rap sheet of welcomes worn out. The erratic behavior and drinking eventually overcame extraordinary performance. Despite the profits, the Ebbets and Ed McKeever estates and the Mulveys hadn’t received a dividend since 1932.64 And they’d begun to hear stories. MacPhail was known to dip into the cash drawer before going to the race track.65 They were outraged when, in August 1942, MacPhail called the whole team to a meeting, included all the newspaper reporters, and then predicted that the Dodgers would lose the pennant race, where they had taken an eight-game lead.66 That he was right only made it worse.

A state banking examiner ordered McLaughlin to find out “what the hell is going on with the Dodgers’ books.” McLaughlin’s investigator found that the team was grossing somewhere between $2.5 million and $4 million, but that not all of it was making its way to the bank.67 This had to be stopped.

Whether MacPhail quit or was fired is a matter of dispute. MacPhail said he’d been talking about going back into the Army beginning in March 1942. The Sporting News printed a rumor to that effect in August. Then MacPhail reportedly irritated the board yet again by disobeying specific orders and paying $40,000 for pitcher Bobo Newsom.68 In September MacPhail announced he was going into the Army.

Mulvey turned once again to Branch Rickey.

Wesley Branch Rickey

Wesley Branch Rickey had been born on November 20, 1881, in Scioto County, Ohio, to a poor farming family. He finished grade school, but then farm labor called. With help from a sympathetic retired educator, he read as widely as the resources of Scioto County allowed in the 1890s. He educated himself enough to become the teacher at the local grade school, saving money for college. Eventually, he went off to Ohio Wesleyan University. For the next decade, Rickey’s life was a welter of sporadic academics, sports, and, eventually coaching. He played baseball and football at Ohio Wesleyan and realized he could make money to pay for his studies. He spent part of several seasons in the majors, getting himself a reputation as a marginal catcher, a poor hitter, and an odd duck for honoring a vow to his deeply religious mother never to play baseball on Sundays.

In 1911, on the verge of 30, Branch Rickey graduated from law school and chose Boise, Idaho, as the site of his law office. He was, by his own accounts, a miserable failure. The impressions he had made as a baseball player and coach came to his rescue. Even while in Boise, he’d spent his summers scouting for Robert Hedges, owner of the American League’s St. Louis Browns. After his second unsuccessful winter in Boise, Rickey was only too happy to respond to Hedges’ request for a meeting in Salt Lake City to discuss a full-time job with the Browns. He borrowed the train fare from Hedges and began a half-century of life in professional baseball.69

By mid-1913, Rickey was the manager of the Browns. In 1916 a new Browns owner made him business manager, and a year later he moved to St. Louis’s National League entry, the Cardinals, in that role. He also added the job of field manager through the 1925 season. Rickey’s managerial record was mediocre and he gained a label as too much of a theorist, inclined to lecture his players how to do things, but unable to motivate them. The proof they pointed to was that in 1926, with the players Rickey had chosen and trained, but with Rogers Hornsby as manager, the Cardinals won their first pennant.

Rickey’s bosses and his rivals all recognized his brilliance as a baseball man, but thought he was too intellectual for the tobacco-stained game on the field. Baseball simply didn’t know what to do with him. In those days, baseball was a game of entrepreneurial owners, who functioned in the roles twenty-first-century teams split among a general manager, a business manager, a scouting director, and a president. It was only when Rickey was kicked upstairs from the Cardinals’ dugout that he found his true role. “Rickey practically created the office of business manager as it is understood today,” wrote the New York Times’ John Drebinger in 1943.70

Rickey’s first great innovation was the farm system. The Cardinals eventually created a chain of minor-league teams for which they could sign players cheaply, winnow the good from the great, win pennants, and make money. Rickey would sell the good to others and keep the great for the Cardinals.

By late 1942, Rickey’s relations with Cardinals owner Sam Breadon could best be described as rocky. Beginning in 1926, the Cardinals had won a third of the National League’s pennants plus four World Series. The team Rickey had constructed would win three more pennants and two World Series in the four years immediately after he left. Yet Sam Breadon was unhappy. He said Rickey earned more money than he did.71 The two were fighting over Rickey’s bonus payments and Breadon’s dismissal of Rickey protégés in the farm system.72 Rickey reportedly was upset at Breadon’s refusal to back him in a dispute with Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, and with Breadon’s paying a large bonus to himself while cutting Rickey’s budget for salaries.73 Rickey was considering a top executive post with a large insurance company.74

In 1937, when Jim Mulvey first approached Rickey, he reportedly had been authorized to offer an ownership stake.75 Rickey had quietly been making inquiries about buying the Dodgers.76 Now there were even more compelling reasons for McLaughlin to facilitate this. The team’s finances had improved, but they were not solid, and the advent of World War II made the future of professional sports uncertain. With Rickey’s reputation, and the Dodgers’ financial improvement, it would be logical to think the trust company could fulfill more easily its responsibilities to the Ebbets and McKeever estates. A sale in which Branch Rickey gained some ownership and remained to run the team would be attractive to many potential buyers. Ownership was a positive inducement to complement Rickey’s desire to escape Breadon.

The wooing was relatively quick. The New York Times first reported Brooklyn-Rickey talks on October 4, 1942. The move was announced on October 29, a day when Rickey was introduced as the new general manager at a lunch at the Brooklyn Club.

Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley and John Smith

George V. McLaughlin needed an exit strategy for Brooklyn Trust’s entanglement with the Dodgers and he was lining up the dominoes.

McLaughlin had multiple — at times conflicting — obligations centered on the Dodgers. The bank was a trustee of both the Charles Ebbets and Edward McKeever estates and thus bound to protect the heirs’ interests, getting them the greatest return possible on their Dodgers stock. And since much of the stock had been used as collateral for loans from the bank, a higher price for the stock would make it more likely that those loans would be repaid. Like the shareholders, the team still owed money to Brooklyn Trust and McLaughlin had to make sure his bank was repaid. The Dodgers were the most visible symbol of Brooklyn, and any misstep could be a public-relations boondoggle for the borough’s biggest bank. In early 1942 McLaughlin had attempted to end the bank’s role as trustee for the Ebbets heirs in part because of the bad publicity the bank was receiving for the perceived conflict of interest.77 He needed to sell the team to a person or a group who could satisfy the heirs, the bank, and the borough’s fans.

Branch Rickey was the first piece of the puzzle. For the team to pay off the debts, it would have to be successful and well managed. Who better to do that than Rickey? Success would be necessary to provide Rickey with the money he would need to buy a share of the team, and McLaughlin was in a position to make sure Rickey had the opportunity to buy. But there would have to be other pieces of the puzzle. Rickey would need partners with their own substantial funds. And McLaughlin would like to keep his own man around to make sure things continued to run well, someone who had both McLaughlin’s confidence and the skills to watch the business end of the team while Rickey concentrated on the baseball end.

McLaughlin’s choice was a 39-year-old lawyer named Walter Francis O’Malley. In the decade since he’d passed the bar, O’Malley had established a large practice mostly involved with bankruptcy cases, a lucrative niche during the Depression. He’d also become a protégé of McLaughlin’s, attending baseball games with the older man and sometimes pouring him into bed after a social evening. McLaughlin had ensured that O’Malley served on the boards of a number of troubled borough companies which, like the Dodgers, needed their finances restructured by Brooklyn Trust.78

Rickey had his own motivations for accepting O’Malley as the team’s lawyer. The Dodgers’ legal business had been handled by a large Wall Street firm that also represented the National League. Rickey recognized that the two might come into conflict and he wanted his own man.79 He also wanted to cut costs and consulted George Barnewall, who represented Brooklyn Trust on the Dodgers’ Board of Directors. Barnewall, not surprisingly, recommended O’Malley, and Rickey soon recognized that O’Malley was “the personal representative, in all legal matters, of Mr. George V. McLaughlin.”80

To all appearances, Walter O’Malley was a casual fan at that point. A boyhood interest in the Giants had evolved into a more practical relationship with the game. He recalled seeing his first Ebbets Field game about 1935, as his relationship with McLaughlin was flowering, and he became a box-seat holder because he could get better seats for entertaining clients there than he could at Yankee Stadium.81 Working with Brooklyn Trust’s financially troubled customers was the core of Walter O’Malley’s law practice, and adding a high-profile client like the Dodgers could only enhance his law firm’s reputation. “I never realized O’Malley would be this interested in baseball,” Rickey said later, but Rickey was impressed by how quickly O’Malley got a property near Ebbets Field condemned by city authorities so the Dodgers could use it.82

Rickey and O’Malley settled into their roles. Rickey began to remake the Dodgers roster and build up the farm system. O’Malley began learning the world of marketing, broadcasting contracts, ticket sales, and stadium operations. He would straighten out the bookkeeping system left by Larry MacPhail. The team’s on-field operations stumbled as players left for the military, but the business operations improved, and others noticed.

A number of offers for the team surfaced through the World War II years, especially as the end of the war appeared on the horizon.83 These offers highlighted another complication for McLaughlin. For the smooth future operations of the club, an ownership group that could exercise full control was necessary and that meant obtaining both the Ebbets shares and one of the McKeever blocs. As the team’s banker, McLaughlin had watched throughout the 1930s as the team’s management stagnated while the 50-50 stock split of the McKeever and Ebbets blocs strangled daily operations, much less attempts to deal with long-term problems. Rickey noted that the bank had found it impossible to get an offer for the Ebbets shares throughout that decade because potential buyers knew their investment would bring them not control, but a few seats on the Board of Directors with the necessity of sitting through rancorous, often unproductive meetings.

Rickey and O’Malley, who had been discussing the potential problems that new ownership could produce, began exploring. They clearly had the inside edge with the bank, but they had to raise the money, which they knew would be $240,000. “Mr. O’Malley took hold of things at this point,” wrote Rickey. O’Malley put down $25,000 of his own money to get an option on the Ed McKeever heirs’ shares.84

Rickey was a man who constantly lived at the edge of his income and would have to borrow to enter ownership. O’Malley could come up with his share and put down the option money, but they needed partners. By March 1944 Rickey was soliciting old acquaintances, but didn’t want to get too many more people involved.85 By the fall, another social and business acquaintance of McLaughlin and O’Malley entered the fold. He was Andrew Schmitz, a highly successful insurance executive with Brooklyn ties. Rickey borrowed $20,000 from Brooklyn Trust in September and the purchase of the Ed McKeever bloc closed on October 27.86

The newspaper accounts focused on Rickey’s move into ownership, with lesser attention paid to Schmitz and O’Malley. But several of the stories noted that this was only a preliminary to gaining the Ebbets shares and full control of the team.87

The Ebbets shares would be harder as the Ebbets family was divided, borrowed to the hilt on their shares and fully lawyered up. Many rested their hopes for the future on the sale of their Dodger stock. Ebbets had divided his estate among his second wife, four children by his first wife, and various grandchildren. The will was also encumbered by promised annuity payments to his first wife and son. By 1944 the Surrogate’s Court handling the case had 59 separate claimants or litigants, many of whom had borrowed money from Brooklyn Trust using the team’s stock as collateral. The file contained claims from 25 law firms totaling $150,000.88 O’Malley would have to guide an offer through the Surrogate’s Court that satisfied all parties.

While O’Malley worked behind the scenes, other potential buyers clouded the public picture. Early in 1945, the Brooklyn American Legion announced that it was interested in buying the team.89 Rickey and his partners said little in public and didn’t respond to the Legion’s request to see the books.90 The Legion’s offer dribbled into silence.

For the partners, anxious to strike a deal with both Brooklyn Trust and the Surrogate’s Court for the Ebbets shares, the problem these offers presented was the price they were willing to pay. The Legion had said it would pay $2 million for all the shares. (The Yankees had recently sold for $2.8 million). Another bidder said he would pay $1 million for the Ebbets shares alone. Both of these offers ran up against the problem that had dogged the club since Ebbets’ death. The Ebbets shares, even at $1 million, wouldn’t buy control, but only a chance for head-butting. For the Legion, the Mulvey share, and presumably the Rickey-O’Malley partners share, weren’t for sale at all, leaving their bid in limbo. Nevertheless, the price that was being put on half the franchise was $1 million, more than the $650,000 the partners hoped to pay, or the $750,000 they were willing to pay.91 And Brooklyn Trust, with its fiduciary duty to the trustees, had seen both offers.

By early May 1945, the partners were making their first formal offer for the Ebbets shares, and examining how they could finance it out of team revenues.92 In June, the Surrogate’s Court refused the $650,000 offer at the behest of the Ebbets heirs. In July, with the bid raised to $800,000, the court approved the sale. It was announced in mid-August. In all the newspapers, it was Rickey who had bought the team, with his partners relegated to the lower paragraphs. In the Brooklyn Eagle, Harold C. Burr confidently reported that the sale gave Rickey “absolute control of the Dodgers, to run as he pleases.”93

In the background, that control was not so clear, as events were to prove over the next five years. The partnership had changed in important ways. When the sale of the Ed McKeever estate’s shares had been announced the previous year, the buyers had been presented as Rickey, O’Malley, and Schmitz. Silent in the background was a fourth partner, John L. Smith, president of Brooklyn-based Pfizer Chemical. In May, while they were making their first formal offer, the group had approached James Mulvey about buying 5 percent of his family’s 25 percent share of the team. This 5 percent was to be split among Rickey and his three partners, giving each of the five shareholders 20 percent of the team assuming the partners bought the Ebbets shares. Such a distribution would prevent 50-50 standoffs in the boardroom.94 Mulvey was not interested.

The failure of this gambit led Schmitz to drop out of the partnership.95 And it led McLaughlin to require a partnership agreement among Rickey, O’Malley, and Smith to prevent boardroom stalemates. This agreement was to set the stage for governing the team over the next five years, and set the ground rules that led to O’Malley’s final control. In the agreement, Rickey, O’Malley, and Smith agreed that they would each own 25 percent of the team separately, but that they would pool their shares for purposes of voting in the boardroom.96 Thus, if there was a disagreement between, say, Rickey and O’Malley, whoever could swing Smith to his point of view would control how 75 percent of the stock was voted.

Smith’s role was also enhanced because he had the money to make the deal go smoothly. Brooklyn Trust had agreed to finance the triumvirate’s purchase. The $240,000 to purchase the Ed McKeever shares was turned over into a new financial package totaling $1,046,000, a sum that also included buying out Schmitz. The bank loaned the triumvirate $650,000 against the value of the Dodgers stock. O’Malley and Smith financed the remainder of their shares out of their own pockets. Rickey borrowed $99,500 from the bank using stock and life-insurance policies as collateral. With his personal assets used up, the bank loaned him another $72,000 based on guarantees from Smith and O’Malley.97 Smith could have handled his share with a check, but chose to go along with his partners in the overall financial agreement.

When he died in 1950, the headline on John Lawrence Smith’s New York Times obituary called him a “noted chemist,” a label the unassuming executive would have appreciated.98 It wasn’t until later that the story mentioned he was a part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. To the nonbaseball world, Smith had made his name as an executive of Charles Pfizer & Co. and especially for his role in leading the Brooklyn company’s pioneering effort in the mass production of penicillin. His leadership was critical in moving Pfizer from a chemical supplier into an international pharmaceuticals giant.99

But to the baseball world of the late 1940s, Smith was the pivot on which the ownership of the Dodgers balanced. His financial resources and his relationship with McLaughlin made him a useful partner, and he soon struck up a relationship with Rickey based on their parallel rags-to-riches stories and their religious sympathies. With O’Malley, the tie was less significant, but older. As a young man, Smith had worked with Edwin O’Malley on the Hollis Volunteer Fire Company. After a fire, Smith would slip Walter and his friends a few dollars for sodas when they did the dirty work of rolling up the wet hoses.100

Smith was born in Krefeld, Germany, on February 10, 1889, as Johann Schmitz, the son of Gottfried and Johanna Schmitz.101 Krefeld was a center of the German velvet industry and Gottfried moved his family to Stonington, Connecticut, in 1892 to pursue opportunities in Stonington’s velvet mills. While they spoke German at home, the family formally changed its name to Smith in 1918, presumably as the result of anti-German agitation during World War I. John, who was naturalized in 1908, used the anglicized version from the time he entered the working world.

In 1914 he got his degree in chemistry, married Mary Louise Becker and moved to E.R. Squibb, where he oversaw the development of a large-scale ether-making facility at Squibb’s Brooklyn plant. By 1919, he returned to Pfizer, becoming plant superintendent. He would remain at Pfizer the rest of his life.

Smith continued to work his way up, emphasizing frugal management and research. During World War II, under his management, Pfizer would become the first company to figure out how to manufacture penicillin inexpensively in large volumes. In the first half of 1943, enough penicillin was produced to treat about 180 severe cases. In the second half, production could handle over 9,000 cases. By D-Day, it was just under 40,000 cases worth of production per month. Half of the world’s penicillin was coming from Pfizer’s Brooklyn plants, and the price per dose had dropped from $20 in early 1943 to $1. The company’s first public stock offering was oversubscribed and the shares value soared on Wall Street.102 Smith’s reward was Pfizer’s presidency in 1945.

One of Smith’s favorite ways to relax was to go to Ebbets Field of an afternoon to watch the Dodgers. He was encouraged in this relaxation by George V. McLaughlin, president of the Brooklyn Trust Company, which served as the bank for Pfizer and most of Brooklyn’s largest companies.

Reading the minutes of the board meetings from 1945 to 1950, it’s easy to see each member constantly returning to his major concern. With Rickey, the emphasis is on acquiring and nurturing talented players. With Smith, it is about economy and using money wisely. With O’Malley, it is about renovating or replacing Ebbets Field. Within the context of their ownership agreement, it was always a triangular discussion as each partner sought the ally he needed to carry his position. Smith had no ambitions to run the Dodgers. His partners, however, were men of ambition and confidence and each knew because of the partnership agreement that Smith was the key ally.

Murray Polner, a sympathetic Rickey biographer who was the first to have access to Rickey’s papers, argues that Rickey and Smith admired each other as self-made men and devout Christians. “Eventually, when Smith lay dying of cancer, O’Malley would wean him away and turn him against Rickey,” Polner writes.103 But the minutes of the board of directors meetings and the press reports of the time paint a picture of Smith considering a host of issues over several years before he counseled his wife to vote with O’Malley in the partnership agreement after his death.

Two years before Smith died, John Drebinger was writing in the New York Times that “the majority stockholders, represented by Walter O’Malley and John L. Smith, were not seeing eye-to-eye with Brother Rickey on a number of things.”104 That same year, Jimmy Powers, forever a Rickey critic, wrote, “The rumor mill is working overtime these days producing hints that Branch may not be as firmly anchored in his Brooklyn post as he used to be.”105

The reasons for Smith’s decision are found in a host of issues, in which he allied himself at various times with both of his partners. But they are rooted in his own path to success, investing for the future while keeping costs down.

The Dodgers were profitable throughout the late 1940s, but John Smith saw economies that could have made them even more profitable. As a young Pfizer executive, he had required his people to justify a request for a new pencil by producing the stub of the old one. When he gave his first major interview as an owner, the reporter’s questions were all framed around Rickey’s reputation as “El Cheapo.” Eventually, Smith counterattacked. “I have read that Rickey is cheap. As treasurer of the Brooklyn club, I think he is extravagant. He makes financial gambles you wouldn’t dare make in any other business.”106 By 1949, the board granted Smith’s request to go deeply into the company’s books.107

Most historians and biographers of the period have approached the story of Rickey, O’Malley, and the Dodgers through the lens of Jackie Robinson or the team’s Rickey-created successes on the field. But it is clear that O’Malley and Smith, the experienced businessmen on the board, used an additional lens. In March 1949, the board minutes reported, “Mr. Rickey was authorized, as usual, to use his best judgment in the baseball department of the corporation’s activities.”108 While the “as usual” affirmed and limited Rickey’s primacy to one area, the whole of the sentence clearly implied O’Malley and Smith’s determination to get involved in the business end.

Some of the early disagreements were indicative. Rickey, on moral grounds, was opposed to beer sponsorships for the radio broadcasts, even when he was having trouble finding sponsors.109 There were regular disagreements over the farm system, where Rickey’s focus on producing future talent collided with O’Malley’s desire to save money to refurbish Ebbets Field or build a new ballpark. While the farm teams were generally profitable in this period, there were significant costs in scouting and acquiring players.110

Smith did not move firmly into O’Malley’s camp immediately. There were important issues on which they disagreed or which aroused Smith’s tightfisted ways. Smith supported Rickey’s investment in the Vero Beach training camp, which could both train all 700 or so Brooklyn minor leaguers and provide a bubble within Florida’s Jim Crow laws for the team’s African Americans. O’Malley balked at the money needed to turn a naval base into a baseball facility. Smith also was suspicious of a contract O’Malley signed with a company to provide maintenance for Ebbets Field. After several years of growing questions, Smith insisted that he, rather than O’Malley, negotiate the contract for 1949.111

O’Malley and Smith constantly deferred to Rickey in baseball matters, but they would use their experience to judge his performance as a businessman.112

Rickey’s biggest management blunder, however, came in football. He was persuaded, against O’Malley and Smith’s judgment, to take over the Brooklyn Dodgers of the fledgling All-American Football Conference. The team lost money in 1948, and then was merged with the New York Yankees of the same league.113 It lost more money in 1949, approximately equal to an annual profit for the baseball team. At the last meeting before Smith’s terminal illness in early 1950, the size of the football loss was revealed and this apparently contributed mightily to Smith’s telling his wife to vote with O’Malley in board matters.

The trigger for O’Malley’s buyout of Rickey was the latter’s contract. For its time, it was very lucrative. It called for an annual salary of $50,000 plus 10 percent of the team’s annual profit and a $5,000 expense account that Rickey didn’t have to account for. In the five years of the extended contract, Rickey would earn just over half a million dollars in salary, expense accounts, and bonuses. Then there was $43,312.50 in his share of the stockholder dividends declared by the board. Over the same years, the highest paid Dodger player would earn less than $120,000.114 The contract was due to run out in October 1950.

Ultimately, it was a game of King of the Mountain, with Smith serving as the referee. Branch Rickey had been trying to get into ownership since his earliest days with the St. Louis Browns and he wasn’t about to give it up easily now.115 “Rickey wanted a one-man operation, which he hadn’t been able to get in St. Louis,” said New York newspaperman Leonard Koppett, who covered baseball beginning in the late 1940s.116 Bill Veeck would later slap at O’Malley for his way of getting his way, but he also said, “Papa Branch is incapable of moving into any kind of any organization without maneuvering to establish himself as the dominant force.”117 Or, as Jane Rickey said of her husband, “No one could make friends easier than Branch. But he can’t take a back seat.”118 Nor could anyone accuse Walter O’Malley of being less than ambitious.

There were also different styles. Branch Rickey was a Midwestern Methodist Victorian and proud of it. He counseled all his players to marry. He wanted nothing to do with alcohol, or Democrats. Even with all his innovations in baseball, he was a man whose concept of marketing was to put a talented, interesting team on the field and let the fans flock to it. The reporters were a necessary evil.

O’Malley, like Smith, was a product of the corporate world. Owners owned. Managers managed. Players (employees) played. It was to be a cooperative effort aimed at maximizing profits, but it was not a cooperative. You needed to market your product and innovate off the field as well as on. You needed to coddle the reporters, who were your best source of free publicity.

And there were differences in style. Both men could be charmers, but O’Malley was more apt to slap your back, buy you a drink, and tell some jokes, many with a little sting at the end. Rickey retained a lot of the farmboy, and O’Malley was New York City born and bred. Both were masters at parsing their sentences, their meanings, and their implications like surgeons. They could dodge a question or cover it with ambiguity as they felt the situation demanded.

Ebbets Field in Brooklyn during its 1950s heyday. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

Rickey Leaves, O’Malley Triumphant

By the summer of 1950, with Smith beginning to criticize, Rickey clearly had moved beyond any thought of staying with the Dodgers.119 The terms of the partnership agreement began to exercise their control. Any partner wishing to sell must offer the others the chance to buy his shares. When Rickey approached O’Malley, he was offered $346,666.66 for his shares, the price he, O’Malley, and Smith had paid in 1944 and 1945. This was not the $1 million price tag Rickey had established in his own mind, a price that was far closer to the real value of the franchise.120

O’Malley clearly was lowballing Rickey. Apparently he calculated that no one would pay much for a nonmajority interest in a team where O’Malley’s influence over the Smith bloc would leave him in control. He would also say he was concerned for Mrs. Smith, as a sale at $1 million would raise the taxes on her husband’s already substantial estate.121 It was a sentimental argument that he knew buttressed his desire to pay less, but it also was an argument that knit Mrs. Smith closer to O’Malley.122

In addition, O’Malley knew Rickey was, as usual, hocked to his substantial eyebrows.123 O’Malley evidently hadn’t paid attention to a situation a year earlier when one owner of the St. Louis Cardinals had leveraged a similar agreement and an outside offer to gain a higher price from his partner.124 The partnership agreement gave Rickey a similar right to find an outside buyer whose presumably higher offer would have to be matched. Walter O’Malley had miscalculated.

Rickey had a fraternity brother named John Galbreath, a highly successful real-estate developer based in Columbus, Ohio. Galbreath was a part-owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates who had substantially raised his stake that summer and assumed the team’s presidency.125 Galbreath was looking for a baseball man to run the team. Rickey was looking for a buyer willing to pay $1 million for his shares. Who approached whom isn’t clear, but Galbreath eventually referred Rickey to a New York real-estate man named William Zeckendorf.

Rickey spent two meetings with Zeckendorf and his associates. Arthur Mann reported that Zeckendorf was at first resistant to Galbreath’s overtures. Playing to Galbreath’s love of horse racing, Zeckendorf asked, “(W)ould you buy a racing stable if they retired the best horse (meaning Rickey)?”126 Assured Rickey would stay if he bought in, Zeckendorf began to listen. He didn’t balk at the $1 million price tag, but was taken aback when Rickey told him the partnership agreement would force Rickey to allow O’Malley to counteroffer. “You’re using me to force a price. I can’t tie up capital” for that. Rickey agreed to a $50,000 fee for Zeckendorf if O’Malley bought the stock.127

On Friday, September 22, 1950, Rickey presented the offer to O’Malley and Mrs. Smith. Brooklyn Eagle sports editor Lou Niss broke the story on page 1 the next day.

O’Malley said immediately that he would match the offer.128 Dick Young of the New York Daily News described O’Malley as “stunned” and “peeved.”129 For years, O’Malley would complain that Zeckendorf wasn’t a real buyer, simply doing Galbreath a favor and pocketing $50,000 in the process.130 But Zeckendorf described himself as a real baseball fan. He had made an earlier attempt to buy the St. Louis Browns.131

The newspapers were most concerned with whether Rickey was moving to Pittsburgh, whom O’Malley might name as general manager and whether Burt Shotton would return as the manager for 1951. Two New York papers reported that Mrs. Smith’s shares were for sale, an unlikely event as her husband’s estate was deep in probate court.132

O’Malley was most concerned with where he was going to raise $1 million. He said he intended to take full advantage of the 60-day window to come up with the money.133Three weeks later, O’Malley started to show his hand. He announced that he and Mrs. Smith would buy out Rickey, and each would own 37.5 percent of the team.134 Two days later, Rickey resigned. In early November few were surprised to learn that he had joined the Pirates as executive vice president and general manager.135 His contract was virtually identical to the contract O’Malley had offered him two months earler.136

O’Malley was still struggling to raise the money. He formally accepted the $1,025,000 offer on November 1.137 Mrs. Smith dropped out of her agreement to participate in buying the Rickey stock on November 20.138 Whether this had been contemplated all along isn’t clear. Rickey’s success in winning his price was certainly an additional financial burden for her husband’s estate.139 O’Malley now had to come up with the full price by himself. He was helped by the terms Rickey had negotiated with Zeckendorf, which called for a 10-year payoff. On November 24 he wrote Rickey that he’d match those terms, paying $175,000 down on December 5 and another $125,000 by March 1, 1951. The remaining $750,000 would be paid in 10 annual installments beginning in 1952.140 The payments over the next decade could be financed out of the Dodgers’ earnings.141

O’Malley’s path to full ownership was accomplished quietly over the next quarter-century. In 1957 he bought out Mrs. Smith’s one-quarter share and divided it with the Mulveys. O’Malley now owned two-thirds of the team and the Mulveys the rest.142 After the deaths of Dearie (1968) and Jim (1973), the Mulvey heirs sold their stock to O’Malley in January 1975.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Rosalind Wyman, a strong Dodger supporter throughout the maneuvering to bring the team to Los Angeles and build Dodger Stadium, presents a commendation from the Beverly Hills B’nai Brith to owner Walter O’Malley. (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Dodgers)

The rise of cable television owners

Shortly afterward, columnist Jerome Holtzman wrote that there were reports the Dodgers were for sale, reports denied quickly by the Dodgers. Holtzman reported that O’Malley was willing to sell only if he got his price, which was said to be $45 million in December 1977 and $50 million to $60 million nine months later.143 This was clearly a substantial gain over the $300,000 at most that he had laid out from his own wallet in the 1940s. He had also forgone several million in Dodger profits that were spent buying out the original bank loan, and later paying off Rickey, Mrs. Smith, and the Mulveys. Even if the team was for sale, O’Malley evidently didn’t get his price.

With O’Malley’s death in 1979, the Dodgers passed in a trust to his two children, Teresa and Peter, with Peter running the club.

With Peter as chairman and his sister and her husband sitting on the board, the Dodgers continued to set attendance records. In the 18 years from 1980 through 1997, the second-generation O’Malley management drew average attendance of over 3 million a year.

But other issues were clouding Peter O’Malley’s horizon. By 1997 he was approaching 60. His sister was four years older. He had three children and she had 10. A possibly very costly tax situation was approaching if they tried to pass team control intact to the next generation. When Peter announced that the team was for sale in January of that year, the necessity for estate planning was the first reason he gave.144

He also said he thought the days of family ownership of franchises had passed. Only corporations would have the financial depth to handle higher payrolls, absorb time lost from strikes, and smooth out the ups and downs. Too much of the family’s wealth was tied up in one business.

There were also some issues O’Malley didn’t address. The influence at the national level that Walter and then Peter O’Malley had exercised during the Bowie Kuhn years had dwindled with each successor as commissioner until he helped oust Fay Vincent, a move he later regretted.145 Another key factor was a failed initiative by O’Malley to win a National Football League franchise and build it a new facility on the Dodger Stadium property. The city council’s decision to push for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum site foreclosed what O’Malley saw as a way to stabilize the family’s assets and income.146

O’Malley said his “responsibility was to find the best possible owner for the ballclub.” He added, “I think commitment to the community, to Los Angeles, to Southern California (are) the No. 1 criteria.”

Buying interest was immediate. Former Commissioner Peter Ueberroth said he’d like to buy the team.147 Corporations such as Arco (oil), Sony (electronics), and Nike (sporting goods) had their names trotted out.148

The name that kept coming back, however, was the Fox Group, the US television arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. For Fox, it was a natural. They already had local television contracts with 21 of the 30 major-league teams. They were trying to build up their Fox Sports West channels in the Los Angeles area, where the Walt Disney Co. and its ESPN affiliate planned to start a rival sports channel but needed a baseball team and its 162 games of programming to provide a foundation.149

In May 1997 O’Malley allowed as how Fox and the Dodgers were in serious negotiations, something Fox confirmed two days later.150 By mid-August, they were close to an agreement in principle and received permission from Major League Baseball to open the Dodgers’ books to Fox.151 Less than three weeks later, the deal was struck. Fox would get the franchise, the Dodger Stadium property, and the team’s training complexes in Vero Beach, Florida, and the Dominican Republic. Over the next several months, the Associated Press would consistently report the selling price as $350 million, while the Los Angeles Times would quote “sources” as saying $311 million and the New York Times would peg it at $320 million.152

Now that Murdoch’s minions had convinced the O’Malleys the sale was a good deal, they would have to convince the other owners. It was a harder sell. Ted Turner, whose Turner Sports network competed with Fox, described Murdoch as a “Nazi,” and said he’d never approve him because of business practices he found unethical. More owners feared Fox would take advantage of its newfound position in the owners’ councils. Major-league teams had automatic access to each other’s books, a practice to help in salary, sponsorship, and media contract negotiations. Now, 22 team owners would enter negotiations over new television contracts when the bargainer across the table knew their financial position.153

Fox was able to allay those fears and Major League Baseball gave Fox and the Dodgers permission to sign the sale contract on March 12, 1998. Formal approval was given by the owners a week later.

It soon became clear that Fox wasn’t going to be the troublesome proprietor other owners, and Los Angeles fans, worried about. At least, they weren’t for long. In May Fox executives traded team icon Mike Piazza to the Florida Marlins. The trade had been made without the knowledge of general manager Fred Claire and the Fox people hadn’t done their homework. One of the players the Dodgers were to receive in return, Gary Sheffield, had a no-trade clause. That had to be straightened out at higher cost.154 The next month, the Fox management unceremoniously dumped both Claire and field manager Bill Russell.155 By the end of the year, Peter O’Malley had quietly resigned as chairman of the board.156

By the next September, Fox fired team president Bob Graziano and then sold 10 percent of the team to Bob Daly, a former chairman of Warner Bros. who’d been an early rumored bidder for the team. Daly was to take day-to-day management of the team out of Fox’s hands.157 He brought back Graziano.

The circus slowed a bit in the next few years, but Fox’s interest in owning the team had clearly flagged. They had the Dodgers’ long-term contract for their cable station and television was their real business. They began to look to get out.

Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, circa 2011. (Courtesy of the Los Angeles Dodgers)

Frank McCourt

Four years later Fox had put the team on the block, but the sale was proving difficult. In the changing cable market, the team’s deal with Fox was no longer attractive. Many other teams were earning much more from their cable contracts. The team was not profitable.158 The bidders who appeared had problems. Los Angeles developer Alan Casden ran into an investigation for improper political campaign contributions.159 Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer wanted to turn the Dodgers over to his Los Angeles-based son, but the NFL’s cross-ownership rules prevented him from using the Bucs for collateral on a loan.160 Former Seattle Mariners part-owner Jeff Smulyan dropped out when Fox refused to include six television stations in the deal, with Smulyan contending that their inclusion was needed to insulate the baseball franchise from losses.161 A bid by Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad, backed by Peter O’Malley and Los Angeles politicians, was too late.162

The only contenders remaining were Frank and Jamie McCourt, Boston real-estate developers who’d lost earlier bids for Frank’s hometown Red Sox and the Los Angeles Angels. But the reason he had lost remained. Major League Baseball required that no more than 40 percent of a team’s purchase price could be borrowed funds, and the McCourts hadn’t been able to make the cut.

While the McCourts weren’t the ideal buyer, they were the only serious candidate. And, as Commissioner Bud Selig admitted later, he was under pressure from Fox, which wanted out. “Fox was anxious to get rid of the team,” Selig said. “Fox sold the club to the McCourts and presented them to us. … There was nobody else. We have a long relationship with Fox. There were no other bidders.”163

Eventually, in early 2004, a deal was struck that fudged the 40 percent limits. At the time, it was reported that News Corp. had loaned the McCourts almost half the $430 million selling price, while retaining a minority stake in the team.164 That amount would later be revealed as $330 million in Fox loans, over 75 percent of the price.165 The collateral included the Dodgers franchise and real estate, plus a 23-acre parking lot on prime land in downtown Boston. They would later have to turn the parking lot over to Fox instead of paying off the loan.166

The McCourt era would be a rocky one for the Dodgers. Perpetually underfunded, the McCourts would cut back staff, reduce budgets for signing talent both in the draft and internationally, and turn the team into a piggybank for their family. Despite attendance, which averaged 3.7 million over his first seven years of ownership, McCourt was taking additional loans to meet payroll near the end of his ownership.

The rumbling began in October 2009 as the McCourts confirmed that they had separated.167 A week later Frank fired Jamie as chief executive officer, alleging among other things that she was having an affair with a subordinate. She immediately sued for divorce, asking for $487,634 monthly to support the lifestyle she and her husband had been enjoying.168

The staggering monthly support figure was the first cockroach to scurry from the papers of Jamie’s divorce filing. Others quickly followed. Jamie had been paid $2 million annually as CEO and Frank $5 million as chairman. They had bought four houses in Los Angeles — two in pricey Holmby Hills (near the Playboy mansion) and two on the even pricier Malibu beachfront. The adjacent Malibu properties had cost $46 million. There was also their old Massachusetts home, a Cape Cod “estate,” a property in Vail, Colorado, and acreage in Montana and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Jamie said the couple dined out four or five times a week for $400 or so an evening. There were the costs of clothes and, for her, makeup and hairdressing sessions so she could present the right image for the Dodgers. And these were just Jamie’s lifestyle. Frank had his own costs. Much of it, she said, was paid for by the Dodgers. In addition, two of their sons were placed on the Dodgers payroll for a total of $600,000 annually, although one was a graduate student at Stanford and the other worked for Goldman Sachs. By February 2010, Jamie had concluded that she actually needed $988,845 a month to support the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed.169 Frank, meanwhile, had said the Dodgers were short of cash.170 Jamie alleged he was having extramarital affairs as well.171

By the late summer of 2010, the Dodgers’ debt level had risen to $433 million, more than the McCourts had paid for the team six years earlier.172

And then there was Shpunt — Vladimir Shpunt. Shpunt, who’d spent most of his life in Russia, was a 71-year-old man who described himself as a “scientist and healer.” Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times discovered that the Dodgers had been paying him at least $100,000 a year for five years to “think blue.” Shpunt would sit in front of his television in Massachusetts, watching Dodgers games and “sending positive energy over great distances.”173

The key question that emerged in the McCourts’ divorce proceeding was who owned the team. Frank claimed he was the sole owner. Jamie said each owned half. Both produced virtually identical documents that supported their positions. Eventually, their Massachusetts lawyer admitted that he had changed a key word in the contract and submitted the new versions for their signatures. Jamie, who holds a law degree from the University of Maryland and an MBA from MIT, said she had signed both versions without reading them.174

Faced with contradictory, fully authenticated legal documents, the judge decided neither version could be accepted. Since California was a community-property state, Jamie was half-owner of the team.175

Frank and his attorneys tried to reach a settlement that would leave him with full control of the team. Since the Dodgers were by far the largest asset, finding enough assets to give to Jamie to balance them was difficult. Commissioner Bud Selig rejected Frank’s first proposed settlement because it depended on revenue from a proposed cable-television contract extension with Fox.176 Ten months after the judge’s ruling, the McCourts struck a deal. Frank kept the team. Jamie got assets valued at $130 million, including the Malibu houses, one Holmby Hills house (the other had already been sold), and the Vail property.

Frank, meanwhile, had been trying to prop up the Dodgers’ finances. He failed to get a bank loan or entice local investors. The only entity willing to be his sugar daddy was Fox. At one point, he made payroll with a $30 million personal loan from the cable company.177 Selig had asked Fox not to get involved and in the wake of the personal loan, he moved to seize control of the franchise.178 Larger deals with Fox depended on extension of the cable contract, and Selig finally disapproved the agreement. He noted that because the divorce settlement was not final, Jamie still had veto power over any contract. He also said he was concerned about the financial management of the team and that, given the revelations in the divorce proceedings, some of the cable-television income would be going into the McCourts’ pockets rather than being invested in the team or stadium improvements.179

A week later McCourt took the team into bankruptcy court, charging that it was Selig’s fault for refusing to approve the Fox contract.180

In September 2011 Major League Baseball petitioned the bankruptcy court to order that the Dodgers be sold.181 In November, after finally settling with Jamie, McCourt agreed with MLB, calling for an auction to be overseen by the court.182

The potential-buyers rumor mill had been churning for a year. Former Dodger Steve Garvey, Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, former agent and White Sox executive Dennis Gilbert, and current owners Tom Werner of the Red Sox and Mark Attanasio of the Milwaukee Brewers, both of whom lived in Los Angeles, were names mentioned early.183 Soon the list of suspects expanded. Jamie said she was interested.184 Allan Casden, the Los Angeles developer who lost out to Fox, chimed in.185 Organizations from the People’s Republic of China were named, as were Peter O’Malley, former general manager Fred Claire, manager Joe Torre, and basketball’s Magic Johnson.186

It was soon clear that Frank McCourt was basing his price on an anticipated blockbuster local television contract. It would involve a current cable player, such as Fox, ESPN, or a local cable provider. It might also involve the Dodgers, or the Dodgers plus a partner, creating a Dodgers-only channel, something on the order of the Yankees or Red Sox.

Guggenheim Partners

In the early months of 2012, the bidders examined the Dodgers’ books, and mulled the cable-television potential. Eventually, a group called Guggenheim Partners, with Mark Walter as the principal, bought the team for $2.15 billion. The price was nearly 2½ times the previous record sale of a baseball franchise, $845 million for the Chicago Cubs in 2009.

Magic Johnson, a minor partner with an investment of $50 million was trotted out as the face of the franchise, and former Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals executive Stan Kasten was made the head baseball person.187

For its $2.15 billion, Guggenheim received much less than McCourt had eight years earlier. The former spring-training site in Vero Beach, Florida, was gone. From the purchase price, $400,000 would have to be used to pay down debts McCourt had accumulated. And McCourt would retain an interest in Dodger Stadium’s parking lots and any future developments on them. The details of that agreement have never been made public.

Still, McCourt had cleared around $1 billion for his years of milking the franchise.188

Last updated: November 28, 2017

ANDY McCUE has been a SABR member since 1982, winning the Bob Davids Award in 2007. He served on SABR’s board for nine years, finishing with a term as president in 2009–11. He won the SABR-Macmillan Award for “Baseball by the Books: A History and Bibliography of Baseball Fiction” and the Doug Pappas Award for a presentation on Dodgers ownership. His biography of Walter O’Malley, “Mover and Shaker,” was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014 and won SABR’s Seymour Medal.

Photo credit

1962 Dodgers photo courtesy of Peter Bond via Flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 license, CC BY-SA 2.0

Notes

Edgar Renteria of the Florida Marlins celebrates his walk-off single to win Game Seven of the 1997 World Series. In just their fifth season of existence, the Marlins became the then-fastest franchise to win a championship in baseball history. (COURTESY OF THE MIAMI MARLINS)

The National League expansion of 1993 was a long time coming. The 1991 decision to add the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins to the major leagues was the end of what the New York Times’s Murray Chass called “the road that began six years, three commissioners, and three league presidents ago.”1

This road began in January of 1984, when major-league baseball announced an eight-member committee to study the possibility of another expansion. In the fall of 1985, 12 different groups presented expansion proposals to a 14-owner committee. At that year’s winter meetings, Commissioner Peter Ueberroth mentioned expansion in his “state of the game” speech, but over the next few years the owners tabled expansion talks, focusing instead on clubs claiming to be in financial trouble and on fighting the players union’s claims of collusion.

By 1987, the US Senate had formed a Task Force on Expansion. This bipartisan group was led by Sen. Tim Wirth (D) of Colorado and included senators from several states with cities, such as Denver, that had expressed interest in a baseball franchise. As other congressional groups had done in the past, the task force pushed major-league baseball to expand or risk losing its antitrust exemption, which protects it from being sued or broken up as an illegal monopoly. The owners agreed to expand, at one point planning to increase each league to 16 teams. But the owners continued to stall. They conducted studies and held rounds of presentations by competing cities and ownership groups. Some owners wanted to stall until a new collective-bargaining agreement was negotiated with the players union and use the carrot of expansion to win other concessions. The threat of losing their monopoly was heightened when a group calling itself the Professional Baseball Federation announced plans to start a new league with eight or ten teams by luring current major-league stars away.

Having faced threats to its monopoly profits from upstart leagues and Congress several times before, the owners relented. In June of 1990, the National League announced that it would add two teams by 1993. In December 1990 the six finalists for expansion were announced: Buffalo, Denver, Orlando, St. Petersburg/Tampa, Washington, D.C., and Miami. On June 10, 1991, the ownership groups from Denver and Miami were announced as the winners of the two new franchises. The decision became official on July 5, 1991, when the owners from both leagues unanimously approved the two new franchises.

Wayne Huizenga

As the search for expansion cities became serious, Miami had been all but counted out. The rain, the heat, and the lack of fans turned off many baseball observers. But Miami became a frontrunner after the South Florida Big League Baseball bidding group was chosen to represent the city’s bid. What changed? The deep, deep pockets of the group’s owner, H. Wayne Huizenga were suddenly in the picture.

Huizenga agreed to pay the entire $95 million franchise fee himself. After that, everyone found reasons to support Miami’s bid. The prospect of professional baseball seemed to excite the city, at least a little. The minor league Miracle’s attendance increased to 700 per game (still low, but better than 1989’s 40 per game) and 114,000 fans went out to Joe Robbie Stadium over two nights in March 1991 to watch the Yankees and the Orioles play. Suddenly, the fact that Miami was one of the nation’s 20 largest television markets was a major factor. And of course, if Huizenga built it, the city’s “Latin and Caribbean population” would come, and “provide a wellspring of fans.”2 But there is little doubt much of the allure of Miami’s bid to the other owners was Huizenga’s wealth — his net worth in the summer of 1991 was estimated to be between $500 million and $800 million.3

In all, it was estimated that it would cost Huizenga between $131 million and $142 million before the Marlins could begin play, not including his partial purchase of Joe Robbie Stadium. This included the $95 million franchise fee, about $30 million or $40 million more in start-up costs (including salaries and equipment), and about $6 million or $7 million for renovations to Joe Robbie Stadium to make it baseball-friendly.4 Huizenga ended up spending $10 million to get Joe Robbie baseball-ready. Compared with these numbers, the $500,000 Huizenga spent promoting his bid to the other owners seemed paltry.5

Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, left, and Florida Marlins owner Wayne Huizenga shake hands before the Marlins’ first game on April 5, 1993. (COURTESY OF THE MIAMI MARLINS)

Huizenga was born in 1937 in Chicago, where his Dutch-born grandfather had founded a garbage-hauling company in 1894. His father was a cabinetmaker and housebuilder. The family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when Huizenga was 15. After dropping out of college in Michigan, Huizenga ended up managing a family friend’s three-truck garbage-hauling company. Huizenga eventually started his own trash-hauling service with just one truck, which he drove. In a few years, his Southern Sanitation Service was a 20-truck operation with routes in several major South Florida cities.6

After starting and growing his own small business, Huizenga made his real money by buying out small businesses and aggregating them into progressively bigger conglomerates. He bought dozens of small garbage haulers and added them to his own company to create his first billion-dollar company, Waste Management. Under Huizenga’s leadership, Waste Management was accused of everything from price fixing to violating environmental laws to making improper political contributions. Huizenga stepped down as vice chairman in 1984, and had planned to retire. Instead, he grew his fortune by buying up “mom-and-pop” companies and consolidating them into larger entities.

At the time of the Marlins’ expansion, Huizenga was best known for owning Blockbuster Video. Huizenga and other Waste Management executives had bought shares in the nascent enterprise in 1987. Once the original founder left the company, Huizenga’s experience in consolidating small, local businesses, like those that comprised most of the video-rental industry of the time, really paid off.

During his ownership of the Marlins, Huizenga sold Blockbuster to Viacom for $8.4 billion and — again using his buy-small-and-consolidate model — created AutoNation, a Fortune 500 network of car dealerships. In 2017 Huizenga was ranked the 288th wealthiest American, with a net worth of $2.8 billion. He died on March 22, 2018, at the age of 80 in his Fort Lauderdale home.

Becoming the Marlins

The Miami franchise chose the name the Florida Marlins. The name Marlins was an homage to a line of minor-league baseball teams which had previously called Miami home. Major-league officials hoped the ownership group would choose the alliterative Miami Marlins, which was better for marketing and kept the door open for the next round of expansion to include another Florida city. But the ownership group wanted to appeal to as many customers as possible, and thus the Florida Marlins were born.7

This homage came with its own complications. The original Miami Marlins were a minor-league team that began play in 1956 in the International League. Its first game saw an almost 50-year-old Satchel Paige flown in by a helicopter that landed on the field, only to go straight to the bullpen and not pitch at all that day. The team moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico, after the 1960 season.8

Another team called the Miami Marlins began play in the 1960s. This team — with a family tree going back to the 1920s — was not affiliated with the original Marlins, but adopted the nickname. As its major-league affiliations changed, this team went from the Miami Marlins to the Miami Orioles and back again, before becoming the Miami Miracle, which was the name it played under when the Florida Marlins became a team. It was this team — the Miracle — that sued the Florida Marlins in October 1992.

The Miracle argued that the Florida Marlins had refused to negotiate about not only the rights to the team name, but also to the exclusive territorial rights for the Miami area. The Miracle held exclusive rights to everything within 35 miles of their home plate — an expanse which included the new home of the Marlins, Joe Robbie Stadium — and under the master agreement between the major and minor leagues, the new Florida Marlins were supposed to compensate the Miracle for the loss of those rights. At the time, the compensation for these rights was estimated to be between $1 million and $14 million.9 The Miracle eventually lost the lawsuit and went to arbitration, where an unknown decision was reached.

Building a Franchise From Scratch

Huizenga started building his front-office staff before the other owners had cast the final approval vote. The first person he brought on board was Carl Barger as president. A former president of the Pittsburgh Pirates and a longtime friend of Huizenga’s, Barger was also a member of the board of directors of Huizenga’s Blockbuster Video.10 Technically, Barger resigned from the Pirates on July 8, 1991. But while the major leagues’ rules barred one person from working for two clubs at once, Barger was allowed to begin staffing the front office of the Marlins while also running the Pirates until the owners selected a new president.

Barger would never see his new team play a single game. On December 9, 1992, during the annual Winter Meetings in Louisville, he collapsed from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance but died before surgery. Barger’s position remained vacant through the Marlins’ first season. Today, Carl F. Barger Boulevard sits just outside what is now Hard Rock stadium — formerly Joe Robbie Stadium — the first home of the Marlins.

The next move for the Marlins was to appoint a general manager In September of 1991, the Marlins hired Dave Dombrowski from the Montreal Expos. Dombrowski in turn “lured virtually all the Expos’ front-office executives to the expansion Marlins.”11 As Chass put it:

Dombrowski was not bashful about raiding his former employer’s cupboard. At last count, 12 other former Expo employees had migrated, including the scouting director, the assistant scouting director, the player development director, the senior consultant on player personnel, the special consultant to the vice president for player personnel, three scouts, three minor league coaches and a secretary.12

One position not filled by a former Expo was manager. The job of managing an expansion team has never been easy. Out of 34 seasons coached by the 10 previous managers of major-league expansion teams, only three seasons, all from the same manager (Bill Rigney of the Angels) were winning seasons. For this daunting task, the Marlins chose Rene Lachemann. In 1992, when Lachemann was hired, he had not managed a baseball team for eight years. His last stop had been with the Milwaukee Brewers in 1984. And if expansion dilutes the talent level of baseball’s player pool by promoting previously unqualified players, the same could be said of the managerial pool. Despite being liked by his players, particularly in Seattle, Lachemann had only three winning records in 13 minor- and major-league seasons.13 Lachemann never had a winning season with the Marlins, and his only managing job after that was one game as interim manager of the Chicago Cubs.

Joe Robbie Stadium on Opening Day, April 5, 1993. (COURTESY OF THE MIAMI MARLINS)

Joe Robbie Stadium

Now the Marlins needed a place to play. That place was Joe Robbie Stadium. Robbie was — and as of 2018 still is — the home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins. It was named after the Dolphins’ then-owner, Joe Robbie. After several failed attempts at getting a publicly financed stadium, Robbie built the $115 million stadium himself. It had opened in 1987. After Robbie died in 1990, Huizenga bought 50 percent of the stadium for a reported $40 million from the Robbie family. Huizenga also bought 15 percent of the Dolphins from them.

In 1994 Huizenga purchased the other half of the stadium’s ownership rights and the remainder of the Dolphins. He continued to own both, collecting rent, concessions money, and luxury and club-seat revenues, until long after he sold the Marlins in 1998.

From First Season to First Championship

Major-league Opening Day finally came to Miami on April 5, 1993. Opening Day souvenirs were sold out an hour before game time. The team honored late president Carl Barger in a pregame ceremony. The first pitch was thrown out by 78-year-old Joe DiMaggio, who lent his name to the Children’s Hospital in neighboring Hollywood, Florida. Despite fielding a team ESPN later described as “your usual array of expansion team washouts and hopefuls,”14 the Marlins won their first game, 6-3 over the Dodgers. The opening three-game series drew 126,575 spectators. Everything was off to a good start for the fans and the owner.

The rest of that first season ended the way most expansion seasons do. The Marlins finished next to last in the National League East (above the Mets), but avoided the 100-loss fate suffered by half of previous expansion teams, ending the season at 64-98 (.395). Center fielder Chuck Carr led the National League with 58 stolen bases. Attendance remained strong that first season. A total 3,064,847 fans attended home games that season, an average of 37,838, making the Marlins one of seven teams to draw over 3 million fans that season.

In the first years after expansion, the Marlins seemed to have a plan to draft and develop young players. Of the 10 expansion teams between 1961 and 1991, the average team started out with a winning percentage of .365, building up to .491 by year eight. The Marlins were ahead of the curve, winning .395 of games the first year and .494 by year four. The process seemed to be working.

But the process was not working quickly enough for Huizenga. By 1997, he was full owner of the Marlins, the Dolphins, and the NHL expansion Florida Panthers. The Panthers had lost the 1996 Stanley Cup finals to the Colorado Avalanche. After being so close, Huizenga wanted a championship. As the Marlins’ steady improvement showed, they already had a promising young core, which included players like Edgar Renteria, Charles Johnson, Al Leiter, and Gary Sheffield.

However, in the offseason after the Panthers’ runner-up finish, Huizenga and Dombrowski shocked the baseball world by spending a record-breaking $89 million on free agents. The Marlins added pitcher Alex Fernandez, and boosted the offense with third baseman Bobby Bonilla and outfielder Moises Alou, who alone cost $25 million. Payroll jumped from $31 million in 1996 to $52 million in 1997.

The spending spree paid off. The Marlins had finished 1996 just under .500 at 80-82. They finished 1997 at 92-70 — their first winning season. After coming in second in the NL East, the Marlins went on to beat the Braves in the NLCS and the Indians in the World Series.

Fire Sale I

The World Series championship was the peak before the valley for the Marlins under Huizenga. Championship in hand, he began the first Marlins fire sale, a process one writer dubbed “a textbook case in how to alienate a fan base.”15 The Marlins sold off big-money free agents from a year earlier — Bonilla, and Alou16 — as well as some of its promising core, including Sheffield and Robb Nen, who had both been with the Marlins since their first season. Fans and sportswriters across the country skewered Huizenga, some saying he was just throwing a “hissy fit” over his failure to get a new taxpayer-funded, baseball-only stadium.17

Huizenga complained he was losing money. He said the Marlins had lost $34 million during the 1997 World Series season. While the Marlins may well have lost $34 million on paper, paper losses in professional sports — as with many large companies — are largely due to accounting practices. Former Toronto Blue Jays President Paul Beeston once said, “[U]nder current generally accepted accounting principles, I can turn a $4 million profit into a $2 million loss, and I can get every national accounting firm to agree with me.”18 Using a tax benefit known in the sports context as the roster depreciation allowance — whose benefits Huizenga had already exhausted — and other paper-only accounting maneuvers, teams often claim large financial losses while also raking in huge profits.

Such claims of massive losses were nothing new in baseball. As former players union executive director Donald Fehr once told Sports Illustrated, “You go through The Sporting News for the last 100 years, and you will find two things are always true. You never have enough pitching, and nobody ever made money.”19

Another thing that made Huizenga’s claim more dubious was the way he structured the various entities he owned that were connected to the Marlins. Huizenga owned Joe Robbie Stadium — by now called Pro Player Stadium — and the team’s cable broadcaster, Sportschannel Florida. The Marlins stadium rent and broadcast fees were structured to favor the other entities. Huizenga made about $40.1 million in revenue off the Marlins that was counted on the books of those other entities rather than the Marlins.

Championship in hand and tax shelter exhausted, Huizenga tried to sell the Marlins. Part of the impetus for the free-agent splash may have been the thought that a successful team would fetch a higher sale price. Whether the goal of Huizenga’s spending spree was the personal goal of winning a championship or the financial goal of making a higher profit by selling the team, what is certain is that, despite claiming that the team’s finances were suffering, Huizenga almost sold the team to longtime business associate and then team President Don Smiley. Surely, if the finances were so bad, Smiley would have known, and would not have tried to buy the team for $169 million. Smiley’s bid fell apart when his group of investors came up $50 million short of the sale price.

Sale to John Henry

Huizenga eventually sold the team in November 1998 to another South Florida multimillionaire, John Henry. Henry agreed to buy the team for $150 million and to pay $8 million for renovations at Pro Player Stadium. But Huizenga still owned the stadium and the cable channel. He was able to negotiate a 10-year contract for his cable channel to broadcast the Marlins’ games before selling the team and, by owning the stadium, he kept all luxury box- and club-seat revenue, as well as a majority (62.5 percent) of the parking revenue and a portion (30 percent) of the concession profit from Marlins games. So even after selling the team, Huizenga continued to profit off the Marlins.

This deal — a great one for Huizenga — almost didn’t come through. The negotiations were long, contentious, and played out in public. Henry had declared the deal dead just 48 hours before it was reached.20 In the end, Henry wanted to be a professional sports owner. He had previously owned minor-league and independent-league teams, and he had tried to buy stakes in several major-league teams, even owning 1 percent of the New York Yankees before buying the Marlins.21

Henry’s time as owner — beginning with the 1999 season and ending after the 2001 season — was remarkably unremarkable. The Marlins finished with winning percentages of .395, .491, and .469, which led them to finishing fifth, third, and fourth in the NL East, respectively. Henry soon wanted to move on from Florida — he explored buying several other clubs, including the Angels and the A’s, before becoming part of a group bidding on the Red Sox, with the help of a special deal orchestrated by Commissioner Bud Selig and the other major-league owners.

Sale to Jeffrey Loria

The catalyst for this deal, and the man who would eventually take ownership of the Marlins from Henry, was Jeffrey Loria. Loria was a wealthy art dealer who had begun flipping baseball teams in the 1990s. In 1989, Loria bought the Triple-A Oklahoma City 89ers for $3.8 million. After the team won a championship in 1992, Loria sold it for $8 million in 1993.

Loria then tried to buy a major-league franchise multiple times, including the Expos and the Orioles in the 1990s. While John Henry wanted to own a specific franchise — the Red Sox — and bought the Marlins as a placeholder, Jeffrey Loria wanted to own any team he could get his hands on. In 1999 the partnership that owned the Montreal Expos was left without a managing partner, and in search of investors to infuse cash into the team. Loria was ready. He managed to get a 24 percent share for $12 million, and also became managing partner — meaning he ran the day-to-day operations but was still accountable to the other partners.

With his foot in the door, Loria made a power move. As managing partner, he had the authority to increase payroll. By signing free agents and paying current players more, he roughly doubled the team’s payroll. Loria later argued that he was trying to make the team competitive after the partnership had long been accused of not doing enough to win. Despite the 2000 and 2001 teams having double the payroll of the 1999 team, neither team did any better. In fact, despite the increased payroll, the Expos only moved from 28th highest salary in the league in 1999 to 24th in 2000, and back down to 28th in 2001.

But the payroll move was, perhaps, motivated not by a desire to win but as a desire for power. By increasing payroll, Loria increased the amount of cash needed to operate the team. To cover this, he made a capital call on the other partners, telling them they should put more money into the team. When they refused, he put $18 million of his own money into the team.22 This triggered a clause in the partnership agreement that allowed Loria to dilute the shares of the other owners from a combined 76 percent down to 6 percent, giving Loria 94 percent ownership of the team.23

Now in control of the Expos, Loria pulled the familiar “build me a stadium or I’ll move” routine. The City of Montreal agreed to help build a new stadium. But after the arrangement was made, Loria demanded that the city pay an even higher share of the costs, at which point the city canceled the project.24 As a result of several years of poor results and Loria’s hostile takeover of the team, the Expos — along with the Milwaukee Brewers — were slated to be removed from the league.25 This gave Loria all the leverage he needed to pull off a major swap, with the help of MLB itself.

In 2001 the Red Sox were put up for sale. Marlins owner John Henry headed a group that put in a bid for the club, but league rules prohibited one entity from owning two teams. A plan was hatched whereby MLB itself would purchase the Expos, giving the other 29 owners the right to decide what to do with it — they eventually decided to move the franchise to Washington and rename it the Nationals. Loria would buy the Marlins from Henry, and Henry would finally be able to buy the Red Sox.

Once Henry’s bid for the Red Sox was approved, the plan unfolded. Henry bid $730 million for the Red Sox and 80 percent of their broadcast network, with $30 million of the purchase price going to fund a new charity, the Red Sox Foundation.26 But he demanded only $158 million for the Marlins — equal to his purchase price of $150 million plus $8 million he paid for renovations to Pro Player Stadium. Loria agreed to pay the $158 million for the Marlins, but he didn’t have to spend a penny of his own money. After paying a mere $30 million for almost complete control of the Expos, the owners of the other 29 major-league teams agreed to pay Loria $120 million for the franchise. The remaining $38 million of the purchase price came from an interest-free loan MLB made to Loria in order to close the deal. Later, $15 million of that loan was forgiven when Loria didn’t get a new publicly financed stadium deal within five years.27

This was clearly a great deal for Loria and MLB. For Loria’s partners in the Expos, however, they lost out on a great deal of money and could do nothing to stop it. The remaining Expos partners sued Loria, MLB, and Commissioner Bud Selig, alleging that the group lied to and defrauded the limited Expos partners, and that they committed mail fraud and wire fraud, and violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in the process. A judge eventually required the parties to go to arbitration, at which the arbitrator ruled in favor of Loria. After losing the contract arbitration claims, the Expos partners dropped their federal lawsuit.28

2003 World Series Championship

After a start like this, it’s no surprise that Loria’s tenure as owner of the Marlins was eventful. In just his second year as owner, the Marlins went from wild card to World Series champion for the second time in their young history. After going 79-83 and finishing fourth in the NL East in 2002, the Marlins went 91-71 and finished second in 2003. Riding All-Star seasons from second baseman Luis Castillo, third baseman Mike Lowell, and pitcher Dontrelle Willis, and their only season with Hall of Famer Iván “Pudge” Rodriguez, the Marlins beat NL West Champions San Francisco Giants in the National League Division Series. Then they beat the Chicago Cubs in the Championship Series in seven games, with a little help from the infamous Steve Bartman. In the World Series, they beat the perennial powerhouse New York Yankees in six games.

Fire Sale II

Through the Marlins’ first decade, the notion of getting a new stadium, and getting the public to pay for it, was always lingering, but never brought to the front burner. Huizenga was making too much money from owning the stadium and both professional teams who called it home to ever put up too much of a fuss. Henry’s heart was always pursuing the Red Sox, so a long-term financing fight would not have been worth the trouble, although he did give it a try. But Loria — fresh off a stadium-or-move threat in Montreal was ready to bring the issue forward.

Surely, Loria thought that winning the 2003 World Series would give him the leverage he needed to get a new publicly financed stadium. It didn’t. There were plans for a new stadium, projected to cost $435 million, to which the Florida legislature refused to contribute multiple times. There was even a plan and design completed for a stadium next to the Orange Bowl, but the City of Miami pulled out of the deal. Loria then sought and received permission from Commissioner Bud Selig to look for other potential cities. Portland, Oregon, which had been in the running to get the Expos franchise before it went to Washington, expressed interest, as did Las Vegas.29

After the 2005 season, the second straight 83-79 finish, Loria decided to blow it all up. The way he and his staff presented it, without a stadium they couldn’t make money, and since they couldn’t make money, they had to cut payroll. Fire Sale II was underway.

For the 2005 season, the Marlins’ total team salary was about $60.4 million. After trading players for prospects and letting free agents walk, the core of the 2003 championship team was gone. The Marlins’ 2006 total team salary was about $15 million, a drop of more than 75 percent. This, unsurprisingly, gave the Marlins the cheapest roster in baseball, costing less than half that of the next lowest spender, Tampa Bay.

The new 25-man roster featured 17 players making the league minimum. The resulting roster, despite having some young, talented players, was unimpressive. The New York Times described the team as “the best team that the lowest payroll in baseball can buy,” “an assemblage of talented kids called up too soon, veteran castoffs, and career minor leaguers getting their miracle shot,” and “a bunch of September call-ups.”30 When approached with the legacy of the first Marlins fire sale, Loria said this was not the same because he had kept the core together for a couple of years after the championship.31

Marlins Park, seen here during the SABR 46 convention in 2016, opened in 2012 after a protracted legal battle. (COURTESY OF JACOB POMRENKE)

Marlins Park

In 2009, after two World Series championships and two fire sales, Loria got his stadium from the politicians of Miami-Dade County. To try to win over the public and the politicians, the Marlins employed the usual new-stadium tactics of promises that study after study has proven false.32  

The Miami-Dade County Commission voted to approve the stadium deal in March 2009, and the vote was controversial from the beginning. The Marlins claimed they were losing money and too poor to pay for their own stadium. But when elected officials asked to see the Marlins’ finances to see if it was true, the team refused to open its books. In 2008, Forbes had claimed that the Marlins had made $35.6 million in profit. When Bryant Gumbel of Real Sports asked why the Marlins refused to open their books if they were telling the truth, team President David Samson said, “[B]ecause in Major League Baseball history, books are just kept private — that’s just how it is.”33

The final agreement called for a $650 million stadium, with $500 million paid by Miami-Dade County, $15 million paid by the City of Miami, and the rest paid by Loria. Miami-Dade County covered a portion of its payment with a bond issue. Because of the timing of the deal, made during the Great Recession, the county had to find the money immediately in order for construction to finish in time for the 2012 season. The county will end up paying $2.4 billion on that bond issue for its share of the stadium costs.34

Opposition to the stadium deal was inflamed again in August 2010 when Deadspin released financial documents from 2008 and 2009 showing that the Marlins had a net income — even after all the accounting tactics — of over $33 million in those two seasons alone.35 According to the Miami New Times, even these numbers included payments totaling about $38.6 million from 2008 through 2010 by the Marlins to Loria under the line item “Administration” and to Double Play Company, a company owned by Loria with Samson as its president, to run the Marlins’ day-to-day operations.36 In response to allegations that the team had intentionally lied to the public about its finances, Samson called the leak “disappointing” and a “crime,” and argued that the documents prove that the Marlins were being fiscally responsible and saving up profits (which he had previously denied making) to pay for the new stadium.37

In 2011 the backlash against the stadium deal intensified even further. The US Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into whether the Marlins and the politicians who approved the stadium deal intentionally misled the investors who purchased the bonds issued by Miami-Dade County. The investigation was closed in 2016 with no enforcement action taken.

In March 2011 Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez faced a recall election. Alvarez was a major proponent of the stadium deal, and when he was up for recall the political action committee he formed to fight off the recall vote received $50,000 from Loria and Samson, $5,000 from Hunt/Moss, a group hired to oversee construction of the stadium, and $73,000 from various other people and companies who were given contracts to work on the stadium.38 Even with the massive influx of money from stadium-related donors, Alvarez was recalled with a whopping 88 percent of ballots voting to recall him.

Other politicians also received campaign cash from donors with a financial interest in the stadium deal. In 2008, the year before the stadium vote, Commissioner Bruno Barreiro received almost $40,000 in campaign contributions –about 1 in every 6 dollars he raised — from firms that planned to bid on construction contracts. Commissioner Joe Martinez originally voted against the stadium deal. He then received a series of $500 contributions from “a litany of Moss & Associates’ top execs.”39 Then he cast a deciding vote in favor of giving the oversight contract to Hunt/Moss without the usual bidding process.

While the Marlins had finally gotten their stadium, they used up all of their goodwill with the local community to get it — even after winning two World Series championships within six seasons. The new stadium, Marlins Park, finally opened in time for the 2012 season. Along with the new ballpark, the team got a new name (changing from the Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins), a new logo, and a new color scheme, going from teal and black to orange, blue, black, and yellow. The stadium, which Loria referred to as “the coolest ballpark ever,”40 features air-conditioning, a retractable roof, extra-wide seats that are angled toward home plate, a home-run sculpture in the outfield, an aquarium for a backstop, and a bar with a pool overlooking the field. With a brand-new stadium paid for mostly by taxpayers, Loria had finally gotten what he said he needed to put together a quality team on the field.

Fire Sale III

After just one year in the brand-new stadium, Loria dumped salary again. For the 2012 season, the Marlins had tried to spend money on good players, and the results were not there. Prior to 2012, the Marlins had never ranked better than 19th in the major leagues in player payroll, usually coming in around 24th-25th or 29th-30th, including three seasons with baseball’s lowest payroll. In two of those three seasons, the Marlins spent less than half of the amount on players as the team with the second-lowest payroll. Loria’s business model was to maximize profits by pulling in shared revenue and paying bare minimum salaries. This model was successful financially, but not on the field. MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association pressured Loria to spend more on salaries and try to make the team more competitive.

So, for the first season in Marlins Park, the fans had some reason for hope. The Marlins skyrocketed from their usual place in the bottom third of salary all the way up to the sixth highest payroll. That year, they spent $118.1 million on player salaries — the first time the Marlins had spent over $100 million in a season, a feat they have matched only once since. Surprisingly, that year the Marlins had their worst-ever season under Loria, finishing last in the NL East with a record of 69-93 (.426).

After just one year of spending major-league money, Loria decided to blow it up again. This would be the second “fire sale” under Loria, and the third in the Marlins’ two-decade history. The Marlins traded away most of their best players for prospects to cut salary. The players leaving Miami during or after the 2012 season included Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buerhle, Emilio Bonifacio, Heath Bell, Hanley Ramirez, Anibal Sanchez, Omar Infante, Carlos Lee, and preseason acquisitions Austin Kearns and Carlos Zambrano. For the 2012 season, the Marlins began the season with $118.1 million in salary, good for sixth in the major leagues. By Opening Day 2013, that had been slashed to $35.9 million, good for 29th. Since 2012, the Marlins (as of 2018) have never been higher than 20th (and that only once) in Opening Day payroll, and have never reached the playoffs.

Loria’s reputation in Miami never recovered. After finally getting the stadium Loria said he needed to field a competitive team, Loria gave up being competitive after one season. Marlins fans — and the City of Miami — felt betrayed. In a poll of 400 Marlins fans conducted in November of 2012, only 6 percent of Marlins fans had a favorable view of Loria, and of those, one-third knew him personally. For comparison, the Miami Herald pointed out that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro had a favorability rating of 1 percent, and was “the only public figure who might lose a popularity contest to Loria in South Florida right now.”41 Other findings from the same poll showed:

• 87 percent of Marlins fans feel “furious and betrayed’’ by the team ownership.
• 83 percent of Marlins fans have an “unfavorable’’ opinion of Loria.
• 61 percent of respondents identifying themselves as season-ticket holders would support a boycott next season if that would force Loria to sell the team.
• 89 percent feel Loria has a moral obligation to field a good team because the new $515 million stadium was built largely with public funds.42

Obviously, being compared with Fidel Castro is bad for anyone in South Florida, especially someone who owns a baseball team that plays in “Little Havana.” In 2014 Rolling Stone magazine named Loria the second-worst owner in sports.43 For many Marlins fans, that’s one place too high.

All this distaste for Loria has not necessarily resulted in fans staying home. If you take away the peaks during and after the World Series championships and the first year of Marlins Stadium, attendance at Marlins games generally fell from expansion until the 2003 World Series, and has steadily risen since, with dropoffs the last two seasons. However, fans supporting their team does not mean fans supporting the owner. Ownership has had to resort to desperate lengths to get fans into seats. In 2013 the Marlins offered free tickets for various activities at local establishments, including test-driving a car, buying a pizza, and visiting a museum, and even offered free tickets to anyone 55 and older.44 Samson admitted that the Marlins were “trying to bring people to the ballpark to enjoy baseball in spite of their feelings for me or Jeffrey [Loria].”45 In May 2016 the Miami New Times reported that the Marlins had been suing season-ticket holders and stadium vendors who had gone bankrupt, after both groups had walked away from contracts at Marlins Stadium citing unfulfilled promises by the team, both on the field and in the concourses.46

Sale to Sherman/Jeter Group

In February 2017 reports emerged that Loria had an unsigned agreement to sell the Marlins to a group headed by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and adviser to President Donald Trump, and Joseph Meyer, the Kushner brothers’ brother-in-law. As the deal was reported, the president’s then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus was allegedly pushing Trump to nominate Loria to be ambassador to France as a reward for his history of donating to the GOP and associated groups. Between the apparent conflict of interests and the trouble the Kushner-Meyer group had coming up with the $1.6 billion price tag, the deal fell through.47

In September 2017 major-league owners unanimously approved the sale to an ownership group led by investment broker Bruce Sherman and Yankees talisman Derek Jeter. The purchase price was $1.2 billion.48 Sherman put up the bulk of that and became the managing general partner, and Jeter became the face of the group and ran baseball operations. The 14 other minority partners include Michael Jordan.49

Bruce Sherman was born in Queens, New York, in 1948. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island and later received an MBA from Baruch College. He co-founded Private Capital Management in Naples, Florida, in 1985. PCM was essentially a wealth-management firm for the Collier family — longtime landowners across Florida and one of America’s wealthiest families at the time. By 2005, the firm had expanded its client base to include government agencies and colleges. It held $31 billion in assets. Sherman earned the nickname “The Paper Shredder” as an activist shareholder who forced the company’s subsidiaries to sell off newspaper investments. Sherman retired in 2009, by which time PCM’s assets had fallen to $2.4 billion, a decline caused in part by the collapse of Bear Stearns and the Great Recession.50

Fire Sale IV

The first thing the Sherman/Jeter group did when it took over the team was to continue the Marlins’ tradition of fire sales. The face of this fire sale was unquestionably the hometown hero Giancarlo Stanton. Born in California, Stanton was drafted by the Marlins in the second round of the 2007 draft. He came up through the Marlins’ farm system and became a star while in Miami. Stanton won the 2016 Home Run Derby, a feat he could not repeat in front of the hometown crowd in 2017. He followed that up with an incredible 2017, which saw him earn his fourth All-Star selection, his second Silver Slugger Award, and his first NL MVP.

Stanton, along with fellow outfielders Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich, and Dee Gordon, formed what was often considered baseball’s best outfield. The four together had a WAR of 20.3 on the 77-win Marlins. They finished first in the league in all combined outfield WAR statistics in 2017. And all four were traded away after the 2017 season. The Marlins’ 2018 outfield was projected to be baseball’s worst, using WAR metrics.

This fire sale again infuriated the baseball fans of South Florida. Perhaps nothing captures this anger more than an incredibly intense interview of Commissioner Rob Manfred by ESPN Radio host Dan Le Batard, whose show is produced and based in Miami, and features a daily “Miami-Only” hour of content. MLB officials were so upset with Le Batard’s treatment of Manfred that they complained to ESPN executives, who told Le Batard to “back off.”51

Miami-Dade County Lawsuit

Even though Loria no longer owned the Marlins, the team could not escape him. In February 2018, Miami-Dade called on Loria to make good on a promise in the 2009 stadium agreement that he would give Miami and Miami-Dade 5 percent of any profit from his sale of the team.52 Loria refused, claiming that he lost $140 million on the sale of the team, despite the fact that he bought the team for $158 million — $15 million of which was a forgiven loan — and sold it for $1.2 billion. Miami-Dade alleged that Loria agreed to put $50 million of the sale price aside to cover any claim against the Sherman/Jeter group, and the county sued both ownership groups to prevent anyone from moving money out of that account.53

Initially, the Sherman/Jeter group claimed that Miami-Dade had no claim against them because they were not part of the deal that Loria allegedly broke. In April 2018 the group argued that the Marlins were not an American company. Instead, because one of the corporations that is a limited partner was based in the British Virgin Islands, the Sherman/Jeter group argued that the whole company was a “citizen” of the British Virgin Islands, and thus could only be sued in accordance with international treaty law. This would mean that the case could not be heard in Miami-Dade’s county court, but that it would have to be held in US District Court. This would give the defendants a better chance at court-ordered arbitration rather than having to go to trial.54

Initially, the Marlins successfully removed the case from Miami-Dade county court to Federal Court. But in August 2018 Judge Darrin Gayles of the US District Court in Miami ordered the case back to state court because not enough evidence had been provided to allow the state court to decide jurisdiction. While he did not rule on the citizenship issue itself, the judge told the Jeter group that they “face an uphill battle” proving foreign citizenship.55

Last revised: December 10, 2018

Fans at Marlins Park have seen not one but two “fire sales” of the team’s best players by management since the ballpark opened in 2012. (COURTESY OF THE MIAMI MARLINS)

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—–. “Wayne Huizenga’s Growth Complex.” New York Times, July 9, 1991.

Schoenfield, David. “Marlins, Rockies Still Seeking Answers,” ESPN.com. April 5, 2013. espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/34431/marlins-rockies-still-seeking-answers.

Smiley, David. “SEC Closes Miami Marlins Stadium Investigation; Charges Unlikely.” Miami Herald, February 19, 2016. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article61311237.html.

Smith, Claire. “National League Expansion Vote Delayed,” New York Times, June 6, 1991.

Snyder, Matt. “Marlins Owner Jeffrey Loria Is Slightly More Popular Than Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro,” CBSSports.com, November 26, 2012. cbssports.com/mlb/news/marlins-owner-jeffrey-loria-is-slightly-more-popular-than-cuban-dictator-fidel-castro/.

Sokolove, Michael. “Happy Just to Be Here.” New York Times. June 4, 2006. nytimes.com/2006/06/04/sports/playmagazine/04marlins.html.

“Sold! John Henry Buys Marlins,” CBS News.com, November 6, 1998. cbsnews.com/news/sold-john-henry-buys-marlins/.

“Stephen Ross Becomes Dolphins’ Majority Owner.” New York Times, February 1, 2009. nytimes.com/2009/01/21/sports/21iht-nfldolphins21.19564527.html.

Sullivan, Paul. “Huizenga’s Big Splash Engulfs All of Baseball,” Chicago Tribune, June 29, 1997. articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-06-29/sports/9706290424_1_florida-marlins-wayne-huizenga-million-by-financial-world.

Talalay, Sarah. “Lawsuit Cites Plot to Wreck Expos,” Sun-Sentinel. July 17, 2002. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2002-07-17/sports/0207170093_1_loria-and-baseball-expos-limited-partners-baseball-s-plans.

—–. “Loria Prevails in Expos Case,” Sun-Sentinel, November 16, 2004. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2004-11-16/sports/0411160145_1_loria-and-baseball-jeffrey-loria-expos-move.

—–. “Marlins More Than Profitable, Records Show,” Sun-Sentinel, August 23, 2010. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-08-23/sports/fl-florida-marlins-financial-document20100823_1_payroll-profit-marlins-president-david-samson.

“Transactions,” New York Times, September 20, 1991.

Vaillancourt, Meg. “Red Sox Reach Deal to Sell Team for Record $700m,” Boston Globe, December 21, 2001. bostonglobe.com/sports/2001/12/21/red-sox-reach-deal-sell-team-for-record/zIwxc8KHP0nIZlvNjzua2L/story.html.

Vardi, Nathan. “Jeff Loria Would Score Huge Baseball Windfall with $1.6 Billion Marlins Sale,” Forbes.com, February 9, 2017. forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2017/02/09/jeff-loria-would-score-huge-baseball-windfall-with-1-6-billion-marlins-sale/#61e3e2493b69.

Vogt, R.J. “Miami’s Suit Over Marlins Sale Heads Back to State Court,” Law360.com, August 14, 2018. law360.com/articles/1073415/miami-s-suit-over-marlins-sale-heads-back-to-state-court.

Weingarden, Steve, and Bill Nowlin, eds. Baseball’s Business: The Winter Meetings, Volume 2 — 1956-2016 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, Inc., 2017).

Wulf, Steve. “The (Dis)passion of John Henry,” ESPN.com, September 26, 2011. espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/7005442/mlb-how-john-henry-built-sports-empire-espn-magazine.

Zimbalist, Andrew. “The Capitalist: A Miami Fish Story,” New York Times Magazine, October 8, 1998.

Notes

1 Murray Chass, “The Marlins? The Rockies? Get Used to It. It’s Official,” New York Times, July 6, 1991.

2 Tim Golden, “Miami Still Has Heat and Rain, But Now It Has a Team,” New York Times, June 11, 1991.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Richard Sandomir, “Wayne Huizenga’s Growth Complex,” New York Times, July 9, 1991.

6 Ibid.

7 “Florida Team’s Name Sounds Fishy,” imbedded in Dave Hyde, “M’s Would Be Great Consolation Prize,” Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, republished in Spokesman-Review and Spokane Chronicle, July 6, 1991: B2.

8 The team then moved several times, changing names, cities, and league affiliations.

9 Golden, “Miami Still Has Heat and Rain…”

10 There was talk of a potential conflict of interest regarding Barger, largely because Pittsburgh’s chairman, Douglas Danforth, was chairman of the National League Expansion Committee, which had made the decision to award the new franchises to Denver and Miami. See Murray Chass, “New Teams Expect Approval Today,” New York Times, July 4, 1991.

11 Murray Chass, “Youthful Executive Rebuilding the Expos in Old-Fashioned Way,” New York Times, March 4, 1992.

12 Ibid.

13 This count includes 12 seasons with one team only, and 1 season (1981) that was split between two teams, the Seattle Mariners and their Triple-A affiliate.

14 David Schoenfield, “Marlins, Rockies Still Seeking Answers,” ESPN.com, April 5, 2013. espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/34431/marlins-rockies-still-seeking-answers.

15 Frank Jackson, “It Was Twenty Years Ago Today,” Hardball Times, Fangraphs.com, April 9, 2013. fangraphs.com/tht/it-was-20-years-ago-today/.

16 Alex Fernandez survived the fire sale, as he was injured in the 1997 NLCS, and was essentially untradeable. He missed the entire 1998 season. However, the Marlins did avoid paying most of Fernandez’s 1998 salary, as about 75 percent of it was covered by an insurance policy. See Buster Olney, “Marlins Lose Fernandez to Bad Shoulder Injury,” New York Times, October 10, 1997, and Mike Berardino, “Lloyd’s Balks at Marlins’ Claim on Fernandez’s Injury,” Sun-Sentinel.com, April 26, 2001, available at articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-04-26/sports/0104260199_1_marlins-alex-fernandez-fernandez-s-case.

17 Tom Verducci, “The Faux Classic,” Sports Illustrated, October 27, 1997: 42.

18 Dan Alexander, “Can Houston Astros Really Be Losing Money Despite Rock-Bottom Payroll?” Forbes.com, August 29, 2013. forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2013/08/29/can-houston-astros-really-be-losing-money-despite-rock-bottom-payroll/.

19 Richard Hoffer, “The Bucks Stop Here,” Sports Illustrated, July 29, 1991. si.com/vault/1991/07/29/124615/the-bucks-stop-here-spiraling-salaries-and-a-potential-loss-of-tv-loot-imperil-baseballs-prosperity.

20 “Sold! John Henry Buys Marlins,” CBS News.com, November 6, 1998. cbsnews.com/news/sold-john-henry-buys-marlins/.

21 Steve Wulf, “The (Dis)passion of John Henry,” ESPN.com, September 26, 2011. espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/7005442/mlb-how-john-henry-built-sports-empire-espn-magazine.

22 Nathan Vardi, “Hardball,” Forbes.com, April 26, 2004. forbes.com/forbes/2004/0426/066.html#1c13ba1512db.

23 Ibid.

24 Farid Rushdi, “How Jeffrey Loria Destroyed the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals,” BleacherReport.com, February 2, 2009. bleacherreport.com/articles/118868-how-jeffrey-loria-destroyed-the-montreal-exposnationals, and Nathan Vardi, “Hardball,” Forbes.com, April 26, 2004. forbes.com/forbes/2004/0426/066.html#1c13ba1512db.

25 Ibid.

26 Mark Armour and Dan Levitt, “Boston Red Sox Team Ownership History,” Team Ownership Histories Project, SABR.org, sabr.org/research/boston-red-sox-team-ownership-history.

27 Nathan Vardi, “Jeff Loria Would Score Huge Baseball Windfall with $1.6 Billion Marlins Sale,” Forbes.com, February 9, 2017. forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2017/02/09/jeff-loria-would-score-huge-baseball-windfall-with-1-6-billion-marlins-sale/#61e3e2493b69.

28 Sarah Talalay, “Loria Prevails in Expos Case,” Sun-Sentinel, November 16, 2004. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2004-11-16/sports/0411160145_1_loria-and-baseball-jeffrey-loria-expos-move.

29 Murray Chass, “It’s No Ploy: The Marlins Are Looking to Move,” New York Times, November 23, 2005. nytimes.com/2005/11/23/sports/baseball/its-no-ploy-the-marlins-are-looking-to-move-on.html.

30 Michael Sokolove, “Happy Just to Be Here,” New York Times, June 4, 2006. nytimes.com/2006/06/04/sports/playmagazine/04marlins.html.

31 Ibid.

32 See, e.g., Scott A. Wolla, “The Economics of Subsidizing Sports Stadiums,” StLouisFed.org, May 2017, research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2017-05-01/the-economics-of-subsidizing-sports-stadiums/ (“In a 2017 poll, 83 percent of the economists surveyed agreed that ‘providing state and local subsidies to build stadiums for professional sports teams is likely to cost the relevant taxpayers more than any local economic benefits that are generated.’”), Andrew Zimbalist and Roger G. Noll, “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: Are New Stadiums Worth the Cost?,” Brookings.edu, June 1, 1997, brookings.edu/articles/sports-jobs-taxes-are-new-stadiums-worth-the-cost/, Richard Florida, “The Never-Ending Stadium Boondoggle,” CityLab.com, September 10, 2015, citylab.com/equity/2015/09/the-never-ending-stadium-boondoggle/403666/, and David Schein, James Phillips, and Caroline Rider, “American Cities Held Hostage: Public Stadiums and Pro Sports Franchises,” Richmond Public Interest Law Review, Vol 20, Is 1, Richmond.edu, February 1, 2017, scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1389&context=pilr.

33 Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, Oct. 25, 2010, available at youtube.com/watch?v=14hm7qX8JM0.

34 Barry Petchesky, “The Real Cost to Miami for Marlins Park Is in the Billions,” Deadspin.com, January 25, 2013. deadspin.com/5978964/the-real-cost-to-miami-for-marlins-park-is-in-the-billions.

35 Tommy Craggs, “Florida Marlins Financial Documents,” Deadspin.com, August 23, 2010. deadspin.com/5619235/florida-marlins-financial-documents/.

36 Tim Elfrink, “Six Lies About the Marlins Stadium,” Miami New Times, May 5, 2011. miaminewtimes.com/news/six-lies-about-the-marlins-stadium-6380692.

37 Sarah Talalay, “Marlins More Than Profitable, Records Show,” Miami Sun-Sentinel, August 23, 2010. articles.sun-sentinel.com/2010-08-23/sports/fl-florida-marlins-financial-document20100823_1_payroll-profit-marlins-president-david-samson.

38 Elfrink, “Six Lies…”

39 Ibid.

40 Joe Frisaro, “New-Look Miami Marlins Make Colorful Splash,” MLB.com, November 11, 2011. web.archive.org/web/20150721022711/http://m.marlins.mlb.com//news/article/25960478/.

41 Michelle Kaufman, “In Popularity Poll, Miami Marlins’ Jeffery Loria Ekes Out a Win Over Fidel Castro,” Miami Herald, November 25, 2012. miamiherald.com/latest-news/article1944837.html.

42 Ibid.

43 Jeb Lund, “The 15 Worst Owners in Sports,” RollingStone.com, November 25, 2014. rollingstone.com/politics/politics-lists/the-15-worst-owners-in-sports-144598/jeffrey-loria-miami-marlins-180681/.

44 Barry Petchesky, “Marlins Tickets Are Basically Free, and Still No One’s Going,” Deadspin.com, April 25, 2013. deadspin.com/marlins-tickets-are-basically-free-and-still-no-ones-480819877.

45 Ibid.

46 Tim Elfrink, “Marlins Sue Season Ticket Holders, Vendors Who Went Bankrupt,” Miami New Times, May 24, 2016. miaminewtimes.com/news/marlins-sue-season-ticketholders-vendors-bankrupted-by-small-crowds-8475702.

47 Des Bieler, “Jared Kushner’s Family Says It Won’t Buy Marlins if Jeffry Loria Becomes Ambassador to France,” Washington Post, February 15, 2017. washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/02/15/reports-marlins-owner-may-sell-team-to-jared-kushners-brother-and-become-ambassador-to-france/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d86e4895e596.

48 Douglas Hanks, “Jeffrey Loria Claimed No Profits on His $1.2 Billion Marlins Sale. Miami-Dade Is Suing,” Miami Herald, February 16, 2018. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article200635529.html.

49 Marissa Payne, “Derek Jeter-led Group Reportedly Wins Bid to Buy Miami Marlins,” Washington Post, August 11, 2017. washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/08/11/derek-jeter-led-group-reportedly-wins-bid-to-buy-miami-marlins/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.24ca750e9063.

50 Rene Rodriguez, “Here’s How the New Marlins Money Man Made His Fortune,” Miami Herald, August 11, 2017. miamiherald.com/sports/mlb/miami-marlins/article166847967.html.

51 Cork Gaines, “ESPN’s Dan LeBatard Refused to Stop Criticizing MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred After Being Asked by Management to ‘Back Off,’” BusinessInsider.com, December 21, 2017. businessinsider.com/espn-dan-le-batard-mlb-commissioner-rob-manfred-2017-12

52 Douglas Hanks, “How Could Jeffrey Loria Claim No Profits From $1.2 billion Marlins Sale?” Miami Herald, February 2, 2018. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article198173034.html.

53 Douglas Hanks, “Jeffrey Loria Claimed No Profits on His $1.2 Billion Marlins Sale. Miami-Dade Is Suing,” Miami Herald, February 16, 2018. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article200635529.html.

54 Douglas Hanks, “Miami Marlins in Federal Court: Don’t Call Team a U.S. Citizen. We’re Foreign, Too,” Miami Herald, July 10, 2018. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article214621475.html; Douglas Hanks, “To Avoid Miami Courtroom, Marlins Claim Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands,” Miami Herald, April 9, 2018. miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article208398234.html.

55 Douglas Hanks, “Judge Rules Against Marlins on BVI Foreign Citizenship,” Miami Herald, August 14, 2018. miamiherald.com/sports/mlb/miami-marlins/article216686760.html.

Citi Field has been home of the New York Mets since 2009. (COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK METS)

As part of the expansion of the National League in 1962 a franchise was given to New York City. From 1962 to the current day, the Metropolitans’ ownership has been fairly stable. Joan Payson and her family maintained control of the club until they sold it team in 1980. Beginning in 1980, the Mets fell under the primary control of Doubleday and Co., which did not relinquish its control until 1986. Even then the ownership stayed with Nelson Doubleday and his partner Fred Wilpon. In 2002, Wilpon and Sterling Equities bought out Doubleday and as of 2017 have remained the primary owners. The relative stability in ownership for the Mets has not prevented them from experiencing incredible highs and lows during franchise history. Two World Series brought the Mets to the highest honor in baseball while they began with the worst record in ML history in 1962.

Birth of the Metropolitans

In 1957, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants left New York to go to the West Coast, New York fans were left reeling and looking for a replacement. A number of groups stepped in and talks developed about who might move in to take over the market.

Late in 1957, New York Mayor Robert Wagner Jr. appointed a committee to bring National League baseball back to the city. While luminaries such as former Attorney General James Farley, department-store mogul Bernard Gimbel and real-estate impresario Clinton Blume sat on the panel, the real power was attorney William Shea. Shea hoped to lure one of the league’s weaker members to New York, but talks with the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Philadelphia Phillies all failed, so he decided to propose the creation of a third league, to be called the Continental League.

The league would have eight teams, including a New York entry, and would be led by Branch Rickey. After nearly half a century as a major-league player, manager, and executive, Rickey knew any challenger would need strong ownership to provide the money to develop a front office, sign players, and, perhaps, build a ballpark. In New York, the Continental League found its potential owners in the city’s old money.

The group was led by Joan Whitney Payson and her husband, Charles Shipman Payson. Her minority partners included George Herbert Walker Jr., an executive with merchant banker Brown Brothers Harriman (and uncle of 41st President George Herbert Walker Bush) and Dwight F. Davis Jr., son of the founder of tennis’s Davis Cup. Another was her stockbroker, M. Donald Grant.1

After two years of resisting the Continental League, the National and American Leagues finally came around to the idea of expansion in late 1960. Each would add two teams and the National League would take its ownership groups (New York and Houston) from the Continental League groups. National League play was to begin in 1962.

The decision gave Payson the distinction of being the first female baseball franchise owner in four decades and the first who did not own the team because her husband had died. She had first gotten involved in baseball by buying one share of stock in the New York Giants in 1950 and gradually increased her involvement to a 10 percent share by the mid-1950s. Before the Giants moved there was some thought that she might invest more heavily to keep the Giants in New York, but she sold her shares when the Giants followed the Dodgers to the West coast. Payson’s interest in baseball came from her mother but it was not her only sporting interest. She also invested heavily in horse racing, owning a stable with her brother Jock.2

Joan Whitney was born in New York in February 1903 to a family with an impressive lineage. Her father, Payne Whitney came from a family line that included a Democratic senator from Ohio in the 1880s. His own father, William C. Whitney, served as secretary of the Navy during the administration of Grover Cleveland and owned a streetcar line. His uncle, Col. Oliver Payne, left his fortune to his nephew when he died in 1917. Her mother, Helen Hay Whitney (from Cleveland) was the daughter of John Hay, who began his career as assistant private secretary to President Abraham Lincoln. He went on to serve as secretary of state to both Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. Joan inherited her father’s fortune with her brother upon their father’s death. Payne Whitney had not only inherited money but added to his fortune with investments in banking, tobacco, railroads, mining, oil, and Greentree Stables.

Joan Whitney married Charles Shipman Payson when she was 21. Their 1924 marriage at Christ Church was a huge social event uniting two oldtime wealthy families. During the course of their marriage they had five children, three girls and two boys, but she continued to oversee and invest her own money in horses, art, and the New York Mets.3

After paying $1 million for her primary investment, Payson moved quickly to organize and name her new ballclub. In March 1961, the first major management decision was made: to hire George Weiss as president and general manager. Weiss had been with the New York Yankees from 1932 to 1960 and been incredibly successful, as his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971 proved. Weiss insisted on bringing Casey Stengel on board as the new manager. Then, in May 1961 Payson hosted a gathering at her Manhattan home to name the new club. According to some of those present, Payson’s personal favorite was the Meadowlarks but the New York Metropolitans was chosen. Payson herself announced the name at the Savoy on May 8, 1961, indicating that the team would be known by the nickname Mets. A new logo was commissioned from sports cartoonist Ray Gotto and unveiled in November 1961.

M. Donald Grant first met Joan Payson at a club in Florida in the 1940s. Over a game of cards the conversation shifted to what each of them would buy with their money, and Payson and Grant both wanted to buy the New York Giants. From there a lifelong friendship and working relationship began. Grant was born in Montreal, the son of Michael Grant, a professional hockey player. He eventually found his way to New York City to make his fortune. He started as a night clerk and worked his way up to being a managing partner in Fahnestock and Company while also serving on the board of the Mets.4 While Grant was a minority owner, Payson claimed that her investment was about 85 percent of the team.5 Grant served as the chairman of the board until he resigned in 1978.

One of the biggest concerns for Payson and the other ML owners was where the Mets would play. Plans were immediately underway to construct what was to be known as Flushing Meadows Stadium, but it would never be ready for the first season. One proposal was to share Yankee Stadium, but the Yankees ownership was not interested in anything less than a long-term rental agreement. The team then turned to the Polo Grounds, the former home of the Giants. The Mets played their inaugural game on April 11, 1962, a game they lost 11-4 to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Mets went on to have the worst record (40-120) of any major-league team in the twentieth century, and attendance for the season was only 922,530.

When Shea Stadium finally opened for the Mets to play their home opener on April 17, 1964, it was supposed to be the state-of-the-art in ballparks. Sadly, the reality was different, though the outcome of that first game was as expected. The Mets lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-3. When Shea Stadium was first proposed, it was planned to be part of urban planner Robert Moses’ vision for all of Flushing Meadows Park. Moses originally used the idea to try to entice Walter O’Malley to move the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Queens.

Shea and Moses had to find a way around a New York state law that prohibited the city from borrowing money to build a stadium. The only way around the law was to prove that the stadium could pay for itself from rent and event revenue. If the new team paid a substantial annual rent, then 30-year bonds could be paid off and no money would need to be borrowed. All Shea and Moses had to do was convince others that the idea could become a reality. With the endorsement of the New York Times and other dignitaries, the deal was made and stadium construction began. Sadly, the Mets were never able to live up to that monetary commitment and that would cause difficulties when Fred Wilpon wanted a new stadium three decades later. The Mets were also granted exclusive rights to Shea during the course of the baseball season by Parks Commissioner Newbold Morris. One of the other features of Shea Stadium was the fact that the ballpark was built for multiple tenants, a trend for municipal stadium development in the 1960s. Due to his efforts in bringing National League baseball back to New York, Shea became the logical person to name the new stadium after.6

Shea Stadium was dedicated the day before the home opener with Shea, Mayor Wagner, Robert Moses, manager Casey Stengel, Joan Payson, and many dignitaries in attendance. Shea christened the new field with water from the Harlem River and the Gowanus Canal. The Polo Grounds had stood on the banks of the Harlem, and its water represented the lost Giants, while the canal ran through Brooklyn near an early field of the Dodgers.

Unfortunately, the new stadium would be plagued by financial issues and water concerns throughout its life. Being built on marsh land meant the new stadium had constant drainage issues. Those issues were not helped when the outfield fences were moved in and the drainage pipes were then outside the fences. The planned 80,000-seat expansion and dome did not happen due to financial shortfalls. The financial woes would continue to plague the Mets for their entire history. Shea Stadium’s financial overruns affected how the city later dealt with the desire by the both Mets and Yankees for new stadiums.7

Part of the blame for the terrible start can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the aging and increasingly disengaged Casey Stengel. But the 1961 expansion draft was the primary trouble. Each National League team had to make available players for the Houston and New York teams to draft. The draft was scheduled for the period before major-league teams had to add blue-chip prospects to their 40-man rosters and thus eligible for selection. The Mets’ selections came primarily from players at the end of their careers or players with no big-league experience. Coupled with the declining skills of Stengel, who was the oldest manager in the major leagues at the time, the Mets got off to a dismal start.

Payson and her fellow board members did not lose heart, bolstered by attendance success that was unexpected given the team’s on-field performance. The team drew over a million fans to the Polo Grounds in its second year, despite another dismal performance, and then shot to 1.7 million, second in the league, the year Shea Stadium opened. The success continued for much of the next two decades.

This helped the owners keep their faith in George Weiss, who was trying to build a farm system. But Weiss turned 72 during the 1966 season and Grant looked for a younger man. In 1967 Bing Devine took over as general manager for one season before being replaced by Johnny Murphy for two years. Murphy guided the Mets to their improbable World Series win in 1969. When Murphy suffered a heart attack in December 1969 he was replaced by special-assignment scout Bob Scheffing and farm director Joe McDonald. There was no assistant GM at the time and Grant, as chairman of the board, made the assignment based on who was on hand. Scheffing, who had never held such a responsibility, remained in charge, guiding the Mets back to the playoffs in 1973. Joe McDonald was the last GM that Payson hired in 1975, before her death in October of that year. Until 1968, Payson was one of five vice presidents but with Devine’s resignation she added president to her résumé. The other VPs were G. Herbert Walker Jr., James K. Thomson, John J. Murphy, and Casey Stengel.8

While Payson was owner, she did not get involved in many of the day-to-day decisions of the ballclub. She preferred to remain in the background and be the team’s number-one fan. She attended games regularly, took care of the players, and even decorated part of her house in Mets colors. One of the few personnel decisions she weighed in on was bringing Willie Mays to the Mets, as he had been her favorite player with the Giants. Much of the operational work was done by the GMs, front-office staff and M. Donald Grant, though Grant indicated in an interview that he was credited with more input in decisions than he ever gave. He claimed he never interfered in the choices made by the GMs but just offered advice and counsel.9

After Joan Payson

After Joan Payson died in 1975, her shares were bought by her husband Charles Payson, making him the majority stockholder with nearly 90 shares. Mr. Payson was not really much of a baseball fan, preferring instead to remain involved in his own businesses and occasionally going out bird hunting at their home on the Florida Gulf Coast. Payson’s other athletic interests were boxing and rowing. (He’d participated in the latter when he attended Yale.) He later attended Harvard Law School. He also took a keen interest in their horse farm in Kentucky. Given Charles’s lack of interest, the family involvement fell to Payson’s daughter Lorinda de Roulet, who became president and then chairwoman of the board after Grant resigned in 1978.10 Payson gave about 33 percent of his shares to his four children, including de Roulet, making him still the majority stockholder, with about a 52 percent interest. The other stock was held by Fred Trask, who had been Mrs. Payson’s financial adviser.11 Grant was asked to step down by de Roulet and the rest of the board, primarily due to his refusal to spend money on free agents. His frugality was given as the primary reason for the Mets’ decline into the cellar from 1973 to 1978. The trade of the popular Tom Seaver may have been the final straw for de Roulet.12

De Roulet had attended Wellesley College and married Vincent de Roulet, later President Nixon’s ambassador to Jamaica. He died young, leaving her as a widow with three children and a ballclub to run. She relied on GM Joe McDonald for most decisions but did not expect to be a silent owner. As chairwoman, de Roulet needed to learn the business to work with VP for business James K. Thomson and William Murray, treasurer and controller.13

Under de Roulet’s guidance, the Mets continued to struggle on and off the field. Their lowest attendance in franchise history came in 1979 with only 788,905 fans attending home games. These struggles led to speculation that Payson was trying to find a buyer for the team. The press had fun speculating on potential new owners but none materialized and de Roulet assured fans that her family was not leaving. Joe Torre, who managed the Mets manager under de Roulet, commented, “Her heart was certainly in the right place and she tried to make the club reasonable.”14 That promise remained true until January 1980, when the Mets franchise changed hands for the first time in club history. Payson invited bids for his club and 21 groups responded. New York Islanders chief operating officer John Pickett helped bring together Doubleday and Wilpon to win the lottery for the Mets.15

A New Day: Doubleday and Co.

On January 24, 1980, the Payson family sold their controlling interest in the Mets to Doubleday and Company and to Fred Wilpon, chairman of the board of Sterling Equities Inc., for a reported $21.1 million. Nelson Doubleday Jr. negotiated the deal on behalf of his family’s publishing company, giving them 80 percent controlling interest. Fred Wilpon bought the remaining stock through his two companies, Sterling Investments and City Investment Corporation. Wilpon remained a minor partner until 1986, when he and Doubleday bought out the publishing company’s interests after Doubleday and Co. was sold to a German company, Bertelsmann AG. At that point he moved from a 5 percent owner to 50 percent.16

Like the Paysons before him, Nelson Doubleday had an extensive pedigree. Born in Oyster Bay, Long Island, on July 20, 1933, Doubleday attended private academies before enrolling in Princeton University, where he played football, baseball, and hockey. Armed with a degree in economics Doubleday worked his way up through his grandfather’s company, eventually taking full control in 1973. After taking over as president and CEO in 1978 Doubleday had the power to buy the Mets in 1980. Doubleday and his wife, Sandra, had four daughters, none of whom took any interest in the baseball franchise.17 Doubleday was described by those who worked with him as patient, quiet, classy, and charming but also a hard-headed businessman.18

Fred Wilpon was born on November 22, 1936, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. At Lafayette High School he played baseball with Sandy Koufax. Koufax played first base while Wilpon pitched. Wilpon attended the University of Michigan on a partial scholarship but blew out his arm before the start of his sophomore season. He graduated in 1958 and continued to be supportive of the university financially. Wilpon and his wife, Judy, had one son, Jeff, and Judy worked in baseball for a time as well. She was hired in 1959 by Branch Rickey as a secretary. Unlike the Doubleday children, Jeff Wilpon took a big interest in the team and eventually became the chief operating officer.19

Wilpon made his money in real estate, working with his partner Saul Katz. Katz was a CPA who graduated from Brooklyn College and was the brother of Wilpon’s wife, Judy. Wilpon spent five years at Hanover Equities before branching out with Katz. In 1972 they founded Sterling Equities and their first project involved townhouses in Tarrytown, New York, up the Hudson River from Manhattan. Wilpon and Katz worked well together from the start as opposites in character. Those who knew them well described Wilpon as hands-on but calm while Katz was more aggressive and streetwise.20

One of the first moves Doubleday and Wilpon had to make was hiring a new GM after Joe McDonald left. Frank Cashen joined the team from Baltimore and would remain as general manager through 1991. Doubleday, as the principal owner, was not a meddler and left the day-to-day decisions to Cashen. He told reporters he would prefer that nobody knew who he was. Doubleday gave all the credit for the Mets’ success to Cashen, telling a New York Times reporter, “The reason the Mets are a success is Frank Cashen — no ifs, ands or buts.”21 It would take a few years but gradually the new owners and Cashen were able to turn the Mets’ fortunes around, on and off the field. The highlight of the partnership came when the Mets won the World Series in 1986 though they would not return again until 2000 in the Subway Series when they lost to the New York Yankees, their crosstown rivals.

After the World Series win in 1986 expectations were high for the Mets to continue to be at the top of the game, but that did not happen. Many of the stars of that championship team found themselves in trouble with drugs and alcohol. Pitcher Dwight Gooden ended up in drug rehab in April 1987. During the 1986 season the Mets were known around the league as boozers, womanizers, and brawlers. Ron Darling and Tim Teufel, for example, got into a scuffle with Houston police after a long night of partying. Doug Sisk, Jesse Orosco and Danny Heep were often referred to as “The Scum Bunch.”22

While the Mets of the 1980s enjoyed seven good seasons, 1990 was the last winning season. After a tough start, Cashen, fired manager Davey Johnson on May 29, replacing him with third-base coach Bud Harrelson. Harrelson managed to turn things around and the Mets ended the season with 91 wins, in second place behind the Pirates. But the 1991 season ended with Harrelson gone, Cashen resigning and the Mets in fifth place. From 1991 to 1996 the Mets had losing seasons again.23

The club’s troubles continued, leading Wilpon to make a strong statement about the need for change in 1993. “Our club is in last place, and we have been plagued all season by a series of embarrassing off-the-field incidents that have indirectly subjected us to local and national criticism. But that will change.”24 One of those incidents involved Vince Coleman lighting a firecracker and throwing it into a group of fans. Three fans got hurt and Coleman ended up having to complete 200 hours of community service. Bret Saberhagen apologized to Mets fans and donated a day’s salary to charity after he shot a water gun full of bleach into a room full of reporters.25 The change Wilpon was talking about was replacing GM Al Harazin, who had taken over after Cashen resigned at the end of 1991. Harazin was replaced by Joe McIlvaine who served as GM from 1994 to 1997. The 1990s ended with Cashen returning as interim GM and Steve Phillips returning the Mets to the World Series in 2000, while serving as GM from 1998 to 2003.

Shea Stadium in the mid-1990s. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

The Wilpon Era

In 2002 Wilpon finally bought out Doubleday for $135 million and became the single principal owner of the Mets, a position he has maintained as of 2017. Wilpon initially hoped to find partners but they all backed out after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Wilpon and Doubleday had not agreed on how to run the ballclub for many years leading up to the split. Their disagreements forced even the members of the board to have to choose sides. Saul Katz and Marvin Tepper supported Wilpon while Dick Cummins supported Doubleday Jr. They disagreed on how involved to be, how much money to spend, and even on whether or not to build a new ballpark. Doubleday wanted to renovate Shea and Wilpon always wanted to build a new ballpark.26

The sale of the Mets did not happen smoothly and required the help of outside arbitrators and Major League baseball to make the sale happen. Part of the issue was the value of the team determined by the assessor, Robert Starkey. In 1986 the Mets were valued at approximately $100 million but by 2002 that value had grown to $391 million. Due to previous agreements Doubleday had to sell to Wilpon and could not put the team out for bids on the open market. Wilpon wanted to be the principal owner in order to build a new ballpark. Doubleday thought Starkey and other appraisers had put the value of the team too low and he wanted to sue. He even accused Commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball of conspiring to keep team values low to lessen the amount that had to be borrowed.27

By becoming the majority owner of the Mets, Wilpon was able to make good on his desire to replace the aging Shea Stadium. It was a struggle. Shea had been a financial boondoggle for the city. In addition, when the Yankees wanted to rebuild Yankee Stadium in the early 1970s, they argued that the $28 million the city had spend building Shea for the Mets should mean an equivalent amount for their project. They were convincing, but escalating costs pushed the Yankees project well over $100 million at a time when New York City was having severe financial problems. City taxpayers clearly were opposed to spending municipal dollars on new stadiums, and the Yankees were looking for a new ballpark as well.

For the Mets, Wilpon solved the problem with a lot of persuasion and a dose of private funding. While taxpayers provided the majority of the money, a new operating arm called New York City Economic Development Corporation for Queens Ballpark LLC was created to oversee the funding and ongoing financial concerns related to the park. The 42,000-seat Citi Field opened in 2009 with much of the funding coming from over $613 million in Citi Field bonds. Installment payments, lease revenue, and another $82 million in insured debt financed the rest of the construction. Unfortunately for many of the bond holders between 2009 and 2014, the Mets attendance fell below projections by as much as 30 percent, meaning little revenue was gained. Their World Series run in 2015 helped to raise revenue by nearly $25 million, allowing the Mets ownership to pay down some of their debt.28

After Wilpon became the sole majority owner, the Mets seemed to settle in to mediocrity. One reporter called the signing of manager Art Howe before the 2003 season as “desperately chintzy.”29 Howe was not a risk-taker and seemed to settle for not shaking anything up. Wilpon did not want to spend any money and even indicated he would walk away before having to spend too much. The one exception seemed to be the signing of Tom Glavine for $35 million. By 2004 his attitude seemed to be changing as a member of his staff stated, “Fred believes in accountability. He’s not going to sit by and allow things to just get worse.”30

Jeff Wilpon also became increasingly involved in the club. He had always loved baseball and wanted a bigger role. He played in high school and caught batting practice for the Mets. He worked for a time with the Montreal Expos before coming back home. By 2004 he was running the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones and serving as vice president for Sterling Equities. As he became the CEO for the Mets some blamed him for the club’s poor performances. He was described by some as a “hot-tempered know-it-all and meddler.”31 Other staff disagreed and said that unlike his father, Jeff was willing to spend money and he was not overbearing or abrasive. Jeff found himself the center of a lawsuit of his own in 2014 over the firing of a pregnant female employee. Leigh Castergine was the senior vice president for ticket sales when she was fired. Her suit charged that she was fired because she was pregnant and unmarried while Jeff Wilpon argued that Castergine was let go because she did not meet sales goals.32

The biggest scandal in Mets history came with the revelation in 2008 of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. The financial issues coincided with the Mets’ best attendance, just over 4 million fans and the recent opening of their new ballpark. The future looked rosy and then the bottom fell out financially. The troubles caused by the Madoff scandal would affect the Mets for nearly a decade.

As a result of all the financial losses associated with the Madoff scheme ending their investment returns and his own real-estate decline Wilpon needed to find an influx of cash. To cover basic expenses, they tried to sell some Mets shares in 2011 to David Einhorn. When that deal fell through, Wilpon had to look elsewhere. Einhorn wanted to become the majority owner with a $200 million investment, but Wilpon was not willing to relinquish his role as majority owner.

In 2012 the Mets sold 12 minority shares to stabilize the financial situation. Four shares were bought by SportsNet NY (SNY) while Steve Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors bought a single 4 percent share along with Bill Maher, a lifelong Mets fan. Bob Pittman from Clear Channel and venture capitalist Kenneth Lever bought one share together. Jeff Wilpon and Saul Katz also bought one share apiece. Sterling Equities, the investment company of Wilpon and Katz, owns nearly 65 percent of SNY, keeping those minority shares somewhat in the family. What the Mets ownership was really doing was transferring some of their debt from the team to the sports network. Another investor was James F. McCann, an executive of 1-800-Flowers. At the time McCann bought a share for his company it was under investigation itself for defrauding customers. McCann said he bought the share because he was a family friend of Fred Wilpon and a lifelong Mets fan. The influx of money from the minority sales helped to pay off bank debt and a loan from MLB. The new owners also worked out a deal under which they could sell back their shares in 2018 for their original cost plus 3 percent interest each year.33

In addition to the sale of the team, Wilpon and Katz cut salaries by over $50 million and shrank their workforce by 10 percent. They also eliminated a minor-league team and cut ticket prices to help boost falling attendance. To make up for the cut in prices, attendance would need to increase by over 500,000 to allow the owners to pay off what is owed on Citi field and interest on other debt. All of these measures were a one-time fix that would not correct long-term revenue issues. The key for the Wilpons was to improve the roster of the ballclub with no extra money.34

Citi Field became a concern during the Madoff revelations as bond owners asked what would happen to the ballpark if the Mets went under. To help reassure wary buyers, the Mets bought bond insurance from Ambac Assurance Corporation, which would be required to pay if the Mets could not. What seemed like a workable solution got more complicated when Ambac filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010. Ambac emerged from bankruptcy in 2013 and the Wilpon group was able to weather the financial storm and hold on to the team.35

The situation for the Mets finally improved with the settlement of some litigation and the 2012 influx of cash. Wilpon was able to right the ship and begin spending again. David Wright was given the biggest contract in Mets history at $138 million for 10 years. At the same time the Mets were also still paying off Johan Santana’s $137.5 million contract through 2014. With the increase in salaries and a new GM, Sandy Alderson (who took over in 2010 from Omar Minaya), the Mets began a climb that resulted in their return to the 2015 World Series, which they lost to the Kansas City Royals. The team pushed their 2016 season to a wild-card game that they lost. At the end of the 2016 season Alderson was able to re-sign Yoenis Cespedes for $110 million for three years, indicating willingness on Wilpon’s part to commit some big funds for the future.36

With Fred and Jeff Wilpon still at the helm, the Mets continue to enjoy stability in ownership which has provided them with ups and downs over the years. Saul Katz continues to serve as team president.

Last updated: November 28, 2017

LESLIE HEAPHY was elected to the SABR Board of Directors in 2010. She has been a member of SABR since 1989 and chair of the Women in Baseball Committee since 1995. Leslie is an Associate Professor of History at Kent State University at Stark and publishes in the area of the Negro Leagues and women’s baseball. In 2008, she became the founding editor of the journal “Black Ball,” published by McFarland. She lives in Kent, Ohio. She was the 2014 winner of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor.

Notes

Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw celebrates after closing out Game Six of the 1980 World Series, clinching the first championship in franchise history. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies)

In the Beginning

The first National League game in Philadelphia was played in 1876 with the Boston Red Stockings facing the Philadelphia Athletics, one of several of the city’s early teams with that name. Playing at Jefferson Park before an estimated crowd of about 2,000, the Athletics lost that game, 6-5. By the end of the season, the Athletics had also lost their place in the league.

With insufficient funds, an unwillingness to waste any more time playing in a futile season in which they had posted a 14-45 record, and a conflicting schedule of exhibition games, the Athletics refused to make their last Western road trip. Accordingly, a few months later, the team was expelled from the league.

Although the Athletics would continue to play as an independent team and, in 1882, another team called the Athletics was awarded a franchise in the new American Association, Philadelphia was left without a National League team for the next six years. That all changed in 1883.

William Hulbert had been the president of the National League, but early in the 1882 season, he died of a heart attack. His place was filled by Abraham G. Mills, a former Army officer, a highly successful New York attorney, and a former player and strong supporter of the game of baseball.

At the time, the eight-team National League included clubs from Troy, New York, and Worcester, Massachusetts. But soon after he became president, Mills launched a movement to rid the league of those two squads, replacing them with teams from New York City and Philadelphia.

“We’ve got to get those big cities back into our league,” he said. “Both New York and Philadelphia have tremendous futures, and some day their populations will be in the millions. If we permit the American Association to entrench itself in these cities, the Association — not we — soon will be the real big league.” Mills ordered the dissolution of the Troy franchise and moved it down the Hudson River to New York. Then he shifted his focus to the Worcester Ruby Legs (or Brown Stockings as some called them). “They’re not big enough to support National League ball,” he said. “I’d like to see that club in Philadelphia.”1

Late in 1882, Mills contacted his old friend Alfred J. Reach, a former player and now the owner of a highly profitable sporting-goods business in Philadelphia. Would Reach be interested in taking over a new team in Philadelphia? Reach jumped at the chance. Soon the Worcester franchise was also dissolved and a new team was set up in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love finally was back with a team in the National League.

Al Reach Reaches Out

Al Reach was the classic American success story, an immigrant who rose from the streets of New York to become a millionaire. Whether it was blazing a trail as a pioneer baseball player and owner, or building a mammoth sporting-goods company, practically everything Reach did was done well and with good results. As a player, he was one of the first to receive a salary. As a businessman, he was one of the first to manufacture baseball bats, balls, and gloves.

Born in 1840 in London, England, where his father was a prominent cricket player, Reach was brought to the United States at the age of one. He was raised in Brooklyn, where his industrious nature surfaced early. He sold newspapers on Broadway, then at the age of 15 he took a job in an iron foundry. Toiling as an iron molder with heavy tools and near the hot furnaces, he worked 12-hour days. Some of his work went into the construction of New York’s finest hotels of the day along Fifth Avenue.

When he wasn’t working, Reach played baseball, first on vacant lots and then with some of the local teams in the Brooklyn area. Although left-handed, he was originally a catcher.

In his early 20s, Reach played for the Brooklyn Eckfords, a prominent club in the New York area.

During a series in Philadelphia, Al attracted the attention of Colonel Thomas Fitzgerald, manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, an independent team that traveled the country. Fitzgerald persuaded Reach to join the Athletics by offering the young player a contract and a full-time salary. Reach accepted the offer and, although he continued to live in Brooklyn, joined the Athletics in 1863.

In those days, some teams paid a few of their players under the table, but Reach is usually credited with being the first man to accept pay openly. And he soon justified his salary, which was said to be $1,000 for the season. Installed as a left-handed second baseman, young Al quickly became the team’s leading hitter.

In 1868 he was named first-team All-American by the New York Clipper. The 5-foot-6, 155-pound Reach was usually good for three or four hits a game, and he earned a reputation as the home-run king of the era. Moreover, he developed a big local following.

In 1871 a new fully professional league, the National Association, was formed. A team called the Athletics not only joined, it captured the pennant, winning 22 of 29 games. Reach, by then a resident of the Frankford section of Philadelphia, led the team in hitting with a .348 average. Later, he became the team’s manager for the 1874 and 1875 seasons.

By this time, Al’s entrepreneurial instincts had been activated. He opened a cigar store and ran it before and after games. The store became a local hangout for sporting types. Reach also noticed the increasing demand for baseballs, bats, and other sporting goods, and the corresponding absence of any stores that supplied such items. The observation prompted him to open a sporting-goods store in 1874, one year before his playing days ended.

The store thrived and by 1881 Reach moved to a larger store. Simultaneously, he took in a partner, Benjamin J. Shibe, an expert on leather and a manufacturer of horse whips. The partnership was formed to launch a business that would manufacture sporting goods. Soon the men opened a plant in North Philadelphia. Later, Shibe would become the original owner of the new American League’s Philadelphia Athletics.

Although he had become a full-time businessman, Reach retained his contacts in baseball. After he was approached by Mills about starting a team in Philadelphia, Reach enlisted the aid of Colonel John I. Rogers, a prominent lawyer, a former city comptroller, a colonel in the Philadelphia National Guard, and a member of the Pennsylvania governor’s staff. Rogers, a native Philadelphian and a University of Pennsylvania graduate, was in later years one of the creators of baseball’s reserve clause. Ultimately, he and Reach became the principal owners of the new team, each holding 43 percent of the club’s stock with a few friends of theirs holding the remaining shares.

There were no players involved in the transaction. They had been gobbled up by other teams as soon as it became apparent that the failing Worcester team would be folded. Thus Reach and Rogers had to start from scratch, recruiting players and even finding a ballpark.

The players came from an assortment of directions, some locally and some from minor professional teams elsewhere. An old ballfield built in 1860 on the block surrounded by 24th and 25th Streets and Ridge and Columbia Avenues called Recreation Park was totally refurbished by Reach. Because its nickname would suggest its geographic location, the team was named the Philadelphia Phillies. It would go on to become the longest continuous, one-city, one-nickname franchise in baseball history. (Neither Quakers, Live Wires, Blue Jays, Whiz Kids, nor any other name was ever officially registered as the team’s nickname.)    

The first team, in 1883, was a dismal failure. After losing its first game, 4-3, to the Providence Grays, the Phillies posted a record of 17-81. The main pitcher, John Coleman, set an all-time record with 48 losses. (He had 12 wins.) Reach fired the team’s first manager, Bob Ferguson, after the Phillies lost 13 of their first 17 games, replacing him with outfielder Bill “Blondie” Purcell. But Reach was not discouraged even though some of his friends tried to convince him that owning a professional baseball team was a bad idea. The Phillies, they argued, should be disbanded, and Reach should concentrate on less futile ways of spending his money.

Reach refused to wither under such pressure. The following season he brought in new players, and most importantly, turned the managerial reins over to Harry Wright, a baseball pioneer himself, and one of the game’s premier managers. In 1869 Wright was the player-manager with the first all-professional team, the Cincinnati Redlegs. Two years later, he became the manager of the Boston Red Stockings, with whom he won six pennants in 11 seasons and was the skipper in the first National League game in Philadelphia.

Wright was given a small number of shares in the team from Reach’s friends’ holdings. Immediately, the Phillies improved tremendously. In 1884 the club moved up to sixth place, and the following year it jumped up to third with the club’s first season over .500 (56-54-1). That started an 11-year streak in which the team would finish in the first division each season, winning as many as 87 games in 1892.

In 1887, with the master plan devised by Reach, the team also moved into a new showplace stadium originally called Philadelphia Base Ball Park. Located on the corner of Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue in North Philadelphia, it was built at a cost of $101,000 alongside a creek and over a dump that required 120,000 wagonloads of dirt to fill the pits and gullies and bring it to street level. It was regarded as the finest ballpark in the nation, a magnificent showplace that was envied by all other cities. The most modern and advanced ballpark of the era, it was the first one that was built mainly with bricks instead of wood and was the first ballpark to include pavilions for seating. Its original capacity was 12,500. Later called Huntingdon Street Grounds and then Baker Bowl, the park was used by the Phillies for 51½ years. Along the way it was the site of several disasters, and by the end of its use as a major-league baseball field in 1938, had become a decrepit and obsolete park that was the laughingstock of baseball.

Starting in the late 1890s, the club became the residence of a number of future Hall of Fame players, including Ed Delahanty, Nap Lajoie, and Elmer Flick, who launched their careers with the Phillies, plus Sam Thompson, Billy Hamilton, Tim Keefe, Roger Connor, and Dan Brouthers, all of whom came from other teams. From 1891 through 1895, Delahanty, Hamilton, and Thompson became the first all-Hall of Fame outfield, playing together and in one season (1894) all hitting over what was then calculated as .400.

It was Reach who gambled on spending $1,900, a staggering figure in those days, for Delahanty, a raw young hitter playing in the minors at Wheeling, West Virginia, and one of five brothers who would play in the big leagues. Ultimately, Delahanty became arguably the best hitter in Phillies history, compiling a batting average over .400 three times and leading the league in numerous hitting categories during his 13 seasons in Philadelphia. When he died in 1903 in a mysterious accident that ended with his washing over Niagara Falls, he had compiled a lifetime batting average of .346, which ranks as the fourth highest in major-league history.

Under Reach, the Phillies finished second twice, third six times, fourth six times, sixth twice, seventh once, eighth twice, and tenth once. Although the club never won a pennant, Reach developed it into one of the cornerstones of the National League. In his 20 years with the team, he built two ballparks, the Phillies finished in the first division 14 times, and the club posted a winning record of 1,339-1,260 for the best percentage (.515) under any club president until Ruly Carpenter. Reach also managed the team for 11 games in 1890 when three substitute pilots had to fill in for Wright after he developed a case of temporary blindness.

There were, of course, disappointments and problems during Reach’s administration. The club engaged in bitter battles over players — in 1890 with the Brotherhood (or Players’) League, and in 1901 with the American League. The losses of players to those leagues, especially Delahanty, Lajoie, and Flick, the sudden death of star pitcher Charlie Ferguson after just four brilliant seasons in the league during which he won 99 games, a devastating fire in 1894 that destroyed the ballpark and forced the Phillies to play part of the season on the University of Pennsylvania’s field, and the players’ mutiny over the abusive tactics of manager George Stallings in 1897-98, all contributed to a less-than-smooth tenure for Reach.

By the mid-1890s, Reach was spending more time with his sporting-goods business and less time with the Phillies. The militant, arrogant, and often stubborn Rogers, who frequently battled with Reach, took over control of the operation of the team. Meanwhile, Wright, later named “The Father of Professional Baseball” for his many contributions to the game, left the team after the 1893 season when he was not offered a new contract by Rogers..

A few years later, another colorful figure earned a place in Phillies history when he was appointed the team’s manager. Bill Shettsline had originally been employed by the team as a handyman. He then rose to ticket taker and then office manager. During the 1898 season, he was named the team’s manager, replacing the fired Stallings. Afterward, Shettsline, a rotund Philadelphia native, went on to manage the team for four full seasons, in 1899 guiding it to 94 wins, a figure than went unsurpassed until 1976. Under Shettsline, the Phillies finished third twice and second once before crashing to seventh in his last year, 1902, when they drew just 112,066 fans for the entire season. He was dismissed after that season, and named the club’s business manager. Three years later, he became the Phillies’ president.

By then, the A. J. Reach Company was flourishing. The company opened another plant in Brantford, Ontario, and moved its store to a large building in downtown Philadelphia. The relationship between Reach and Shibe couldn’t have been better. Reach’s son George married Shibe’s daughter. And when the American League began, Reach, who in 1899 had unsuccessfully offered to sell his shares in the Phillies to Rogers, recommended his partner for a franchise in Philadelphia.

The ensuing sequence was laced with irony. Shibe became the first owner of the American League’s Philadelphia Athletics. And the Reach ball became the official ball of the new league. Yet, the presence of the young circuit and its player raids on the Phillies were a main factor in Reach’s decision to end his ownership in the National League.

In 1901, financially crippled by the raids, Reach and Rogers had to secure a loan from Pittsburgh Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss during the grueling legal battle with the American League. The Americans had signed Phillies’ star Nap Lajoie, who had won the AL’s first batting crown with what would be the highest average (.426) in AL history. The Phillies’ owners sought an injunction to stop Lajoie from playing with any other teams. When the Phillies won the case, American League President Ban Johnson moved Lajoie to the Cleveland Blues, a move the Phillies did not contest and where he spent most of the rest of his Hall of Fame career.

One year later, as their relationship became increasingly acrimonious, Reach and Rogers sold the Phillies to a syndicate headed by James Potter for $180,000. Reach and Rogers retained the title to Philadelphia Park, leasing it back to the new owners for $10,000 per year. Seven years later, Rogers died of a heart attack.

Eventually, Reach also sold his sporting-goods store. But his manufacturing company continued to crank out new baseballs, using a special winding machine that Reach invented. The company also produced a huge assortment of other sporting goods, and for a number of decades it published the official American League Reach Baseball Guide.

The Philadelphia Ledger in 1915 described Reach’s operation in glowing terms. “The establishment of Mr. Reach has grown to larger proportions, and the name is synonymous with baseball,” it said. The Reach Company and the A.G. Spalding Company, founded by another old baseball-playing pioneer, were the dominant firms in the sporting-goods field in the country.

Before retiring, Reach sold his company to the rival Spalding firm. He lived his final years in Atlantic City. Reach died on January 14, 1928. He left an estate valued at $1,017,868.

The Phillies first owner is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Also buried there are Harry Wright and Benjamin Shibe.

On the Road to Mediocrity

After performing for 20 years under the same ownership and rising to a place among the stronger franchises in the league, the Phillies vaulted onto a path of chaos.

During a 10-year period following the sale of the team to the Potter group, the Phillies would have four owners. They would be commanded by six presidents, one of whom would get barred from baseball for life. The team would have four managers, once lost 103 games, and drew just 140,771 paying customers one season. Meanwhile, the rival Athletics of the new American League won five pennants and three World Series between 1902 and 1913 while becoming the favorite team of Philadelphia baseball fans.  

The Potter group’s purchase of the team launched the Phillies’ downfall. Potter, a socialite and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, was also a stockbroker whose clients had mostly not achieved the social status to which he was accustomed. But he induced many of them to join him in his investment in the sport of “base ball.” In addition, Dreyfuss, who had earlier loaned Reach and Rogers money to fight the new American League and had been paid off secretly with Phillies stock, took the position of running the team behind the scenes. It was a clear conflict of interest, despite the fact that such things were fairly common during that era, as the Taft organization, among others, would demonstrate.

After he bought the team and became president, it didn’t take long for Potter’s collapse to begin. During a game on August 6, 1903, the fans were attracted to a disturbance behind the left-field bleachers in which two drunks were taunting a group of young girls. When one girl fell and she and her friends started screaming “help” and “murder,” fans ran to the top of an overhanging balcony protruding about 30 feet above the stands to see what the commotion was about. The balcony fell under the weight, crushing fans and sending them into the cement pavement below. Twelve fans were killed and 232 were hospitalized. More than 80 lawsuits against Reach and Rogers, still the owners of the ballpark, followed, and although they, as was Potter, were eventually absolved of blame, the two eventually sold the ballpark to the incoming Taft family

The Phillies finished seventh that year. In 1904 they dropped to eighth. After the season, Potter realized that baseball wasn’t his game. In 1905, he got out. The stockholders held a reorganization meeting and the presidency of the team was passed to Bill Shettsline.

Shettsline, a resident of Glenolden in Delaware County, served through the 1908 season, during which time the Phillies finished third once and fourth three times. In his most important move, coming shortly after he was named president, Shettsline signed a semipro outfielder. His name was Sherry Magee, and he would go on to win a batting title in 1910 while becoming one of the top Phillies players of his era. Under Shettsline’s leadership, the 1908 Phillies drew 420,660, a club record to that point.

After Potter pulled out, the remaining Phillies stockholders sold the team to Charles Phelps Taft, a native of Cincinnati and a graduate of Yale University and Columbia University Law School, and Charles Murphy, who was part-owner of the Chicago Cubs, thanks to money Taft had loaned him to purchase controlling interest in the team. The son of a United States attorney general who later served as US secretary of war, Taft was the younger brother of William Howard Taft, the nation’s 27th president.

During his career, Taft served as a successful attorney, a member of the Ohio State Legislature, and a member of the US Congress. He also spent 10 years as editor of the Cincinnati Times-Star and later owned the Cincinnati Post. His work with newspapers ultimately became the focus of his career.

Taft was the major stockholder in the team until 1913. During that period, the Phillies finished in fourth place five times, in fifth twice, and second and third each once. Along the way, he put Murphy in charge of the team after purchasing his stock in the Cubs

Murphy was a former newspaper reporter who had become one of baseball’s first publicity chiefs, first with the New York Giants and then with the Cubs. Then, after buying 53 percent of the stock in the Cubs, he became the team’s president in 1906. He stayed until 1914 when he was ousted by the league’s other owners after an acrimonious relationship that came to an end after Murphy was accused of mishandling the contracts of some of his players, especially former player and current manager Johnny Evers.

In 1909, however, Taft had sold his controlling interest in the team to Israel Durham and James McNichol, Philadelphia’s two top Republican political bosses. Along with banker Clarence Wolf, they formed a syndicate and bought the club with Durham replacing Shettsline as president. Shettsline returned to his position as the team’s business manager.

Durham, who had served as a Philadelphia police magistrate, a state senator, and the state insurance commissioner, had high hopes for the team. “We will save neither money nor effort to bring a first National League championship to Philadelphia,” he announced.2

But even as he took over the presidency, Durham was a sick man. And he died during the 1909 season. After his death, neither McNichol nor Wolf decided they had any real interest in running the team. They sold it on November 26, and the new buyer was a surprise to everyone. His name was Horace Fogel and he was a well-known local sportswriter.

Fogel took over the team’s presidency in 1909. He insisted that he was running the whole show while claiming that he was the sole owner. In fact, Taft had loaned him a large sum of money to purchase shares in the ballclub that was now said to be worth $350,000, and was still the team’s largest stockholder.

The highlight of Fogel’s tenure came in 1911 when the Phillies bought a young pitcher named Grover Cleveland Alexander from a minor-league team in Syracuse for $750. Alexander won a league-leading 28 games as a rookie in 1911, launching a Hall of Fame career in which his 373 victories made him the fourth-winningest pitcher in major-league history. Also during Fogel’s reign, the Phillies signed Gavvy Cravath, a 31-year-old journeyman who would win six home-run crowns in the next seven years while holding the career record for home runs (119) until it was broken by Babe Ruth.

Things were never dull when Fogel was president. He tried unsuccessfully to change the team’s nickname from Phillies to Live Wires. His sportswriting buddies ignored the idea. He tried to have a wedding staged inside a lion’s cage at the pitcher’s mound with the lion acting as one of the witnesses. He fired manager Bill Murray and replaced him with catcher Red Dooin, who made the club better and more exciting. In 1911 Fogel swung what was the biggest trade the Phillies had made up to that point with pitchers George McQuillan and Lew Moren, third baseman Ed Grant, and outfielder John Bates going to the Reds for third baseman Hans Lobert, center fielder Dode Paskert, and pitchers Jack Rowan and Fred Beebe.

One night in 1912 Fogel was drinking with some writer friends, and at one point said the National League pennant race was fixed. Fogel said that the umpires were told to favor the New York Giants, and that St. Louis Cardinals manager Roger Bresnahan always played his weakest lineup against his former team. The writers in Fogel’s group wrote articles about his comments. Ultimately, National League owners held a meeting in New York, Fogel was found guilty of five of seven charges, and was banned forever from the National League.   Albert Wiler was installed as the interim president of a franchise that was in a state of limbo.

Meanwhile, Taft sold his remaining interest in the Phillies and soon thereafter purchased the Chicago Cubs, a team he owned until he sold it after the 1915 season. Wiler served for only three months, leaving the position when a syndicate headed by William H. Locke purchased the team from Taft, who had become the team’s principal owner.

Locke, Dreyfuss’s top assistant with the Pirates, had a lifelong desire to own and operate a major-league baseball team. He put together a group in which he was the biggest investor and which included a cousin, William F. Baker, a former New York City police commissioner and a man of considerable means. Another shareholder was Lewis C. Ruch, a New York businessman. Baker became the second biggest investor in the syndicate. Locke made his bid, which was accepted, and on January 15, 1913, his dream became reality.

Locke worked hard to build a team that had finished third once, fourth five times, and fifth twice in the previous eight years. He held daily conferences with manager Dooin on ways to improve the team. He tried to buy up all outstanding stock so that his interests would be solely in command.

But his efforts suddenly ended. Seven months after he assumed control of the team, Locke died. His passing changed the course of the franchise’s history. His death led to the tenure of William F. Baker, who became the team’s primary owner and president. Two years later, Baker got what Locke had wanted so badly: The Phillies won the National League pennant. Baker would own the team and serve as its president from 1913 to 1930.

Philadelphia Phillies fans enter the Baker Bowl for a game in 1915. (Library of Congress, Bain Collection)

The Start of a Catastrophic Era

In his 18 years with the Phillies, Baker took the franchise from good days to bad days. He made some of the worst trades in major-league history, allowed his ballpark to deteriorate so badly that it became hazardous. He won one pennant, and finished last eight times.

Baker ran his operation on a financial shoestring, even when things were going well in the mid-teens. During the later years of his ownership, he was constantly trading whatever talent he had to get cash to meet the payroll.

Baker died in Montreal on December 4, 1930, a controversial figure in Philadelphia to the end. The big complaint about him was that he never dipped into his own pocket to finance the team. Although he was a wealthy man, he chose instead to let the team pay for itself. In addition, some Philadelphians resented the fact that he spent most of his years as team president commuting back and forth from New York City instead of establishing a residence in Philadelphia

Baker also failed to endear himself to the loyal Phillies fans in 1925 when, in Common Pleas Court testifying in a suit contesting the ownership of shares of Phillies stock, Baker admitted that he was hoping to sell the team eventually. “We (Baker and his partners) thought that when I could get the club up to the first division, we could get a good price for it,” he said.

In reality, Baker was never a baseball man before he took over the presidency of the Phillies. He assumed leadership only to protect his investment. But once he got his feet wet, Baker became a mover and shaker. Shortly after he took over the team, he named the Phillies ballpark after himself. The stadium would be called Baker Bowl for the rest of its long life. Baker fired eight different managers during his tenure, including Pat Moran, who had led the team to the 1915 pennant.

Baker showed a total lack of understanding for the game after the 1913 season when the Federal League was offering many baseball stars much larger contracts. Instead of fighting back, Baker offered small or no salary increases to those Phillies who were approached. As a result, he lost some of his top players.

But after the 1914 season, Baker did something right. He changed managers after the team finished a disappointing sixth, replacing Dooin with Moran. “I didn’t have to go far to find a successor,” Baker said. “I found him right on the ballclub in coach Moran. I’ve watched Pat and like the way he goes about his work. He knows a lot of baseball. I think he’ll make us a fine manager.”3 Baker was right. The first year under Moran, the Phillies won their first pennant.

It has been argued that the Phillies won the 1915 pennant despite Baker, not because of him. Their chances of winning the World Series that year were hindered badly by his desire to generate more revenue by roping off some areas in left and center field, allowing spectators to stand on the playing field between the ropes and the outfield wall.

After Alexander won the first game, and Woodrow Wilson in Game Two became the first president to attend a World Series, the Phillies lost four games in a row to the Red Sox. In the fifth and final game of the Series, Harry Hooper, who had hit two home runs all season, hit two into the roped-off area and Duffy Lewis hit one to give the Red Sox a 5-4 victory. Baker took a terrible beating in the national press, which called him the goat of the Series.

After the 1917 season, Baker made one of the worst trades in the history of the franchise. He moved Alexander and Bill Killefer to the Cubs for $60,000, pitcher Mike Pendergast, and catcher Pickles Dillhoefer. Baker insisted at the time of the deal that it was made strictly because Alexander was going to be drafted for service in the World War and there was no way he was going to gamble on Ol’ Pete’s safe return. But when pressed on the issue several years later, Baker told the real reason for the trade. “Because I needed the money,” he admitted.4

One of the biggest critics of the Alexander trade was manager Moran, who let it be known that he and the boss did not see eye to eye on it. Baker’s response was to fire Moran at the end of the 1918 season.

The Roaring Twenties were not accompanied by roaring crowds at Baker Bowl. Only once in the decade did attendance surpass 300,000. From 1919 through 1930, the Phillies finished in eighth place seven times and in seventh place twice.

Baker again incurred the wrath of Phillies fans by continuing to trade stars for lesser players and large sums of cash. Included in this discarded batch were stars like shortstop Dave Bancroft, pitcher Eppa Rixey, outfielder Irish Meusel, and catcher Jimmie Wilson. In one deal, Baker sent outfielder George Whitted to the Pittsburgh Pirates for outfielder Casey Stengel. He did make a superb trade in 1917, however, when he acquired Cy Williams from the Chicago Cubs. Williams went on to lead the National League in home runs four times, three of them during his 13 seasons with the Phillies, thereby etching his name as one of the great hitters in Phillies history.

Even Giants manager John McGraw, however, who had been the beneficiary of some of Baker’s trades, got tired of Baker’s foibles. He ripped Baker for his manner of conducting business. He said that he, along with other owners, would run Baker out of baseball.

The Phillies president fought back. He accused McGraw of tampering with players on other teams, making them dissatisfied with playing anywhere but for the Giants. McGraw never got Baker out of baseball, and Baker continued to sell whatever good players he had. He also put a 12-foot screen atop the already high 40-foot right-field wall, which was 282 feet down the line, to cut down on Chuck Klein’s home runs, an act done so the slugger could not ask for a higher salary.5

One month before he died, Baker made his last trade, sending Lefty O’Doul, who had hit .398 and .383 in his two seasons with the Phillies, and Fresco Thompson to Brooklyn. In exchange, he received three lesser players and $25,000 in cash.

At his funeral in New York, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis praised Baker as “a pillar of the baseball community.” In reality, his policies were a bitter pill for Phillies fans to swallow. And because of the sad state of finances on the team, the policy of trading stars for cash continued for more than a decade.

The Downhill Slide Continues

The next president of the Phillies was Lewis C. Ruch, who neither sought nor wanted the job. But once named, Ruch proved to be a capable and effective administrator who worked extremely hard to make the club respectable.

Ruch was born on a farm in 1862. His father died in the Civil War, and Ruch was raised in poverty. He had little formal education. As a youth he worked full-time as a farmhand. At the age of 21 he was earning $15 a month on a farm, plus 50 cents for each cord of wood he cut. Eventually, Ruch moved to Ravenna, Ohio, where he got a job in a hardware and farm implement store, earning $25 a month, and enrolled in a six-week business course in a school in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Ultimately, Ruch sold animal feed, then ended up in New York where he met Will Locke and William Baker. He worked at a freight transportation company, then an outdoor advertising company.

One day in 1913, Ruch received an urgent call from Baker. Locke was attempting to pick up an option he had to buy the Phillies, but several of his financial supporters had backed out at the last minute, and the deal was on the verge of collapsing. Locke and Baker were making a final attempt to arrange the sale. Could Ruch help out? He agreed, and later that day he was on a train from Brooklyn to Philadelphia to sign the papers and become part-owner of the Phillies.

One month after the transaction was completed, Locke died, and Baker was elevated to the club presidency. Ruch was named vice president, a position he held until Baker’s death in 1930 cast him into the role of president.

At the time of Baker’s death, he and Ruch owned the controlling interest in the Phillies. There was speculation that the club would be sold. A group headed by Ty Cobb was anxious to purchase it, as were several others. But Baker’s will stipulated that the club could not be sold. Ruch, who had originally retired in 1920 because of declining health, was hauled reluctantly out of retirement to direct the team.

Ruch became president on January 5, 1931, at the age of 69. At the time he had no plans to run the club, but when the board of directors passed him the reins, Ruch plunged enthusiastically into the job.

“Naturally, we are going to try and improve the Phillies,” said Ruch upon his appointment. The club had finished eighth in four out of the previous five seasons. Urging everyone to call him Charlie, the popular Ruch added, “From what I understand, it takes a healthy and active man to run the Phillies. I’ll do everything possible to bring about a winning club.”

Ruch vowed to spend every day from the start of spring training until the end of the season with the club. And he did, moving from his home in Brooklyn to Philadelphia, pumping his energy into the operation. Charlie engineered the end of a long contract dispute with slugger Klein, who staged a holdout that lasted through all of spring training in 1931. Klein signed a three-year contract for $45,000, a heavy sum for the Phillies at the time but far short of what many of Klein’s followers thought he was worth.

Under his administration, Ruch saw the Phillies progress to sixth place in 1931 and to fourth in 1932. But that was the only time the club finished in the first division between 1918 and 1949.

Ed Pollock in the Philadelphia Public Ledger praised Ruch as a sportsman and a “business man of proven acumen. He came into baseball as the president of a major league club at a time when finances were more important than pennants. The golden era had ended. He knew it. The players didn’t. He had to cut overhead expenses and at the same time satisfy the stars.”

After two seasons, Ruch, his health again failing, tendered his resignation as president on the advice of his physician. Charlie was then 71. Soon after he left the club, Ruch moved permanently to his winter home in Miami, where he died in 1937 at the age of 75. He was replaced by Gerald P. Nugent.

Born on October 25, 1892, in Philadelphia, Nugent was a football and baseball star at Northeast High School. After graduating, he took a job in the leather business and worked there until joining the Army in 1917. Nugent served in Europe in World War I, earning two citations for bravery.

After returning home, Nugent worked as a purchasing agent for a fastenings firm. In the early 1920s he met Mae Mallon, a secretary to and close friend of Phillies President William Baker and his wife. The two dated, and eventually Mallon introduced Nugent to her boss. Baker was so impressed with Nugent’s knowledge of baseball that he offered him a job as his assistant.

Nugent began work for the Phillies in 1925. Soon afterward, he and Mae were married. A year later he was named business manager, and in 1928 he joined the club’s board of directors. Long a baseball fanatic who devoured everything he could read on the subject, Nugent played a valuable role as Baker’s right-hand man. One of his moves was to purchase the contract of Klein for $7,500 from a minor-league team.

When Baker died in 1930, he willed 500 shares of Phillies stock to Mae and 700 shares to his wife. Two years later, at the age of 40, Nugent was elected president of the club when Charlie Ruch retired. Then, in 1934, Mrs. Baker died, leaving her 700 shares to Mrs. Nugent and the Nugents’ son, Gerald.

With the 1,200 shares that his wife and son now owned plus some stock he had previously bought himself, Nugent now controlled 51 percent of the Phillies stock. Mae, who had served under Ruch as treasurer and assistant secretary of the club, was added to the board of directors and named a vice president, the first woman to hold a position that high in the National League. Despite her lofty appointment, she refused to discuss it with the press. “Gerry does all the talking for this family,” she said.

Gerry did more than talk. He bought, he sold, he traded, he cajoled. No matter what he did, though, financial problems always seemed to intrude. At one point, Nugent had to put his stock as collateral to keep the team afloat. On at least one other occasion, he used his own salary to pay a debt, although he and Mae reportedly drew a combined salary of only $20,000. He even had to borrow sometimes so that he could send the team to spring training.

On the day he was named president of the Phillies, Nugent made an announcement to the press. “I will not trade or sell any of my key men, Bartell, Whitney, or Klein, no matter how attractive the figure or how promising the material offered. They are the nucleus of our club, the foundation from which we must build.”

Less than two years after making that statement, Nugent had not only traded that trio, but he’d swapped or sold an army of others. It was not so much a commentary on a man going back on his word as it was a statement on the dire straits to which the team had driven him.

In his 10 seasons at the helm of the Phillies, Nugent ruled over the sorriest period in the club’s history. It was an era of terrible teams, playing much of the time in a miserable ballpark with little success and equally little support from the fans. The combination of these formed a perpetually bleak financial picture in which Nugent struggled valiantly to make ends meet.

Gerry, it was said, was always just one step ahead of the sheriff. The team’s debts almost always exceeded its income. In the end that dilemma forced the beleaguered Nugent to relinquish control of his team.

Nugent was an astute businessman with an extremely thorough knowledge of baseball. “But no matter how good an operator you are,” he once said, “you have to have some luck.”

Nugent had none, and neither did his hapless charges. The Phillies never got above seventh place during Gerry’s presidency, finishing eighth six times and seventh four. The club seldom drew many more than 200,000 fans for the season, falling below that mark twice and going above 250,000 just once. Sometimes they attracted no more than 200 or 300 for a game.

It usually cost about $350,000 a year to operate the team, $250,000 of that going for payroll. Nugent figured that each paid admission brought in $1, which gave the club an annual income normally in the $200,000 range. That left an annual deficit of about $150,000. Nugent’s method for balancing the budget was simple. Nearly every year he sold off one or two of his best players.6

Nugent had the uncanny knack, though, of spotting obscure talent. He usually demanded such talent as throw-ins in trades. That’s how he got many fine young players. But once a player showed more than average ability, he was gone. Over the years, Nugent sold and traded away a virtual All-Star team, including Bucky Walters, Dolph Camilli, Claude Passeau, Johnny Moore, Ethan Allen, Kirby Higbe, Curt Davis, Morrie Arnovich, Spud Davis, Dick Bartell, Pinky Whitney, and Klein.

No one ever claimed Nugent didn’t know what he was doing. Gerry was regarded as one of the shrewdest traders in baseball. But the bill collectors always beckoned. And Nugent had to peddle his stars to raise cash. When Gerry sent Klein to the Chicago Cubs in 1933, he received three players and $65,000. Three years later, he got Klein back, along with $50,000.

The Phillies president inspired a lot of emotion with his wheeling and dealing. He was panned and pitied, admired and ridiculed. His constant trades were frustrating to the fans, who watched their heros parade in and out of Philadelphia with sickening regularity. His trades rarely helped the club, except at the bank.

For decades the Phillies had been hampered by the absence of Sunday baseball. The only times the team could expect to attract much of a crowd were Saturday afternoons and holidays. But in 1934, Sunday baseball was legalized in Pennsylvania. The attendance, 156,421 in 1933, jumped to 169,885 in 1934 and then to 205,470 the following year.

Nugent also managed to escape, at long last, from the motley problems of Baker Bowl. The $25,000 rent, plus $15,000 in taxes and $500 in upkeep that he paid each year were insurmountable costs. The right-field wall was so close to home plate that balls flew over it with sickening regularly. Even worse was the miserable condition of the obsolete structure. It was falling apart and had been given the nicknames “The Hump” and “House of Horrors.”

Although he had tried many times to break the 99-year lease signed long ago by his predecessors, Nugent finally succeeded in 1938 after threatening court action. The estate of Charles Murphy, former part-owner of the Phillies and Chicago Cubs and the owner of Baker Bowl, relented after Nugent agreed to make $25,000 payments over the next six years. The Phillies moved out of Baker Bowl in midseason in 1938, shifting seven blocks away to Shibe Park, home of the Philadelphia Athletics, at 21st Street and Lehigh Avenue.

The Phillies president had a reputation as an innovator. He was a strong supporter of interleague games. Nugent tried unsuccessfully to set up a farm system, too, naming Swarthmore College graduate Johnny Ogden, a former pitcher and minor-league executive, as the team’s first farm director. Ogden had one scout, Patsy O’Rourke. He introduced the knothole gang and Ladies’ Day to Philadelphia. And he proposed a Shaughnessy playoff plan in which the top four teams in each league would oppose each other over a two-week period to determine the pennant winners. Nugent thought this plan, used in the minor leagues, would generate a considerable amount of fan interest. Few others at the time agreed.

After a hunting accident in which Chicago White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton extinguished a budding career by shooting himself in the foot (ultimately resulting in the amputation of his leg), Nugent advocated placing a clause in contracts that would ban players from hunting. This idea also had little support.

While Nugent’s mind worked overtime, his players did little else but lose. Gerry, though, was the eternal optimist. “We’re on the upgrade and will have to be figured as a pennant factor this year,” he said in 1941. That year the club lost the most games (111) of any Phillies team in history. In fact, during Nugent’s ownership, the club had four of the Phillies’ seven worst seasons, at one point finishing last and losing more than 100 games in five straight seasons.

There was always some group or individual trying to buy the Phillies. Chocolate manufacturer Milton Hershey once offered $6 million with the idea of moving the club to Hershey, Pennsylvania. A California group wanted to buy the club for $5 million and move it to Los Angeles. Hall of Famer Bill Terry, then the Giants manager, and Philadelphia Eagles owner Alexis Thompson tried to put together a group to purchase the club. And there were other attempts by such potential buyers as Bill Veeck, Branch Rickey, Dan Topping, John B. Kelly Sr., Moe Annenberg, and the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.7

In 1940 a group of the Phillies minority stockholders tried to oust Nugent and take control of the club. After a well-publicized battle that culminated in a stormy meeting of the team’s owners, the group lost its case because of insufficient support.8

In his Thanksgiving Day column in the Philadelphia Record the next day, Red Smith wrote: “Because holders of at least 51 percent of the Phillies’ stock agree he is a peachy fellow, turkey will grace the Nugent board this gladsome day, even though crow may be the piece de resistance for some minority stockholders.”

By this time, though, the Phillies’ debts were still mounting. And Gerry had new adversaries. National League President Ford Frick and the four owners making up the league’s board of directors were closing in for the kill.

In late 1942 it was becoming increasingly obvious that the National League wanted Nugent out, and that he had run out of options. In addition to that, World War II had decimated his team, leaving Nugent with no players left to sell. Reportedly, he owed the league $160,000 and was two years behind in rent at Shibe Park.

Frick moved swiftly, ousting Nugent and appointing a group from his office to run the Phillies while a new owner was sought. The new owner appeared almost immediately. Waiting in the wings to take over the club was William D. Cox, a friend of Rickey, then the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the man Frick wanted to own the Phillies.

Meanwhile, Nugent sadly closed his office at Phillies headquarters in the Packard Building. “The scene,” wrote Ed Pollock in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, “was what you would expect at a funeral. Club employees looked like red-eyed mourners.”

Later, Nugent was named president of the Interstate League, a minor league in the Middle Atlantic area. He served in that position until 1952, then took a post as a stockbroker for a prestigious Philadelphia firm. Nugent died in 1970.

Former collegiate track athlete William D. Cox became owner of the Phillies at age 33 and immediately demanded changes in player conditioning, stating, “I want the team to run morning and afternoon.” (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

In just one short year as president of the Phillies, William D. Cox showed that he was a master at capturing headlines and creating turmoil. Probably no chief executive in the history of the franchise was ever as successful at turning the spotlight away from his team and onto himself. Cox, who was once described as “impatient, impetuous, and inexperienced,” was embroiled in one fracas after another.

A glib, convincing talker, Cox had the promotional instincts of a circus barker and a head substantially less knowledgeable for running a baseball team than he thought it was. Cox was an astute businessman. The trouble was he insisted on operating the Phillies with the same strict regimen with which he ran his lumber company.

He arrived on the scene with a considerable amount of fanfare in early 1943. Heading a 30-man syndicate, 20 of whose members were from Philadelphia, including future Phillies stockholders F. Eugene Dixon Jr. and his father, Cox outbid another syndicate led by John B. Kelly, Sr., for ownership of the team. The group put up $190,000 in cash, plus a $50,000 note for 4,950 of the team’s 5,000 shares. The National League eliminated one-half of the Phillies’ debt to it, and the Athletics’ Connie Mack forgave the amount owed him by the club.

Officially, the new group took title on March 15, 1943. At a press conference, Cox declared, “The Phillies will not want for an all-out show of energy, alertness and winning spirit.” He also said, “Whoever the manager is, there will never be an attempt on my part to interfere.” The statement would sound hollow a few months later.

Cox was 33 when he became president, the youngest man in that position in the major leagues. A native New Yorker, he was born in 1909 and grew up on swanky Riverside Drive, graduating from high school at the age of 15 and attending New York University and Yale.

After leaving Yale in his senior year, Cox worked for a New York bank, an investment firm, and finally a lumber company, which named him its president in 1936. Later, he founded his own lumber firm. In 1941 he became part-owner of the football New York Americans. Cox established a reputation for himself by running onto the field during one game to protest a referee’s call. His action earned his team a 15-yard penalty.

When Cox took control of the Phillies, he promised a fighting club. But the team had a limited number of bona-fide major-league players. And when spring training began at Hershey, Pennsylvania, there were only 14 players in camp.

Cox’s first big move was the appointment of Bucky Harris as the team’s manager. A veteran major-league pilot, Harris made some immediate improvements in the Phillies, and in the early part of the season the club even flirted with the first division.

The new president, who delighted in suiting up and practicing with the team, worked diligently to build the club into a winner. He acquired a number of respectable players, most notably Schoolboy Rowe, Babe Dahlgren, and Jimmy Wasdell. He bought a farm team at Utica, increasing the club’s minor-league holdings to two.

Overall, the Phillies of 1943 were vastly improved from the previous five years of eighth-place finishers. They wound up in seventh place with more wins (64) than any team since 1935. Fans responded favorably. Attendance (466,975) in 1943 not only was more than double that of 1942, but also was the highest for a Phillies team since 1916.

“Some of Cox’s maneuvers and statements were given a poor press and the public reacted unfavorably,” said Ed Pollock in the Evening Bulletin. “But at least he kept the fans talking about him and his ball club.”

Cox tried a lot of schemes to generate interest. On Opening Day, for instance, he set up a footrace before the game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Phillies. The Phillies won when Dodgers manager Leo Durocher ordered his players to jog and “save your running for the ballgame.”

The new owner was convinced that track and baseball had a lot in common. In pursuit of that notion, he hired a veteran track coach, Harold Anson Bruce, as the team’s trainer and physical-fitness director. Neither Harris nor the players were particularly thrilled by the intrusion.

But intrusions were part of Cox’s style. He often gave instructions to players, usually in conflict with Harris’s strategy. Cox made a habit of barging into the locker room before and after games, a practice generally frowned on. He was shocked when some of the writers advised him to stay out of the clubhouse.

During his reign, Cox feuded with National League President Ford Frick, with some of the other owners in the league, and even with officials of his farm team at Trenton, who protested to Commissioner Landis that he was raiding the club of its players.

In late July, climaxing a long and widening rift between the president and the manager, Cox leaked to the press that he was going to fire Harris. Bitter exchanges between the two men followed. The players were so irate that they refused to take the field for a game and returned to play only at the urging of Harris. At one point, almost as an aside, Harris told reporters that Cox had a habit of betting on the Phillies. The remark landed like an exploded bomb.

Through a letter written to him by a Philadelphia sports editor, Judge Landis, who had strict rules against gambling, learned what Harris had said. Quickly, the commissioner launched an investigation. It dragged on for months amid rumors, innuendoes, and speculation. Finally, on November 23, 1943, Landis announced that he was banning Cox from Organized Baseball for life. Despite a hearing on December 3 at which Cox defended himself, Landis’s verdict stood.

Cox, however, continued to participate in sports. In 1945 he became part-owner with Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers of the All-America Pro Football Conference. The team later merged with the New York Yanks and entered the National Football League.

He also vainly attempted to form a 10-nation soccer league. In 1966 he headed the New York entry in the North American Professional Soccer League. In the late 1960s he became general manager of that league’s San Diego Toros, and then executive vice president of the St. Louis Stars. He died in Mount. Kisco, New York, on March 28, 1989.

There’s Hope for the Future

In an era when most baseball teams were the part-time toys of owners whose main interests and occupations were elsewhere, Robert R.M. “Bob” Carpenter Jr. was a rarity. His only job was running the Phillies. He did it for 28 years, more than any president in Phillies history, pouring his energy and his family’s fortune into a team that most of the time lost money and finished in the second division.

The team had been purchased by Carpenter’s father, Robert R.M. Carpenter, a wealthy resident of Wilmington, Delaware, where he had married the sister of Pierre S. du Pont, and later became the president and part-owner of the mammoth E.I. Du Pont de Nemours Company. Various people had tried to buy the team, reportedly even Bill Veeck, whose father had been president of the Chicago Cubs, and who reportedly said he would stock the team with Negro League players if he became the owner.

But the senior Carpenter had made it known that if the Phillies ever came up again for sale, he would be interested in buying the team. When the Phillies lost their second owner in less than one year, Carpenter was contacted. Commissioner Landis was in no mood to play games with the floundering franchise. Connie Mack went to bat for the Carpenters, assuring Landis that they would be good for baseball. Others gave similar recommendations.

On November 23, 1943, the franchise was officially awarded to the Carpenters. The price tag was an estimated $400,000. The senior Carpenter put up the money, the junior Carpenter was installed as president, and the family would become the Phillies’ sole owners for nearly four decades

Born August 31, 1915, the year of the Phillies’ first pennant, Bob had been a football, basketball, and baseball star at Tower Hill School in Wilmington. Later, he attended Duke University, where he earned a varsity letter as an end on the football team.

Carpenter quit college before his senior year to get married. He took a job in the public-relations department of Du Pont, but, unhappy in that position, he left the job after two years. By this time, he was involved in sports activities in Wilmington. He promoted boxing matches and owned the rights to several fighters. He also raised champion Chesapeake Bay retrievers. And in 1937 he won the Delaware state badminton championship.

In the late 1930s, Bob had convinced Connie Mack of the need for a minor-league team in Wilmington. The two became partners in the Blue Rocks of the Interstate League. Carpenter was president, and Mack agreed to use the club as a farm team for his Athletics. Carpenter also became the owner of the Wilmington Blue Bombers, a professional team then in the American Basketball League, and he was the driving force behind the construction of a new stadium in that city.

Once he was installed as president of the Phillies, despite his team’s sometimes shoddy performances, Carpenter became a major power in the National League. While owners of other teams came and went with regularity, Carpenter was a pillar of consistency.

The highlight of Bob’s regime was the club’s 1950 National League pennant. He also presided over the signing of future Hall of Famers Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, and Mike Schmidt, as well as such stars as Dick Allen, Chris Short, Greg Luzinski and Larry Bowa. And he championed the city’s construction of Veterans Stadium.

Perhaps Carpenter’s chief contribution to the Phillies, though, was the dignity he gave to a flimsy franchise. Bob changed the image of the club, giving it the respectability it had for so long been lacking while finishing in the first division just once between 1918 through 1948.

During his 28 years as president, Carpenter’s teams finished over .500 12 times, placing in the first division nine times. The club either finished in or tied for first one time, second once, third twice, fourth five times, fifth seven times, sixth four times, seventh three times, and eighth six times. Over this period, Carpenter, spending nearly every minute of his waking hours working on Phillies business, had 12 managers.

Bob never took a salary, and he never expected to show heaping profits from the Phillies. “If anybody goes into this business for money,” he once said, “he should have his head examined.”

But Carpenter wasn’t anxious to lose money, either. He was a tough-minded businessman who described himself as “an awful skinflint” and who worked hard to achieve success with the Phillies. “I always wanted to make money,” he admitted, “because there’s no satisfaction in doing something if you don’t make a success of it.”

When Carpenter took over the Phillies, the franchise was in ashes, the result of the previous regimes. “All we had to start with,” said Bob, “was 25 second-division players and one minor leaguer named Turkey Tyson.”

The Phillies had a working agreement with one minor-league team (Trenton) and one scout. There was only one player on the roster who would be with the club three years later, young catcher Andy Seminick.

Although he was only 28 years old, at the time the youngest club president in National League history, with World War II at its height, Carpenter faced being drafted. So that he would have someone to run the club when that happened, his first move was to hire Herb Pennock as general manager.

Pennock was a former pitcher and a future Hall of Famer. He most recently was the farm director of the Boston Red Sox. He had been friendly with the Carpenters for many years, even to the point of taking Bob as a youngster on a road trip with him when he played for the New York Yankees.

In 1943 the Phillies had finished seventh, but having been eighth in the five previous seasons, Pennock and Carpenter formulated a plan to pull the club out of the National League dungeon. It would be a slow process, but the basic idea was to build a strong farm system.

“The first thing I want to do is build up the farm system,” said Carpenter at his first Phillies press conference. “We’re not going to beat anybody’s brains out by trying to get a good club right off the bat. But we are going to start working for one systematically.”

With Pennock teaching the young owner how to run a big-league baseball team, the two put their plan into action. Eventually, it became known as “the five-year plan.” Carpenter was drafted into the Army in March 1944 and served until January 1946, leaving Pennock to carry out the plan. Within four years, the Phillies had doled out bonuses amounting to $1,250,000. And the farm system was built up to a level where the club soon had nine scouts and working agreements with 11 minor-league teams.

During the early days of Carpenter’s presidency, the Phillies languished in eighth place. But after two years there, they climbed to fifth in 1946. The team that year was made up mostly of veteran players including Schoolboy Rowe, Emil Verban, Johnny Wyrostek, and Skeeter Newsome, who had been picked up from other teams. Their function was to make the club respectable until the youngsters arrived from the farms.

Meanwhile, Carpenter lavished huge sums on young players. A bonus of $65,000 went to Curt Simmons, $25,000 to Roberts, and lesser amounts to Ashburn, Del Ennis, Granny Hamner, Willie Jones, Stan Lopata, Bob Miller, Bubba Church, and others. Bob would stop at nothing to sign a player he thought would help the Phillies, often outbidding some of the wealthier teams like the Yankees, Red Sox and Cardinals.

To get Simmons, Carpenter even sent the entire Phillies squad to Curt’s hometown of Egypt, Pennsylvania, to face the left-hander’s local team. Simmons put on a dazzling show, nearly beating the Phillies. After the game, Carpenter treated all comers to a chicken dinner at the local fire hall.

There was nothing bashful about Carpenter when it came to opening his checkbook. As he later would demonstrate, that went for established players, too. Bob once offered the Cardinals $500,000 for Stan Musial. And he handed Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley a signed blank check for Duke Snider and Gil Hodges.

Of course, Carpenter’s big bucks didn’t always produce dividends for the Phillies. The club had some notorious flops: Tom Qualters, Tom Casagrande, Steve Arlin, Stan Hollmig, and Ted Kazanski, to name a few recipients of big bonuses.

Carpenter was, however, always attempting some positive change. He even tried to improve the club’s image by changing its nickname. In 1944, Carpenter held a public contest to pick a new name. The winner was Blue Jays. The name, however, was never registered with the league office as an official nickname and, having never gained much acceptance, it was dropped as a secondary nickname in 1948.

In 1946 Carpenter made headlines when he hired a woman scout, Edith Houghton. A former softball star on the widely heralded Bobbies and a former Navy officer, she is believed to have been the first female scout in baseball. One year later, Carpenter set up spring-training camp in Clearwater, Florida, after decades of moving around the country. More than 70 years later, the team was still there.

Pennock died suddenly in 1948, leaving Carpenter to run the club. When the senior Carpenter died a year later, Bob was strictly on his own. He acted as the club’s general manager for six years, until signing Roy Hamey in 1954. As GM, Bob traded away Harry Walker, who had won the batting championship just one year earlier. But he made the deals that gave the Phillies such key members of the 1950 team as Jim Konstanty, Dick Sisler, and Eddie Waitkus.

The high point of Carpenter’s administration came in 1950 when the players he and Pennock had planted on the farms ripened to produce a National League pennant. Sisler hit a 10th-inning game-winning home run to beat Brooklyn 4-1, and give the club the flag on the final day of the season. Relief pitcher Jim Konstanty won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award as a relief pitcher. The team, which averaged just 26 years old, justified the $2 million that Bob by then had pumped into a long-range development plan.

The Phillies lost the 1950 World Series in five games to the Yankees, and they never again came close to a flag during Carpenter’s reign. Some of the stars of the Whiz Kids never approximated their 1950 performances again. Eddie Sawyer, the manager who had been so popular a few years earlier, fell out of favor in 1952 and was fired. And the team in general did a downhill slide from which it never recovered, even though Sawyer was brought back as manager in 1958.

Philadelphia Phillies teammates carry Robin Roberts off the field following the 10-inning pennant-clinching game on October 1, 1950. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

The worst part of Carpenter’s regime occurred in the early 1960s. In 1961 the Phillies lost a major-league-record 23 straight games. Then in 1964, with Gene Mauch as manager and Johnny Callison, Allen, and Jim Bunning starring on the field, the first-place Phillies blew a 6½-game lead with 12 games left to play. It would be a disaster that was never forgotten by anyone who was around at that time.

One of the main criticisms of the Carpenter era was the team’s reluctance to sign black as well as Latin American players. It hadn’t helped the team’s image when manager Ben Chapman and some of his staff screamed racist comments at Jackie Robinson during his major-league debut year in 1947.

Actually, that view was badly mistaken as the team had signed its first African-American, a player named Ted Washington of the Philadelphia Stars, in 1952. Others were signed in the years shortly thereafter, although the first black player to perform in an actual Phillies game did not occur until John Kennedy took the field in 1957.

It was sometimes said that Roy Campanella, a Philadelphia native, would have preferred the Phillies to the Dodgers. But he wasn’t the only great star the Phillies could have but didn’t sign. Al Kaline and Carl Yastrzemski could have worn Phillies uniforms, but got away. So did Hank Aaron.

Carpenter was always somewhat preoccupied with big, strapping pitchers who could throw hard. He packed his major- and minor-league rosters with pitcher like Short, Bob Miller, Jack Meyer, Jim Owens, Don Cardwell, Dick Farrell, Jack Sanford, Dallas Green, Art Mahaffey, Ray Culp, Dennis Bennett, and Rick Wise. One such pitcher the Phillies developed but let go in an ill-advised trade was Ferguson Jenkins, who became one of the outstanding hurlers in the major leagues and a Hall of Famer.

It was just the reverse situation with Roberts. The great right-hander, often rated by Carpenter as his number-one player, performed brilliantly year after year in Philadelphia, at one point winning 20 or more games in six straight years. Repeatedly Carpenter turned down trade offers for Roberts. He finally did move him, reluctantly and only after it had become apparent that Roberts and new manager Gene Mauch couldn’t get along. But he refused $75,000 from one club, instead accepting $20,000 from the Yankees so that Roberts could play for a pennant contender.

Carpenter was like that. A generous man, he loaned money to many of his players who wanted to buy businesses or homes or who were simply short of cash. And he often took care of their expenses when they were ill or had problems. When Waitkus was shot in 1950 by a deranged woman, Bob ordered the best available medical care. Then he paid for a winter of rehabilitation in Florida for Waitkus and trainer Frank Wiechec, one of the first full-time trainers in baseball.

Carpenter could be a strict president. He was opposed to his players enjoying too much nightlife. When the postgame habits of some of the Phillies seemed to become a problem in 1954, Bob and Hamey hired private detectives to follow them. The tactic backfired when infielder Granny Hamner discovered that he was being trailed home after a game. Hamner called police who arrested the detective. Hamner exploded in a well-publicized tirade, demanding and subsequently getting an apology from Carpenter.

Bob could get mad himself. One famous outbreak occurred at spring training in 1949. The Boston Red Sox were visiting Clearwater for an exhibition game. Expecting to see the mighty Red Sox sluggers, a large crowd poured into the ballpark. Boston manager Joe McCarthy, however, had left Ted Williams and Vern Stephens home. When Carpenter learned this, he was irate. Bob grabbed a microphone and announced to the fans that they could have their ticket money refunded. The gesture merely served to infuriate the Red Sox, especially McCarthy. A near-brawl followed in which several Red Sox and Phillies officials almost engaged in a fistfight.

Carpenter could throw his weight around when necessary. When A.B. “Happy” Chandler’s contract as baseball commissioner came up for renewal, Bob led the fight to oust him. He also led the drive to install National League President Ford Frick as commissioner. Carpenter’s side won both battles.

Carpenter was heavily involved in the demise of Connie Mack Stadium (the former Shibe Park) as a major-league ballpark and the emergence of Veterans Stadium. In 1954, although he wasn’t anxious to do so, Bob bought Connie Mack Stadium when the Athletics left for Kansas City. He paid $1,657,000 for a ballpark that in 1908 had been built for $315,248.69. Soon afterward, he began a campaign for a new ballpark.

Carpenter sold Connie Mack Stadium in 1964 to Philadelphia Eagles owner Jerry Wolman for a meager $600,000. The Phillies continued to play there, while the campaign for a new ballpark staggered along. Finally, with Carpenter, the owners of the Philadelphia Eagles, and others prodding the city, a new site was selected at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue in South Philadelphia. Costing some $52 million, the city-owned ballpark that seated 55,371 for baseball officially opened as Veterans Stadium in 1971.

By then the Phillies had run the gamut from pennant winner to doormat to pennant contender to mediocrity. Carpenter’s team had been on a frustrating roller-coaster. On November 22, 1972, Bob announced that he was stepping out as president. His son, Ruly, became the chief executive, and Bob took the position of chairman of the board.

Carpenter died at his home outside of Wilmington on July 8, 1990. He was 74.

Daredevil Karl Wallenda crosses a high-wire atop Veterans Stadium on August 13, 1972, in Philadelphia. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies)

In his nine years as president of the Phillies, Robert R.M. “Ruly” Carpenter III watched his team and the sport it played change completely.

Ruly was 3 when his father took over the team. He was 10 when the team won its second National League championship, but by the time he enrolled in Yale University, the team had reached bottom.

At Yale, Ruly was a two-way end on the football team and captained the baseball team, on which he pitched and batted .350. He was also teased constantly by his classmates and friends about how bad his father’s baseball team was.

Ruly had gone to New Haven with the idea of pursuing a career in law, but he changed his mind while at school. “The teasing and criticism from my teammates and classmates in college convinced me that I wanted to do something about the Phillies. It was kind of a challenge,” he said.

After Carpenter graduated from Yale, he took courses in business administration at the University of Delaware and served as the university’s assistant baseball coach. In 1963 he joined the Phillies in the accounting department. By the spring of 1964, he and then-scout Paul Owens worked together, evaluating the talent on the lowest minor-league teams in the Phillies chain. Later, Carpenter said he enjoyed player development more than anything else in baseball.

“His dedication and intensity were so great, I was certain once he got experience, he would make a fine baseball executive,” Owens said.

Both Owens and Ruly could see something was wrong with the Phillies’ farm system. In 1965, at Ruly’s urging, Owens was named farm director. Ruly became his assistant. The roots had been planted to turn the team around by developing players instead of trying to trade for them.

In June 1972 Owens replaced John Quinn as general manager. One month later, he fired Frank Lucchesi and named himself field manager, explaining that he had to see firsthand what his team was all about. Ruly agreed totally with that philosophy. The Phillies won only 59 games in 1972.

Ruly, at age 32, assumed the presidency after the 1972 season. When he did, the Phillies had a quartet already working for the club who would become the longest-serving employees in the team’s history. Public relations director Larry Shenk had been hired by the team in 1963 and would hold that position until he retired in 2007. Chris Wheeler had joined the Phillies’ PR staff in 1971, then became a broadcaster in 1977, holding that post until 2013. Harry Kalas had also joined the team in 1971, and would be the team’s iconic play-by-play announcer until 2008. And public-address announcer Dan Baker would start in 1972 and after 46 years was still at work in 2018, the second-longest PA stint in baseball history.

When Carpenter took over, however, the Phillies’ future did not seem bright. About the only thing they had going for them was the result of a trade. In the last major deal made by general manager Quinn, who had joined the team in 1959, he talked the Cardinals into giving him Steve Carlton for Rick Wise. It was a deal that would forever stand as one of the best the Phillies ever made.

But there were other problems. Before that season, baseball had undergone a massive change, and the Phillies were hugely affected. When Curt Flood was traded to the Phillies in 1970, he challenged the reserve clause, which bound a player to a club as long as it wanted him. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Eventually, free agency was born.

Ruly hated it all. He admitted that things had not been right in the past, but that now they had swung the other way. At first he refused to get into any auctions for players, preferring instead to sign his own stars like Schmidt and Greg Luzinski to lucrative long-term contracts. He believed the Phillies had developed the players and that they should enjoy the fruits of their labor. Bowa, Bob Boone, and Dick Ruthven were among others who had grown up through the Phillies farm system.

Eventually, they all took major roles on the team. And from 1976 through 1978, under manager Danny Ozark and with Owens adding some high-ranking players like Garry Maddox, Manny Trillo, and Tug McGraw in trades, the Phillies won three National League East titles. But they lost in the League Championship Series each time. Then in 1979, the Phillies signed Pete Rose.

That proved to be a brilliant move. In 1980, led by Rose and the provocative manager Dallas Green, the Phillies won the East Division, and the League Championship Series in a thrilling match with the Houston Astros. They then won the first World Series in club history, beating the Kansas City Royals in six games with Carlton winning two games and McGraw winning one and saving two.

“It was the greatest day of my life, more awesome, more emotional than I ever dreamed it would be,” Carpenter said. But that was one day of happiness. There were too many other days of misery. “It isn’t fun anymore,” Ruly said in 1981, the year of a players strike.

On March 6, 1981, Ruly Carpenter, having repeatedly complained about skyrocketing player salaries, made the announcement that stunned the baseball world. The Phillies, he said, were up for sale. “The reason for this decision to sell,” Ruly said, “is that it has become very apparent to me that some deeply ingrained philosophical differences exist between the Carpenter family and some of the other owners as to how the baseball business should be conducted. It’s just impossible to continue with our philosophy. So, rather than continue to beat our heads against the wall, we have decided to sell.”

Garry Maddox is carried off the field after the Philadelphia Phillies clinched the National League pennant on October 12, 1980, at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas. (Courtesy of Getty Images)

It’s a Whole New Ballgame

William Y. Giles had lived baseball since the day he was born. And he achieved his lifelong dream on October 29, 1981, when a partnership he headed purchased the Phillies, ending nearly four decades of ownership by the Carpenter family.

The son of Warren Giles, a part-owner of the New York Yankees in the 1930s, general manager and then president of the Cincinnati Reds in the 1940s, and the National League president (1951-69), Bill was born in Rochester, New York, in 1934 while his father was a minor-league executive. He got his first job in baseball as a summer employee of the Cincinnati Reds while he was attending Denison University. After serving for three years in the US Air Force, he joined the Reds’ front office on a full-time basis. In 1962 he joined the new Houston franchise as traveling secretary and publicity director. By 1967, he was a vice president of the Astros.

On October 10, 1969, Giles joined the Carpenters and the Phillies as vice president of business operations, as the Phillies prepared to move from Connie Mack Stadium to Veterans Stadium. Giles had been instrumental in the building of the Astrodome in Houston, and in 1971 he led the Phillies into the new Veterans Stadium.

Three years later, Giles was elevated to executive vice president. Eventually, he would become universally recognized as one of the main reasons the Phillies changed their image from shabby losers to progressive winners through the 1970s.

A masterful promoter, Giles launched numerous highly popular moves. He initiated the formation of the Phillie Phanatic, a team mascot that, played first by Dave Raymond and then Tom Burgoyne, became the most highly acclaimed mascot in the nation. He developed Phanavision, a $4 million electronic scoreboard that featured close-up pictures of batters, fans, and replays, plus various kinds of statistical information. He had stuntman Karl Wallenda walk across the top of Veterans Stadium on a wire, and brought in such acts as Kiteman, Cannonman, Rocketman, Benny the Bomb, and the Playboy Bunnies to deliver the first ball at a game. He started the Hot Pants Patrol, a group of highly attractive, scantily clad young women who appeared on the field throughout a game and who served as ballgirls down the left- and right-field lines. And he used parachute jumpers, trapeze riders, duck races, various other animal acts, and celebrities to entertain the fans either before or during games.

Much of this came before Ruly Carpenter shocked the baseball world by announcing during spring training in 1981 that he was putting his world championship team up for sale. Giles played a major role in running the team. Carpenter encouraged him to try to put together a group to buy it.

The sale was finalized on October 29, 1981, with a group of investors paying a reported $30 million. Giles, who reportedly had put up only $50,000 for a 10 percent ownership, had partners that included Taft Broadcasting Company, which owned Channel 29 in Philadelphia and which was granted rights to the Phillies games for 10 years beginning in 1982. Others were J.D.B. Associates (John Drew Betz), Tri-Play Associates (brothers Alexander, James, and William Buck), former 76ers owner Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr., and Rochelle Levy, a prominent artist and wife of Robert Levy, a well-known local businessman and philanthropist who owned Atlantic City Race Track. None of the partners held as much as a 50 percent share of the limited partnership. Taft had contributed $15 million, good for a 47 percent ownership.

The first two years of Giles’ stewardship were highly successful from an on-the-field standpoint. His first team finished second to the world champion St. Louis Cardinals in the National League East. His second team, in 1983, led by Paul Owens after the team’s general manager had again appointed himself manager, had many of the 1980 players including Schmidt, Carlton, and Rose still on the team, plus new additions and future Hall of Famers Joe Morgan and Tony Perez, and the forthcoming 1983 Cy Young Award winner, John Denny. The Phillies won the NL East and the National League Championship Series but lost to the Baltimore Orioles in five games in the World Series with Denny gaining the team’s only win.

The team’s success, both on and off the field was, however, short-lived. Giles had said soon after assuming command of the team that his group’s objective was not to make a lot of money but not to lose money, either. “I really want to win,” he said. “I hate to lose. When we lose, I think it’s my fault. But on the other hand, I don’t want to go broke.”

Nevertheless, the Phillies fell into fourth place in 1984, attendance dropped, and the team was generally acknowledged to have slipped well into red ink. By 1985, the Phillies drew a mere 1,830,350 in attendance, the first time except for the strike-ridden 1981 season that the team had slipped below 2 million since 1975.

In 1986, Taft Broadcasting sold its 47 percent share in the Phillies to Giles, Dixon, and the other stockholders for $24.1 million. Giles became the largest single stockholder in the club. However, the team that Giles predicted would be the “team of the ‘80s” ended the decade with an overall record of 783-780-3, two pennants, and one World Series championship.

When Owens gave up his job as general manager following his short stint as manager of the team in 1983, Giles assumed the role of directing the Phils’ on-field fortunes. For five years, he and other members of the front office ran the baseball operation. “The Gang of Six,” as it came to be called, was often criticized in the press and by fans for some of the moves it made. One of the trades that backfired sent relief pitcher Willie Hernandez to the Detroit Tigers, and he became the American League’s Cy Young Award winner as well as the Most Valuable Player. Giles had also gotten some flak for trading away future Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg in 1981, and for breaking up the 1980 and 1983 championship teams, perhaps prematurely and with little in return.

On the plus side, Giles was the man chiefly responsible for bringing the signing of Rose to fruition. A man who always treated his players and other employees fairly, Giles also brought in general manager Lee Thomas in a move of considerable foresight because of Thomas’s success on the trading market.

Giles made perhaps one of his boldest moves when he signed catcher Lance Parrish to a Phillies contract in 1987. At the time major-league owners, who would eventually be found guilty of collusion, were adamantly refusing to sign free agents. Giles broke the logjam by signing Parrish, who had become a free agent after playing with the Detroit Tigers.

With Giles as president, the Phillies had seven managers. He had the team stage emotional retirement nights for future Hall of Famers Steve Carlton, who had won four Cy Young Awards with the Phillies, and Mike Schmidt, a three-time Most Valuable Player, as part of the numerous special events that were geared to building fan interest and making a Phillies game an entertaining event for fans.

No one, of course, has had more to do with turning the Phillies into one of the major leagues’ most lucrative franchises than Giles. His promotional skills and his ability to market a team and keep it popular despite less-than-satisfactory records on the field were hugely successful.

As a leader among baseball’s top echelon, the future of the sport was also something in which Giles had a keen interest and stake. He was a member of baseball’s television committee, which had entrusted to it the matter of the distribution of potential cable monies and, ultimately, the shape of the game for years to come. Giles was also a member of the rules committee and the National League executive committee, and he was on the committee that recommended interleague play and the inclusion of more than four teams in each league’s postseason playoffs.

He authorized a number of key trades that bolstered the club’s on-field prowess, including acquiring players like Curt Schilling, Jim Eisenreich, Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Dave Hollins, Terry Mulholland, and Mitch Williams. Along with team leader Darren Daulton, they played major roles in the 1993 pennant winner. Despite a disappointing end to the World Series that year with a loss to the Toronto Blue Jays in six games, the Phillies were seen as a team that would rank among baseball’s elite in the ensuing years. Instead, following a strike that began late in the1994 season and carried into 1995, the Phillies never recovered the glory of 1993 and faded back into mediocrity.

Giles himself drifted into the background, away from the spotlight that for many years had shone so brightly on him. Having handed over the daily operation of the club to David Montgomery, who had acquired a small piece of stock in 1994, Giles, at age 63, stepped down as president and chief executive officer of the team in 1997.

His new title was chairman. While Giles had little to do with the team’s daily operations, he continued to be extremely active in local charities and was frequently honored for his work both in baseball and in the city. Moreover, he had another challenge. It was his job to get a new ballpark built.

Giles left no stone unturned. Meeting with politicians, business leaders, and just about anybody else who might have an interest in the mammoth project, Giles final saw his efforts pay off when plans for a new baseball-only ballpark were unveiled in 2001. Getting the Phillies into the new Citizens Bank Park in 2004 may rank as the foremost achievement in Giles’s career. Built at a cost of $345 million, with the city, state, and Citizens Bank footing almost all of the bill, the glittering 43,651-seat ballpark would become an enormously popular spot for local sports fans.

After serving as chairman for some 18 years, Giles was named chairman emeritus of the Phillies in 2015. As of 2018 he was still serving in that post.

The appointment in 1997 of David Montgomery as the leader of the Phillies was more than simply a case of another local boy making good in his hometown. It was the continuation of a long climb from bottom to top for the then-51-year-old Roxborough native who had been a loyal follower of the Phillies since his days as a youthful fan at Connie Mack Stadium. Montgomery would go on to preside and be a part-owner of the Phillies during the greatest era in team history.  

Montgomery had begun his career with the Phillies in 1971 when he came to the team in search of a job and was given a spot in the sales department as a seller of season and group tickets at a salary of $600 a month. Starting the job just six weeks before the opening of Veterans Stadium, Montgomery plunged immediately into the hectic business of putting fans in the stands.

The Phillies president never forgot the lessons learned from those early days of Veterans Stadium, which was a major civic project for the city and also the home of the Philadelphia Eagles. Montgomery would put those lessons to good use 34 years later, when the team embarked on a venture into yet another new ballpark.

A graduate of William Penn Charter School and the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in history as an undergraduate before earning an MBA from Penn’s Wharton School,

Montgomery was promoted to marketing director and director of sales in his early years with the Phillies. When the team was sold in 1981, the detail-oriented Montgomery was named executive vice president, a job in which he ran the daily business operation of the club.

Having gained a reputation as owning one of baseball’s brightest minds, Montgomery moved to the forefront in 1992 when he was appointed executive vice president and chief operating officer of the team. Two years later he became one of the team’s stockholders and the title co-general partner was added to his résumé.

When Bill Giles bowed out in 1997, Montgomery was named general partner, president, and chief executive officer. He operated largely behind the scenes and was seldom quoted in the press or seen on television. But he had attended nearly every Phillies home game since 1971 and almost never took summer vacations. His time out of the spotlight would soon end.

When the Phillies failed to sign number-one draft pick J.D. Drew in 1997 and several other players left the club for higher salaries elsewhere, Montgomery was perceived as being a penny-pincher. Fans grew unhappy with what they regarded as his greater interest in the “bottom line” and disinterest in signing free agents. That perception heightened when first Schilling and then Scott Rolen left the team after accusing it of being unwilling to spend enough money to build another pennant contender.

Fans started staying away from the ballpark in droves and attendance eventually dropped to as low as 1.5 million for the year in 1997, a sharp drop from the then-all-time high of 3,137,674 million in 1993. But very quietly, Montgomery, who was extremely popular among the club’s front-office employees, was building the club on his own terms. Mike Arbuckle, who had been hired as director of scouting and then moved up to director of the whole minor-league operation, was putting together an outstanding farm system, which figured to supply the team with ample numbers of top prospects. Building from within was the anchor of Montgomery’s philosophy.

In addition to building the team on the field, Montgomery played the lead role in making the Phillies a major part of the community, participating in and sponsoring numerous groups and events around the city that became enormously popular. Among these were an annual fund-raising event for ALS, several baseball programs for urban youth, and other programs that supported teachers, fitness programs, and pets.

“I just believe that the organization needs an image that’s not directly tied to wins and losses,” Montgomery said. “We have to do things in the community.”

Under Montgomery’s watch, Ed Wade was elevated to the post of general manager in 1998. Succeeding Terry Francona’s unsuccessful reign, Larry Bowa was hired as the manager, and in 2001 he led the team to only its second .500 season since 1993. In a rash of spending unparalleled in Phillies history, the club began issuing big long-term contracts to some of its better players, including Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, Randy Wolf, and Mike Lieberthal.

Then, with an abrupt shift in policy that stunned both local fans and all of baseball, the Phillies entered the free-agent market in 2003 with their checkbooks wide open. Overall, the club’s payroll was at $56.8 million in 2002, up more than $20 million since 1997

Then the club signed free agents Jim Thome, a future Hall of Famer, and David Bell to ultra-huge contracts while also adding high-priced Kevin Millwood in a trade. These actions helped to rebuild the Phillies into a contender. Fan interest was also reviving as the Phillies finally became once again a top contender in the National League East.

In 2004 the Phillies made their exit from Veterans Stadium to the fancy new Citizens Bank Park, built on one of the Vet’s parking lots just down Pattison Avenue from the ballpark that the Phillies had called home since 1971. In 2004 Montgomery also presided over the opening of Bright House Field (now called Spectrum Field) as a new spring-training ballpark in Clearwater, Florida, replacing Jack Russell Stadium, which had stood as the team’s preseason home since 1954.

Meanwhile, starting with a second-place finish in 2001, the team finished third in the division twice, then second three straight times. By then, Charlie Manuel had taken over as Phillies manager, and eventually the team became filled with star players, such as first baseman Ryan Howard, second baseman Chase Utley, and shortstop Jimmy Rollins — all three becoming the greatest players at their positions in Phillies history — plus outfielder Pat Burrell, catcher Carlos Ruiz and pitchers Cole Hamels and Brett Myers. In addition, outfielders Shane Victorino and Jason Werth, and pitchers Brad Lidge and Jamie Moyer were among players added to the team in trades or as free agents.

The Philadelphia Phillies entered a golden era in the 21st century after moving into Citizens Bank Park, winning a World Series in 2008 and a National League pennant in 2009. (Courtesy of the Philadelphia Phillies/Photo by Miles Kennedy.)

In what was the team’s greatest run in history, the Phillies won five straight division titles, starting in 2007, and went to the World Series in 2008 and 2009. They won the Series in 2008, beating the Tampa Bay Rays in five games with Hamels winning the Series MVP Award. They then lost to the New York Yankees in six games in 2009. Along the way, Howard won two home-run crowns and a Most Valuable Player Award, Rollins also won an MVP, Utley had a starring role each season, and in 2008 Brad Lidge had one of the greatest seasons of any reliever in baseball history when he saved 41 games during the season in 41 save opportunities (plus seven out of seven in the postseason).

Manuel, a Montgomery hire, would go on to become the winningest manager in Phillies history (780 wins between 2005 and 2013). The Phillies, however, would drop down again after the 2012 season, and through 2017 would not come anywhere close to being a winning team.

Meanwhile, Montgomery, a lifetime activist in community and charity organizations, had taken a leave of absence due to illness and left his post as the Phillies leader in 2014. The job as president was given to former general manager Pat Gillick, who was given a small block of stock and served in an interim capacity until Andy MacPhail became president in mid-2015. Montgomery remained with the team with the title of chairman. In the final analysis, much of the credit for the Phillies’ greatest era ultimately went to the man who through 2017 served 48 years with the team, the longest of anybody in the team’s 136-year history.

John S. Middleton had been a Phillies stockholder since 1994 when he became a limited partner with Montgomery, Giles, and the Betz and Buck families. John Betz had died in 1988, leaving his wife, Claire, in charge of their stock. (Claire died in 2017, leaving the shares to the Betz business.) Sally Buck, wife of the deceased James, had also become the owner of her husband’s stock before she died in 2014, leaving the stock to their estate.

Middleton was an extensive philanthropist and the owner of one of the world’s largest tobacco companies and several other businesses. A native of Havertown in suburban Philadelphia, he was a graduate of Amherst College with a master’s degree from Harvard University. After he spent $18 million to get a 15 percent share of the stock in 1994, his ownership in the Phillies had increased after he sold his business for a reported $2.9 billion in 2007 and invested an additional undisclosed amount over several years that wound up giving him a 48 percent interest in the team.

By the time he took over the Phillies with the new title of managing partner in 2016, the club was said to be worth more than $1 billion. With Giles and Gillick having sold the major part of their interests, the other shares were held by the Buck family business called Tri-Play Associates, the Betz family’s Double Play Company, and Montgomery. “We own this team and we intend to win,” Middleton said.

As president, MacPhail had a major role in the decision-making process. His father, Lee, and his grandfather, Larry, were both former major-league executives and inductees into the Hall of Fame. Andy had been a major-league executive with the Minnesota Twins, Baltimore Orioles, and Chicago Cubs, whom he served as president and CEO from 1994 to 2006. He was born in Bronxville, New York, and was a graduate of Dickinson College.

While keeping well below the radar, Middleton and MacPhail worked closely together. One of their major moves was naming in 2015 a youthful Matt Klentak as general manager. Klentak was only 35 years old at the time, the youngest GM in Phillies history. The group also hired Pete Mackanin as manager in 2015, but fired him after the 2017 season, despite his having been signed through 2018.

In 2018 the Phillies ownership also announced that over the next two years it planned to spend $110 million of its own money to refurbish and remodel Citizens Bank Park.

Last updated: October 1, 2018

RICH WESTCOTT is a baseball writer, historian, and the author of 26 books. A former newspaper and magazine writer and editor, he is considered the foremost authority on Philadelphia sports. A former publisher and editor of Phillies Report, he has written eight books on the Phillies, including the local best-selling “Phillies Encyclopedia,” plus three books on Philadelphia’s ballparks. Among his other books are ones on Philadelphia’s championship teams in the city’s four major-league sports, the top 50 baseball players in Philadelphia history, a review of Philadelphia sports in the twentieth century, and biographies of Mickey Vernon, Eddie Gottlieb, and Biz Mackey. Westcott is a former president of the Philadelphia Sports Writers’ Association and has been inducted into four halls of fame.      

Sources

Philadelphia Phillies media guides.

Lieb, Frederick, and Stan Baumgartner. The Philadelphia Phillies (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953).

Shiffert, John. Base Ball in Philadelphia (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2006).

Westcott, Rich, and Frank Bilovsky. The Phillies Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 3rd edition, 2004).

Westcott, Rich. Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).

Westcott, Rich. The Fightin’ Phils — Oddities, Insights, and Untold Stories (Philadelphia: Camino Books, 2008).

Westcott, Rich. Philadelphia Phillies — Past and Present (MVP Books, 2010).

Westcott, Rich. The Champions of Philadelphia — The Greatest Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, and Flyers Teams (New York: Sports Publishing, 2016).

Notes

1 Frederick G. Lieb and Stan Baumgartner, The Philadelphia Phillies (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1953), 12.

2 Ibid., 82.

3 Ibid., 111-12.

4 Ibid., 142.

5 Ibid., 167.

6 Rich Westcott. Philadelphia’s Old Ballparks (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 40.

7 Rich Westcott and Frank Bilovsky. The Phillies Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004), 371.

8 Ibid., 373.

The San Diego Padres celebrated their 50th season in Major League Baseball in 2019. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)

San Diego’s quest for major-league baseball began earnestly in the mid- to late 1950s, around the time California’s largest cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, ascended to “the bigs.” Home of the Pacific Coast League Padres since 1936 and backed by local banker and businessman C. Arnholt Smith, San Diego looked for an opportunity to obtain major-league baseball. City leaders sent representatives to baseball business meetings in hopes of making connections and generating good will.

If anyone was positioned to deliver a big-league team for San Diego, it seemed destined to be Smith. Well-connected among business and political leaders — he was a close friend and adviser to Richard Nixon — Smith’s boosterism earned him the nickname “Mr. San Diego.” Described as always wearing “a smile, a suntan, Buster Brown shoes and a brown suit,”1 Smith had a diverse portfolio of business interests that appeared to provide ample means to acquire a team.2 In addition to owning the PCL Padres, he headed more substantial organizations such as the U.S. National Bank and the Westgate-California Tuna Packing Corporation, the latter a conglomerate with seafood, ground transport, aviation, hotel, and insurance .

To complement his bid, Smith teamed up with Los Angeles general manager Emil Joseph “Buzzie” Bavasi. Bavasi’s career with the Dodgers organization dated to 1940, first as a business and general manager for several minor-league affiliates before becoming general manager of the Dodgers in Brooklyn in November 1950. As GM, Bavasi assembled the talent that would win four World Series and eight NL pennants between 1952 and 1966. With Walter O’Malley ensconced as Dodgers owner, Bavasi was effectively blocked from moving any higher within the organization. Seeking to join the ownership ranks and with O’Malley’s promise of support,3 Bavasi focused on expansion teams. With Smith promising about one-third of the team, the match was made.

Together, the Smith-Bavasi team provided a formidable combination of financial strength and baseball experience. Noting the area population of one million (and growing), Bavasi detected the potential for success: “If everybody in the city of San Diego attends one game, we’ll do all right.”4 In addition, community support for major-league sports was evidenced in November 1965, when 72 percent of those voting approved city bonds that would finance construction of the 50,000-seat San Diego Stadium. While the ballpark would initially house the American Football League’s Chargers, baseball officialdom took notice that the multipurpose facility could also accommodate a baseball team.

The National League was seeking to expand in the late 1960s, but its hand was forced by the American League. Attempting to assuage Missouri Sen. Stuart Symington over Kansas City’s loss of the Athletics to Oakland, the AL agreed in October 1967 to expand by admitting Kansas City and Seattle for the 1969 season. Although the move caught the NL by surprise, it agreed to expand as well during the 1967 Winter Meetings in Mexico City. In voting to expand, the NL did not commit to expanding in concert with the AL. That uncertainty did not dissuade cities from preparing their pitches as San Diego, Dallas-Fort Worth, Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Montreal emerged as the serious contenders.

To evaluate the applicants, the NL appointed an expansion committee of O’Malley, John Galbreath of Pittsburgh, and Houston’s Roy Hofheinz. The composition of the committee was important in two respects. Not only did Bavasi have a close ally on the committee in O’Malley, but it was assumed that Hofheinz would block Dallas-Fort Worth in order to keep the Texas market to the Astros.

The NL convened in Chicago on May 27, 1968, with increasing expectations that the two expansion cities would be chosen for the 1969 season. After 10 hours of deliberations, a likely consequence of the unanimity requirement, NL President Warren Giles announced that San Diego and Montreal were accepted into the league.

Although it was assumed that Bavasi’s status as a baseball insider would assist the city’s bid, it was revealed later how close the Padres came to missing out. To some surprise, the NL accepted Montreal unanimously early in the voting. Buffalo clinched nine votes, but San Francisco’s Horace Stoneham held out for San Diego.5 At one point, San Diego had the support of only four owners as some Eastern owners lobbied colleagues for two Eastern cities.

After 18 ballots, momentum shifted away from Buffalo with San Diego’s bid the beneficiary. When the contenders were called into the meeting room, O’Malley tipped off Bavasi to the result with a smile followed by the question, “You got your ulcer yet?”6 had not accompanied Bavasi to Chicago but sent his attorney, Douglas Giddings.

After speaking with Smith, Giddings reported, “He was happy but he wondered why the meeting lasted so long.”7 Smith expressed his appreciation later: “I am gratified that years of planning and dreaming have come to reality today. … The action in Chicago by the NL owners is another expression of confidence in the great future that lies ahead for San Diego.”8

The Smith Years: Building a major league team

In the aftermath of the NL meeting and with mere months before spring training, attention shifted quickly to assembling San Diego’s major-league organization. At the executive level, Smith was named chairman of the board, Bavasi would serve as president, and Eddie Leishman was elevated from the general-manager position of the PCL Padres to the same spot with San Diego’s new NL club. The NL set the expansion fee at $10 million, the first $1 million of which was due on August 15. Of the $10 million aggregate, $6 million would be allocated to compensate the other NL clubs for each of the 30 players to be taken during the expansion draft. The Padres officially joined the NL with a $6 million payment on January 28, 1969, with the remaining $3 million to be paid in installments.

With the franchise in hand, the Padres turned to negotiating contracts for local radio and television rights and a lease for San Diego Stadium. The Padres hoped to maximize local radio and television given that the expansion clubs would not receive a share of national television revenue until the 1972 season. However, San Diego was hemmed in by the two-club Los Angeles market to the north and the Mexican border to the south. This caused some concern that the Padres would be hampered in their local negotiations. The team and local station KOGO announced an agreement at the end of July 1968 for both radio and television rights.

Although the Pacific Coast League iteration of the Padres was already playing at San Diego Stadium, a new lease was required for the major league team. After several rounds of negotiations that became stuck on the issue of a city subsidy to defray some of the costs to obtain the franchise, the club and the city delivered two tentative agreements to the City Council on August 1.

The parties to the first agreement were the city and the Padres, under which the club would pay a rental fee of 8 percent of ticket revenue over the 20-year lease term. The second agreement was between the city and San Diego Stadium Management Co., formed by the Padres to manage, operate, and promote the 50,000-seat ballpark for nonbaseball uses. The city would pay the management company the actual costs to maintain and operate the stadium on an agreed annual budget plus a 10 percent management fee. In addition, the city agreed to a subsidy of approximately $2.1 million in annual installments over the first seven years of the agreement, amounts intended to be reimbursed over the final 13 years of the agreement.

Early speculation on the managerial appointment focused on Dodgers third-base coach Preston Gomez and then-PCL Padres’ manager Bob Skinner. The PCL Padres were the Triple-A affiliate of the Phillies, and they tapped Skinner in mid-June 1968 to replace Gene Mauch in the Philadelphia dugout. While Mauch was believed to have interest in managing the NL Padres, Bavasi hired Gomez on August 29 on a one-year contract. The Cuban-born Gomez would be the first Latino hired to manage in the major leagues. At the introductory press conference, Leishman commented, “There were other people we considered, but Preston is the man we wanted most.”9 Leishman also viewed Gomez’s reputation as a teacher to be an important asset in assembling a new, young team to compete in the NL.10

The expansion draft provided the main opportunity to harvest a roster capable of competing at the major-league level. Bavasi lured 20-year scouting veteran Bob Fontaine away from Pittsburgh to run San Diego’s scouting operation. Bavasi nonetheless had his own idea of the team he hoped to assemble: “The thing we have in mind is to concentrate on good fielders, ballplayers who can run and control a bat. Naturally, we’ll be after strength down the middle. … The ground is hard at [San Diego Stadium] and we must have a good center fielder.”11

Under the expansion-draft rules, San Diego and Montreal would each select 30 players from the 10 established NL clubs. The draft occurred on October 14, 1968, in the Versailles Room of Montreal’s Windsor Hotel, the same location as the National Hockey League’s “Second Six” expansion draft ahead of the 1967-68 season. San Diego won a coin flip with Montreal for the right to pick first, and the Padres used that choice to select Downtown Ollie Brown from the Giants. Brown, a 24-year-old outfielder with a strong throwing arm, had slumped in 1968 after hitting .267 with 13 home runs in 1967.

With its second pick, San Diego chose pitcher Dave Giusti from St. Louis. Giusti had been traded from Houston to the NL champions the week before the draft and made no attempt to hide his feelings. “Nobody in St. Louis told me this was going to happen. I wanted to work for a championship club.”12 The Padres rounded out their first batch of selections with Dick Selma, 9-10, 2.75 ERA with the Mets; Al Santorini, a 20-year-old right-hander from the Braves organization; and Jose Arcia, a “good glove, weak bat” second baseman from the Cubs.

The Padres brass targeted youth throughout the draft, selecting players like Clay Kirby, a 20-year-old right-hander from the Cardinals organization; Fred Kendall, 19-year-old catcher from the Reds system; Julio Morales, an outfielder and another 19-year-old; Nate Colbert, a 22-year-old first baseman-outfielder who hit .264 in 1968 for the Astros’ Triple-A club in Oklahoma City; and Jerry DaVanon, a 23-year-old shortstop from the Cardinals organization and a native San Diegan. Unlike Giusti, he was excited to join the Padres. “Being picked by San Diego was the nicest surprise I’ve ever had,” DaVanon said.13

After the draft, the differing strategies between the Padres and Expos became readily apparent. The Expos certainly had more familiar names in veterans Maury Wills, Donn Clendenon, Manny Mota, and Jesus Alou. Bavasi mused, “We drafted players who are on the verge of becoming real big leaguers and Montreal drafted a bunch of players who are trying to stay in the majors.”14 Bavasi explained the club’s expansion draft strategy to San Diego Union columnist Jack Murphy: “Our job is to give fans a good show, and I don’t think you can do it with veterans.”15 Leishman added, “The club is tailored to fit a big park such as San Diego Stadium. We wanted speed, pitching, and defense.”16

The Padres waited for the Chargers to conclude their 1968 AFL season before making a concerted push for season-ticket sales. In that department, the Padres were lagging behind their Montreal expansion brethren. The Dodgers’ Don Drysdale and the Giants’ Willie Mays assisted the Padres’ efforts by recording radio spots to let San Diegans know they would be visiting during the coming season.17

The 1969 Padres coaches gather around manager Preston Gomez during spring training in Yuma, Arizona. Left to right are coaches Sparky Anderson, Wally Moon, Roger Craig, and Whitey Wietelmann. (COURTESY OF TOM LARWIN)

There was some concern that the decision to keep the Padres moniker contributed to tepid ticket sales. Bavasi favored dropping the name, but was overridden by both Smith and apparent fan sentiment. Smith’s influence brought around Bavasi as the latter declared, “It’s a beautiful name, very apt and descriptive.”18 The swinging friar logo as well as the brown and gold color scheme debuted in November, and the club unveiled its uniforms in December. As the 1969 season approached, Bavasi’s initial concerns appeared to be manifested in still-disappointing ticket sales. Bavasi explained, “When people see or hear the name Padres they still think of minor-league baseball.”19

For their first spring training, the Padres selected Yuma, Arizona, over Mesa-Tempe, Arizona, and Imperial Valley, California. The Cactus League was a natural fit for the Padres, and the circuit would include seven teams for 1969: San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, California, Cleveland, and the Chicago Cubs. The Padres used temporary facilities and a remodeled Keegan Field while the City of Yuma built a permanent complex with four fields in time for 1970.

The new San Diego Padres made their NL debut on April 8 at San Diego Stadium against the Houston Astros. Bavasi maintained his optimism about the new venture despite having to revise downward his hopes for a bumper crowd on Opening Day. He commented, “San Diego is either a major-league city or it isn’t. I think it is and I believe I made the right decision.”20 Although the attendance of 23,370 fell short of expectations, the on-field result did not disappoint. Scattering five hits and backed by Ed Spiezio’s line-drive home run in the fifth and an RBI double by Brown, Selma secured the first win in Padres history, 2-1.

The Smith Years Continued: The constant specter of relocation

Despite the Opening Day success, the 1969 Padres struggled on and off the field. On the field, the Padres completed the opening series sweep of the Astros, but finished April at 9-14. The Padres were 24-30 on June 4, but proceeded to drop 31 of their next 36 games to establish a firm hold on the NL West Division cellar. Chris Cannizzaro became the first Padre selected for the All-Star Game, although he did not play. With the team collapsing on the field, attendance followed suit. The attendance barely topped a half-million; at 512,970, the Padres drew about 160,000 fewer fans than the Seattle Pilots, their American League West Coast expansion counterpart, who moved to Milwaukee in April 1970 after the team’s bankruptcy. Attendance was such an issue for the Padres that Buffalo and New Orleans inquired about relocation in July.21 The Padres finished 52-110, the same record as the Expos. In a debut season filled with ups and (a lot of) downs, San Diego was now a major-league city.

Throughout the Smith years, the club was dogged by poor performances on and off the field.

Expansion draftees Colbert and Kirby become the early stars of the club, and the Padres continued the strategy of building with youth. The results lagged, however, and the team could not escape the NL West basement. Relocation rumors also persisted as disappointing attendance figures suggested San Diego was unable (or maybe unwilling) to support major-league baseball.

With relocation such a persistent concern, the Padres Action Team and Chamber of Commerce organized to sell partial season tickets for the 1972 season. With a young team and improved offense, there were signs of preseason optimism. Leishman said, “If we get off well and stay around .500, I’m sure the attendance will pick up.”22 A slow start doomed the Padres once again. Bavasi fired Gomez after 11 games and replaced him with third-base coach Don Zimmer. The move provided a temporary respite for the Padres’ ails, and large crowds were attracted to the San Diego Stadium for series in May against the Dodgers and Reds. By the end of June, however, the team was in last place once again. Colbert had a great year (38 HRs, 111 RBIs), but he was the only one. A weak lineup and poor pitching ensured a last-place finish in the NL West.

Bavasi tried to quash rumors of a move to Washington, D.C., or Toronto, and he could point to improved attendance by about 85,000 over 1971. Washington-area lawyer Edward Bennett Williams and businessman Joseph Danzansky were known to have been sniffing around the Padres as a replacement for the Senators, who had decamped to Arlington, Texas, for the 1972 season. Before the San Diego Sportscasters-Sports Writers Association meeting in September 1972, Bavasi proclaimed, “I’ve come here to put an end to all of the scare stories — the Padres definitely are staying in San Diego.”23 Danzansky’s interest had a figure attached to it as he tabled an $11.75 million bid for the Padres in November 1972 with the clear intent of moving the team to Washington.

Bavasi continued to champion San Diego, and argued that the critics should not judge the city until the team became competitive.24 There were practical financial issues that needed to be resolved for the team to be successful. The Padres were estimated to have lost $2 million in their first four seasons. As would become evident, Smith did not have much liquidity to absorb these losses.

In addition to the attendance issues, the Padres and the city were in a conflict over stadium advertising, which the city had retained the right to sell. Bavasi observed, however, that the scoreboard advertising panels sold by the city featured competitors of the team, including Smith’s U.S. National Bank, leading some radio sponsors not to renew for the 1973 season. Bavasi believed the problem would only increase over time and enlarge the differences in broadcast revenues between the Padres and other teams.25 Though the ads provided approximately $40,000 to the city, Mayor Pete Wilson agreed to help the club work through lease and advertising issues and also committed to help with season-ticket sales.

On December 22, 1972, the club provided San Diego baseball fans with an early Christmas gift (depending on one’s view of those early Padres teams) by announcing their intent to stay in San Diego for the 1973 season. Bavasi referred to Smith as “the only Santa Claus in the baseball business.”26 The city stayed with its carrot and stick approach: offering help with the lease while reminding the team that the lease had a 20-year term. Making good on his promise, Wilson teamed up with 75 local businessmen in January to launch a drive to sell 10,000 “mini” season tickets, or the equivalent of 3,000 full-season packages.27 Wilson said, “This is a good young club — better than people realize –and it deserves public support. Up to now, the support hasn’t been good enough.”28

Lurking in the background, Smith’s financial empire was beginning to crumble. The Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission were taking interest in his business affairs. He would have to sell, and soon. With respect to the Padres, Smith had borrowed most of the money required to pay the NL expansion fee, requiring annual interest payments of $700,000. San Diego Union sportswriter Jack Murphy wrote that Smith would be unable to make the interest payment due in May 1973, illustrating the depth of Smith’s situation. Meanwhile, the Padres were not exactly luring the populace to the ballpark as another poor start ruined the season before it really started. The Padres had the good fortune to draft Dave Winfield from the University of Minnesota, but future prospects would have to provide any good news for Padres fans.

On May 27, 1973, Smith announced that he had signed a letter of intent to sell to Danzansky for $12 million. Smith claimed that he wished the team would stay but he did not see how the situation would work out. Bavasi stated that any move was “not an indictment of San Diego. I can’t blame the town or the people.”29 Nonetheless, Bavasi opened talks with potential Japanese investors. He asserted, “I intend to exhaust every effort I can to keep the Padres in San Diego.”30

On August 1 Bavasi revealed that those talks had come to naught. Ultimately, Bavasi was limited in his ability to prevent Smith from acting unilaterally. Although it was thought that Bavasi had actual equity in the Padres, his supposed 32 percent ownership was illusory. That is, it had been intended for Bavasi to acquire his stake over time through profits generated by the team; none, however, had been earned since the team’s formation.31 Possibly seeking to placate the club’s nerve center, Danzansky offered jobs to Bavasi and his son, Peter, with the relocated club for 1974.

If Danzansky intended to follow through on relocating the Padres to Washington, he would have to overcome opposition from the City of San Diego and skepticism from the NL owners who would have to approve the sale and relocation. The city made clear its intent to fight back, and went to court to block any move. There remained more than a decade on the club’s lease of San Diego Stadium, and the city stood to lose millions without its primary tenant.

Within the NL, there appeared to be little enthusiasm to plant the league flag in a twice-failed AL city. Before flying to Washington to meet Danzansky on September 5, Bavasi offered, “I’m going to be very honest with Joe and tell him that several owners are violently opposed to the move.”32 Two weeks later, the NL held a daylong meeting in Chicago that provided no resolution other than a 30-day delay on taking a vote. It appeared that five or six clubs opposed the deal, and nine votes from 12 would be needed to approve the sale.33

Meanwhile, Smith’s legal and financial woes with federal agencies continued to pile up. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency declared U.S. National Bank to be insolvent in October, the nation’s largest-ever bank failure at that time. The IRS and SEC continued to investigate Smith’s affairs. The IRS claimed that Smith owed $22.8 million in back taxes and interest, and the SEC sued Smith and other executives for fraud against shareholders of Westgate and U.S. National Bank.

Against the backdrop of multiple federal inquiries and Danzansky’s bid looking like a nonstarter, Smith announced on October 5 that he had found another buyer willing to keep the team in San Diego. Marjorie L. Everett, CEO of the Hollywood Park Race Track and other tracks around the country, assembled a group that agreed to buy the club for around $10 million. Everett’s group included music composer Burt Bacharach, orthopedic surgeon Robert Kerlan, and Vernon Underwood (chair of Hollywood Park Race Track board), but some regarded Everett as “only slightly less controversial than gas rationing.”34

Opposition to Everett among NL owners related to testimony she provided in the bribery and conspiracy trial of Judge (and former Governor) Otto Kerner in Illinois. Everett sold stock in Chicago-area race tracks to Kerner for which he made a profit, a transaction apparently related to securing favorable racing dates. Everett claimed she was a victim of extortion over lost racing dates and was never charged with bribery or any other wrongdoing. Her lawyer, Neil Papiano, said, “Marge was investigated by every law enforcement agency you can think of and everyone gave her a clean bill of health.”35 Wilson also argued that she should be approved as Padres owner, noting that the city also had made inquiries of law enforcement.36

NL owners appeared unpersuaded. Heading into the Winter Meetings in Houston, four owners were said to oppose the sale to the Everett group.37 There were also rumors of finding someone to operate the team in San Diego in 1974 and then moving the Padres to Seattle, New Orleans, or Toronto for the 1975 season; it had not escaped baseball’s attention that Seattle and New Orleans were building domed stadiums scheduled to open in 1975.38

On December 6, 1973, the NL formally rejected Everett’s bid but provided conditional approval to Danzansky’s. The condition included a 15-day window to resolve San Diego’s $12 million lawsuit over the remaining years on the lease and provide an indemnification to the NL against $5 million in possible damages. During that window, the city also filed a federal antitrust suit seeking $24 million in damages, which if successful would treble to $72 million under the antitrust laws. The suit named a host of baseball and public officials, alleging a conspiracy to prevent San Diego from lawfully operating its stadium in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Damages included lost revenues, destruction of the city’s business relationships, loss of and inability to get another baseball team, and loss of associated revenues from tourism.39

With obstacles emerging, Danzansky remained excited but restrained. He was working to secure the indemnity requested by the NL, but it was clear that there were limits to the financial risk he would assume to acquire the Padres. Danzansky asserted, “We just want a club that is free and unencumbered. We are not prepared to take an inordinate risk more than our $12 million that we are paying for the club.”40 To provide the indemnity, he approached Smith about changing the terms of the payouts. Originally, Danzansky and Smith agreed to a payment of $9 million in immediate cash with the remaining $3 million to be paid out over a longer term; Danzansky now sought to provide $7 million in cash upon sale with $5 million held in reserve for the requested indemnification.41

Danzansky could not arrange a satisfactory indemnification and the league rescinded its conditional approval on December 21. One week later, Everett appeared back in the picture with Smith accepting a renewed offer of around $9 million for the team. Part of the bid’s attraction was that Smith had a final $750,000 installment on his expansion fee coming due, and the Everett group sweetened the deal by agreeing to make payment on January 5.42

The NL still was not having Everett and again rejected her bid for the club on January 9. The vote was 9 to 3 against Everett, with only San Francisco and Cincinnati joining San Diego in favoring the sale. NL President Chub Feeney refused to provide an explanation, but Papiano and Wilson each suspected that the Kerner issue was just an excuse and that the NL really wanted to choose its own group that would move the team.43 In rejecting the bid, the league would have to return the installment payment to Everett.

The ownership saga left the Padres entering 1974 with uncertainty about their owner and their home. Bavasi’s efforts to manage baseball operations were hindered by a dwindling supply of working capital. On January 11 Wilson claimed he had spoken with three groups interested in buying the team, but Bavasi quickly disputed the claim: “There is no line forming to buy the team, at least not to my knowledge.”44

Spring training was about six weeks away, and the team had no idea if it was staying or going. There were no contracts for radio or television in place for the coming season,45 and the club was forced to ask the city for $71,000 in order to prevent 10 players from becoming free agents. Wilson assisted with obtaining the funds, calling the payment an advance on money owed by the city to the Padres’ stadium management company.

The Ray Kroc Years: Stability, splurging, and building a pennant winner

Just when it seemed the situation was at its bleakest, San Diego finally had the owner and stability it needed. On January 23, 1974, McDonald’s founder and chairman Ray Kroc reached an agreement with Smith to purchase the team for $12 million in cash while also committing to keeping the Padres in San Diego. Kroc announced his confidence in San Diego: “I am totally inclined to keep the team in San Diego. … I think San Diego can be a great sports town.”46

With a personal fortune of around $500 million, Kroc clearly possessed the financial wherewithal to turn the Padres into a contender. His wife, Joan, told him he would be “nuts” to buy the team,47 but Kroc bought the team with a sportsman’s enthusiasm: “Baseball is my sport. I want to have fun with an expensive hobby.”48 Kroc believed he could turn around the club and, drawing upon his background, bring fans into the ballpark. Kroc said, “A winning team, a fighting team, a personality team will draw, just like a great show will be a success.”49 He planned for amenities such as a stadium club and package deals with hotels and restaurants as well as 4:00 P.M. or 5:00 P.M. start times for weekday games.50

The NL unanimously approved the sale on January 31. There was some last-minute drama as Smith threatened to cancel the sale if the IRS attached Kroc’s check, a situation that Kroc made clear was Smith’s problem. Smith’s legal woes followed him for years; he was ultimately convicted of income-tax evasion and embezzlement but would serve only seven months tending to roses at an honor camp.51

Kroc quickly negotiated a new lease with the city that would keep the Padres at San Diego Stadium for the foreseeable future. The city agreed to take over day-to-day stadium operations, and Kroc extended a personal guarantee in relation to the lease.52 Under the terms, the Padres would get one-third of parking revenue and all concession revenue, and the club received veto power over ballpark advertisers but none of the income. The city would continue to receive 8 percent of gross receipts, but also get 50 cents per person for attendance over 800,000 after 1978.53

Kroc announced that he would retain Buzzie and Peter Bavasi, but it became apparent that Kroc would be a more hands-on owner than Smith was. Kroc said, “I’ll be a very active owner, but I’ll try to stay out of Buzzie’s hair.”54 The tradeoff for having an active owner was that Kroc’s money would give Bavasi greater flexibility to build a contender. Bavasi observed, “We will be in a position, financially, to compete with the other clubs.”55 Kroc expanded on his view about club responsibilities under his ownership. He stated, “I won’t interfere in the management of the club. Buzzie will have the manager of his choice. My line is marketing and merchandising: I’ve been in the food and beverage business all my life. I’ll concentrate on the quality and cleanliness at the ballpark. It will be a place where people can come to have fun.”56

However things turned out, Murphy wrote about the fundamental difference between Smith and Kroc as owners: “For the first time since the birth of the San Diego ball club in 1969, there is no speculation the franchise will fail and be moved elsewhere.”57 Murphy added, “The team’s new owner already is uniquely popular in this town. People have decided he is a man who can be trusted.”58

With the ownership situation resolved, there remained the not insignificant matter of preparing for the 1974 baseball season. The front office had adopted a dual track approach to the 1973-74 offseason: trying to create the economic conditions that would permit the team to stay in San Diego and shaking up a roster with little idea about where the team would play. In such a climate where ownership and location seemed likely to change by the week, the Padres engineered trades for established stars Willie McCovey, Matty Alou, and Bobby Tolan.

The anticipation manifested itself with a crowd exceeding 39,000 for the home opener against the Astros. Fans showed their appreciation to Kroc through a pregame standing ovation. The on-field results did not go as hoped, and the Padres trailed badly late in the game. Kroc used the public address microphone to let the fans know, “Ladies and gentlemen, I suffer with you.”59 Shortly afterward, he opined to the crowd “that this is the most stupid baseball playing I’ve ever seen.”60 Kroc later apologized for the comment.

Stable ownership and additional promotions helped drive attendance over one million, far exceeding any previous season’s attendance. Injuries cursed the roster, including Tolan missing two months after getting hurt in midseason, and the Padres finished last in the NL West once again, with a record of 60-102. In a sign of future aggressiveness in the free-agent market, though, Kroc flashed the cash in a bid for new free agent Catfish Hunter but lost out to the Yankees; he also pursued Andy Messersmith the following offseason with similar lack of success.

In 1975 Randy Jones emerged as a star talent and the Padres finally get out of the NL West cellar with a fourth-place finish at 71-91. Important for the business side, attendance continued to climb, reaching 1.28 million. Jones continued his ascent into baseball’s elite by earning the All-Star Game start and the Cy Young Award for the 1976 season. The Padres did not see a noticeable improvement in results, with a 73-89 record, but attendance almost hit 1.5 million.

With free agency implemented throughout baseball before the 1977 season, Kroc followed through on earlier forays into the market. This time the Padres landed Rollie Fingers (six years, $1.6 million) and Gene Tenace (five years, $1.8 million) while also acquiring George Hendrick through a trade with Cleveland. The Padres appeared poised for a leap, but the team struggled. Manager John McNamara paid for the failures with his job on May 29, replaced by the unpopular Alvin Dark. Kroc thought well of McNamara personally, but argued, “Mac is a very wholesome guy but we’re in the baseball business, not the fellowship business. The players by their performances have shown us we aren’t getting the leadership we need.”61 Despite adding Dave Kingman on June 15, the team finished fifth and suffered its first attendance decline of the Kroc era.

Tensions from the managerial change created a simmering situation that culminated in Bavasi’s departure shortly before the conclusion of the 1977 season. The decision to fire McNamara had been Kroc’s, not Bavasi’s. Bavasi declared, “I’m still a John McNamara man” when he resigned.62 Bavasi was further irritated that Dark opened a direct channel of communication with Kroc. When Bavasi also somehow found himself embroiled in apparent disagreements with Joan Kroc, he bolted. While he may not have had the freedom of action under Kroc that he had with Smith, Bavasi acknowledged the resources that Kroc brought to the team. Bavasi said, “It’s a shame Ray Kroc couldn’t have been our original owner.”63 Kroc reached a financial settlement with Bavasi, leading the latter to quip, “If I had known Ray was going to be this generous, I would have resigned two years ago.”64

Within weeks, Gene Autry hired Bavasi to lead the front office of the California Angels. Kroc promoted Bob Fontaine to GM with a directive to make trades and acquire young players. In the shake-up, Kroc took Bavasi’s title as president and named son-in-law Ballard Smith as executive vice president. Fontaine would have the final say on trades, and Smith would look after the balance sheet. Smith explained, “People have the impression Ray is making a lot of money off the Padres, but that is hardly the case. My ambition right now is to see that we break even this year.”65

The Padres, however, appeared not to be taking concrete steps to rein in spending ahead of the 1978 season. Kroc authorized the signing of Oscar Gamble on a six-year deal worth $2 million. The club also signed Gaylord Perry as a free agent from Texas and coaxed Mickey Lolich from retirement. For good measure, Kroc bought an airplane for club travel. The despised Dark was replaced by Roger Craig in the dugout. The first half of the campaign was plagued with the now-characteristic inconsistency, but rookie Ozzie Smith made his big-league debut and ensconced himself at shortstop with a Rookie of the Year runner-up campaign.

San Diego hosted its first All-Star Game on July 11, with Winfield and Fingers representing the host team. After the break, a 10-game winning streak starting in late July carried the team over .500. While never really threatening to become a player in the divisional race, the Padres remained on the happy side of the ledger and completed their first-ever winning season at 84-78. Attendance surged to 1.67 million, another club attendance record under the Kroc regime.

Kroc continued to show aggressiveness in recruiting players to San Diego. He lost out to the Phillies in trying to sign Pete Rose, but another slow start to the 1979 season caused Kroc to get ahead of himself in the coming free-agent market. Kroc vowed to spend $5 million to $10 million for talent; he did not stop at an amount, however. Rather, he specifically named Graig Nettles and Joe Morgan as his targets “if they become free agents.”66 Their current employers were not pleased, and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Reds President Dick Wagner complained to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn about tampering. Kroc apologized, saying, “I made a slip of the tongue.” He also took himself out of the contention to bid for Nettles or Morgan, but made clear, “I’ll do what it takes to improve the team.”67

Despite the apology, Kuhn fined Kroc $100,000, the largest in baseball history at the time. Kroc chose not to appeal and also stepped down as Padres president, handing the title to Smith. He sounded defeated and irritated in saying, “Baseball has brought me nothing but aggravation, it can go to hell.”68 It appeared he might give up more than his title in suggesting, “There’s a lot more future in hamburgers than in baseball.”69

Although upset in the aftermath of the fine, Kroc remained the pivotal person among the Padres leadership. The promotions continued, culminating in the hiring of Ted Giannoulas, better known as the San Diego Chicken, to fire up the fans. Kroc explained, “When you own something, you never give up control. I own the Padres. I don’t work on the day-to-day stuff, but I own the club.”70 The negative results on the field — a fifth-place finish in 1979 despite Winfield’s best season yet — caused attendance to slump. Craig paid for the failures with his job, to be replaced by Padres broadcaster Jerry Coleman.

Indeed, neither Nettles nor Morgan joined the Padres in the 1979-80 offseason, and Fontaine’s overtures to pitchers Nolan Ryan and Dave Goltz also came up short. Fontaine managed to part with some of Kroc’s millions in signing Rick Wise and John Curtis. Those contracts paled in comparison to the riches that appeared to await Winfield. Going into the 1980 campaign, the club and the player were millions apart. Another disappointing start to a season did not help matters. Fontaine was fired in midseason and Smith hired Jack McKeon as his replacement, a move that would pay dividends in crafting an eventual pennant winner. The team, however, finished in the cellar and attendance dropped to 1.14 million, a loss of more than a half-million ticket buyers since the high of 1978.

As expected, Winfield played his last season in San Diego, trading Padres brown for Yankee pinstripes (and plenty of Yankees green). With the passing of longtime sportswriter Jack Murphy in September, the ballpark would be renamed for the San Diego Union columnist.

Padres owner Ray Kroc greets the San Diego Chicken before a game in the late 1970s. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)

McKeon moved Coleman back to the broadcast booth for the 1981 season, hiring the former Dodger and Senator Frank Howard to man the dugout. The rookie manager presided over a season that had not one, but two, last-place finishes. As McKeon began remaking the roster, the team had a youthful look with most regulars in their mid-20s. The inexperienced team brought up the rear of both halves of the strike-shortened 1981 season, notable perhaps only for the crowd of 52,608 that took up Kroc’s offer of free admission to the first home game after the end of the two-month midseason work stoppage. McKeon fired Howard after the season, but the hire of Dick Williams would bring championship managerial experience to the club.

McKeon faced the prospect of another star player bolting in free agency, as shortstop Ozzie Smith and his agent agitated for a long-term deal beyond the Padres’ means (even Kroc’s). McKeon found a trading partner in Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog, and the teams agreed to an even exchange of shortstops, Smith for Garry Templeton. Under Williams’s tutelage, the Padres had baseball’s second-best record during the first half of the 1982 season, and only the division rival Atlanta Braves were better. The Braves ended up winning the NL West, while the Padres slumped to 81-81 by season’s end. The second half witnessed the big-league debut of Tony Gwynn, but also the arrest and suspension of Alan Wiggins for cocaine possession.

Attendance rebounded near the high of 1978, and appeared likely to be eclipsed in 1983 after the free-agent signing of longtime Dodgers iron man Steve Garvey on a five-year, $6.5 million contract. Kroc told Garvey, “Steve, I think you can make a difference here,” and Garvey told Ray and Joan, “We’re going to have some fun. We’re going to have a winner.”71 It was not to be … at least not right away. Garvey missed the final 62 games of the season with the first significant injury of his career, and the club hovered below .500 for most of the season.

The year 1984 started inauspiciously for the Padres with Kroc’s death on January 14, only eight days after he made Goose Gossage the highest-paid pitcher in baseball with a five-year, $6.25 million deal. Gossage had visited the ailing Kroc in the hospital, and told him, “I hope I can help your ballclub, Mr. Kroc.”72 Kroc replied, “I hope you can, too, with what we’re paying you.”73 His memory would be honored with “RAK” to be worn on the jersey sleeves throughout the 1984 season.

With Kroc’s passing, Joan became team president and chairwoman of the board. Smith remained in charge of day-to-day operations, and said on Kroc’s death, “This doesn’t affect the future of the club at all. Ray made provision for operations to continue here. … Joan is as committed to fielding a winner here as Ray was.”74

Five years after his tampering charge, Kroc posthumously got his man when McKeon traded for Nettles, a San Diego native, in a trade involving pitcher Eric Rasmussen. The Padres started the 1984 season quickly with a 15-8 April record. After a minor slump in May, the Padres reclaimed first place on June 9 and never surrendered the division lead. Not even a minor media circus surrounding revelations that pitchers Eric Show, Dave Dravecky, and Mark Thurmond (who combined for 75 starts) were members of the right-wing John Birch Society could derail the Padres season. The West Division title was clinched on September 20 with a 5-4 win over the last-place Giants. Utilityman Kurt Bevacqua said, “I wish Ray was here to enjoy this, because people don’t understand what a fan he really was. I think all of us who knew him have dedicated this season to his memory.”75

At 92-70, the Padres won the division with 12 games to spare. Almost 2 million visited Jack Murphy Stadium as the Padres broke their single-season attendance record for the fifth time since 1974. Capacity crowds also filled the ballpark, and team’s coffers, to witness the team’s first postseason. After the Padres reversed a two-games-to-none deficit to defeat the Chicago Cubs in the NL Championship Series, the 104-win Detroit Tigers proved too great an obstacle in the World Series.

Joan Kroc Years: Tumult in the clubhouse, and the sale that wasn’t before the sale that was

Although the Padres generally contended for the remainder of the decade, the club could not repeat the success of 1984. It was not for lack of trying. San Diego traded for 1983 AL Cy Young Award winner LaMarr Hoyt in December 1984 and signed free agents Jerry Royster and Tim Stoddard in January 1985. The club sported new uniforms as well as a new logo, with a more traditional pinstripe uniform replacing brown pullovers. Despite the new faces and the new look, the club could not overcome injuries and could do no better than 83-79 in 1985. The fans, however, bettered their previous mark, as attendance surpassed 2.2 million for another club record.

The following year was one of discontent, throwing off a season that seemed to promise so much. Prior to the season, Williams resigned after losing an apparent power struggle with McKeon and Smith. Joan Kroc commented at one point that if the executives sought to get rid of the manager, “They’ll have to use their own money because they’re not using mine.”76 Steve Boros became the first new manager since 1981. Hoyt was detained by US customs officials in one incident, was arrested in another, and began the 1986 season in alcohol rehabilitation.

In May, Joan Kroc revealed her plan to sell the ballclub. Although Kroc preferred to sell to her son-in-law, Smith was not interested. Smith provoked the ire of the clubhouse by banning beer from all employee areas at the ballpark, citing increased liability insurance premiums as the justification. Gossage slammed Smith and Kroc, saying, “I guess Ballard and Joan don’t have anything better to do. Their lives are so boring.”77

Gossage continued his feud with management later in the season. Smith had told players that the team would not offer multiyear contracts unless drug testing was implemented. In an interview, Gossage complained that Smith “wants choir boys and not winning players” and doesn’t know anything and doesn’t care.”78 Kroc and Smith handed Gossage a 30-day suspension without pay on August 29. Gossage later apologized. The season ended 74-88, and Boros was out after a single season. Larry Bowa would helm the Padres ship in 1987, and it would be lighter ship with the Padres trimming payroll by releasing or trading Hoyt, Nettles, Royster, Terry Kennedy, Kevin McReynolds, and Dave LaPoint.

Meanwhile, the club remained on the market with Kroc rumored to be seeking $50 million.79 Garvey, still a member of the playing staff, claimed two groups approached him about teaming up on a bid. The first baseman said, “We’re just in elementary stages. There’s nothing concrete, but there is an interest — based around the idea that the club stays in San Diego — and the potential for the franchise, really, is unlimited.”80

Ultimately, Garvey was unsuccessful in putting together a group. Kroc, however, appeared to have found a buyer from the ranks of her fellow owners. On March 26, 1987, Kroc announced that she had accepted an from Seattle Mariners owner George Argyros, a deal conditioned on his unloading his current club. Terms were not disclosed, but the deal was estimated within the $50 million-$65 million range. Argyros lived up in the coast in Newport Beach, and explained, “My decision is related to where I spend my time and where it makes sense to have my interests.”81

At the time, Kroc spoke optimistically about Argyros. She said, “I think he is going to be good for baseball and San Diego.”82 Argyros rejected one offer to buy the Mariners and proved unable to secure the funds need to purchase the Padres, so Kroc pulled the plug on Argyros and put the team back on the market on May 29. Kroc explained, “Both Mr. Argyros and I entered negotiations thinking this would be a simple, uncomplicated deal. … [I]t had become quite clear that it could not be completed on time. I didn’t feel it was fair to the community to keep things in limbo.”83

Kroc quickly took the club off the market, however. The Padres had opened the 1987 season with a staggering 12-42 record, and it was clear that care was needed to improve the team. Kroc stated, “Another buyer is the last thing in the world I’m looking for now. We’re going to turn everything around. There will be no sale or discussion of sale this year, period.”84 She also wanted to negotiate a new lease with the city of San Diego to ensure that the Padres would not move.85

Kroc hired former NL President Chub Feeney to the club presidency in June. Perhaps the only surprise is that club avoided losing 100 games in a miserable season. Kroc seemed content to holding onto the Padres, saying, “God willing, I expect to own the Padres for a long time.”86 Kroc also signed a 13-year lease with the city, a move that appeared to secure the team’s immediate future.

The 1988 season seemed destined for another bumpy ride after a 16-30 start that cost Bowa his job. The Padres had tried to land Kirk Gibson when the Tigers slugger hit the market after the collusion cases. The Padres and Dodgers both offered three-year deals, but the Dodgers’ offer came in higher by $300,000. McKeon replaced Bowa in the dugout, and the team turned around the season to finish in third place at 83-78.

During a Saturday night game against the Astros on September 24, unhappy fans made known their displeasure about the Padres executive management by unfurling a “Scrub Chub” banner at Jack Murphy Stadium. Feeney responded by flipping the bird. His attempts to deny having done so were disproven with pictures of the incident, leading the longtime baseball executive to resign at the end of the season. Kroc made clear, however, that he was pushed and did not jump. She said, “Only one person handled Chub — me.”87

Reflecting on her deceased husband, Kroc added, “I asked myself what Ray would do. Quite simply, Ray loved his customers, and the fans are our customers. We never would allow them to be insulted.”88 The Padres presidency was Feeney’s last job in baseball.

With new leadership needed, Kroc named Dick Freeman as club president and hired Tal Smith to look after day-to-day operations. Off the late-season surge, the Padres sought to strengthen for the 1989 season. The loss of pitcher Andy Hawkins to the Yankees was offset by the free-agent signing of Bruce Hurst from the Red Sox. Trades for first baseman Jack Clark and pitcher Walt Terrell, along with an improved contract for Tony Gwynn, seemed to signal the Padres’ intent to challenge the World Series champion Dodgers in the NL West. The Padres spent most of the season near the .500 mark, however, and another September surge got them no closer than three games behind the division-winning Giants in the end.

The club on the upswing, Kroc placed the Padres on the market in October. Ownership responsibilities appeared to have sapped the philanthropist of her enthusiasm for the ballclub. Kroc explained, “It’s time for someone with renewed energy to take over, to get involved day to day.”89 It was also apparent that the experience from two years before of dealing with Argyros left a sour taste. “I’m never going through the agony of the George Argyros sale again. … Only quality people of integrity need apply.”90

She turned to her son-in-law, player agent Jerry Kapstein, to help with the sale. Kapstein opined that the team was worth $100 million, a price tag that did not appear to dampen interest. Among those linked to the Padres were Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall, San Diego businessman Larry Lawrence, diet moguls Sid and Jenny Craig, and even Garvey. A paternity suit squashed Garvey’s potential candidacy before it gained much traction. At one point, it appeared the Craigs would be the buyers. They irritated Kroc, however, by breaking the news of their intended purchase at a local luncheon in defiance of Kroc’s wishes for a news blackout.91 Ultimately, the Craigs could not meet Kroc’s financing requirements and their bid was scuttled.

With the 1990 season approaching and the club still on the market, Kroc added oversight of club operations to Kapstein’s responsibilities. Kroc explained the move: “[T]o be free to carry out my travel plans this summer, I have asked Jerry to step in as my personal representative. As long as it takes, we’re going to ride out the waves and give this city a darn good team.”92 Freeman and McKeon would report to Kapstein, a situation of which McKeon approved. McKeon said, “I think it’s a good move. … [H]is placement in this particular role blends right in with his other job as the representative of selling the club.”93 Trader Jack focused on preparing for the 1990 season in which the Padres were favored to take the NL West. Although closer Mark Davis signed with the Royals, McKeon signed Craig Lefferts from division rival San Francisco as his replacement. He also traded for Joe Carter to boost the offense and also signed him to an extension.

Jack Murphy Stadium, in San Diego’s Mission Valley neighborhood, was home to the Padres from 1969 to 2003. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)

The Werner Years: From tire fire to fire sale

One week before the 1990 season opened, Kroc found her buyer. On April 2 she agreed to sell to an ownership group headed by television producer Tom Werner for $90 million. The investor group eventually swelled to 15 members, leading Werner to joke, “We’ve got enough people now for a partners-players baseball game.”94 The NL provided its unanimous approval on June 13 in Cleveland, and, for the first time since 1974, the team’s owner was not named Kroc.

Werner was not expected to make major changes as Freeman and McKeon remained in place.

The Werner group had an unpropitious start when a promotion on July 25 to celebrate “Working Women’s Night” backfired. Werner, who produced Roseanne among other TV shows, invited comedian Roseanne Barr to sing the national anthem prior to the start of a game against the Reds on July 25. It did not go well. Barr’s off-key performance closed with spitting and crotch-grabbing. The team issued a statement suggesting that the audio feed was to blame. Gwynn remarked, “It was a disgrace,” and Show called it “[a] total embarrassment to the club.”95 The incident sparked national condemnation, including from the White House. Lost in the fallout was that the Padres swept that day’s doubleheader. The following month, a chastened Werner said, “What I hope is that the fans will come to realize our heart is in the right place.”96

The on-field product failed to meet the preseason expectations. The Padres foundered in the first half, and McKeon resigned as manager during the All-Star break with the Padres at 37-43, 13½ games behind the Reds. McKeon had told Werner he would like to leave the manager’s chair in order to focus on baseball operations. Greg Riddoch assumed managerial responsibilities from McKeon, but a 75-87 season cost McKeon the job he had wanted to keep. Werner fired McKeon on September 21 and tapped Mets assistant GM Joe McIlvaine to orient the team toward greater scouting and development. McIlvaine said, “We are here to develop the best player development system in baseball.”97 In announcing the move, Werner said, “We all respect Jack. He’s done some wonderful things, but it’s important for us to get to the next level.”98 Despite the sack, McKeon said he was “not bitter” and added, “I think I am leaving them a good club.”99 McKeon was the first move in the housecleaning that included 25 front-office dismissals in the first weeks of the offseason.

The Werner group made over more than just the front office. Since their inception and despite several uniform changes, the Padres’ colors had remained brown and gold. Harkening to the PCL Padres days, the team adopted navy blue and orange for the 1991 season. One of Werner’s partners, Art Rivkin, said, “All I’ve heard about the old uniforms is complaints.”100 Bob Payne, another partner, added, “We didn’t really care for brown.”101 Despite various fan campaigns over the years, brown would be exiled from the Padres’ color palate for three decades.

Likely unrelated to the new look, the Padres finished just about .500 in each of the next two seasons. McIlvaine had traded Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar to Toronto for Fred McGriff and Tony Fernandez before the 1991 season, and then acquired Gary Sheffield during spring training 1992, but the club could not break through. In a sign of a coming cash crunch, Werner vetoed McIlvaine’s offer to Danny Tartabull after the 1991 season. Werner revealed that some partners wanted out, as the cost of owning a piece of a major-league club was becoming too much to bear. Though expressing unhappiness about baseball’s financial direction, Werner denied that the Padres were on the market. It became clear what the Padres’ financial direction would be. Werner said after the 1992 season, “Spending more money doesn’t mean you win. We spent last year, and it didn’t work.”102

After losses of $8 million and amid persistent rumors of cash-flow problems, Werner ordered McIlvaine to trade Fernandez before he could exercise his contract option and also slash payroll by $7 million.103 McIlvaine would resign in June 1993, replaced by Randy Smith, who became baseball’s youngest GM at 29. Werner opined, “You’d have to have your head examined to invest in a baseball team.”104

The 1993 season appeared to be a disaster waiting to happen. Hurst made clear he wanted out, in stating, “[T]he way things are going around here, I sure don’t want to be back.”105 Werner hoped that increased revenue-sharing among major-league teams would help even out the economic imbalance. He argued, “I’m fighting for the Padres’ economic survival.”106 Werner continued to deny any plans to sell the team. Washington-area attorney Bart Fisher claimed that his group offered $150 million to buy the Padres and move them to the District of Columbia or Northern Virginia. Werner repeated his mantra: “As I’ve said before, the team’s not for sale.”107

By the 1993 trade deadline, Hurst got his wish and was moved, along with Darrin Jackson, Sheffield, McGriff, and Greg Harris. The Padres finished 61-101, in seventh place for the first time now that the expansion Colorado Rockies joined the NL West. Several players acquired in return would prove to be productive major leaguers but, as the losing continued, the Werner regime became increasingly unpopular.

Werner and his group began coming to the realization that greater financial wherewithal would be required. Payne, antagonist of the old color scheme, admitted, “We need a larger capital base. … We have some owners who are unwilling or unable to keep contributing to make up the shortfall.”108 The owners also recognized that a new ballpark would be required to generate additional revenue and hired consultants to develop financing options.

As for the 1994 season, the Werner group projected a $4 million loss even after the prior season’s fire sale.109 Perhaps the lone bright spot of the season was Tony Gwynn’s charge to become baseball’s first .400 hitter since San Diego native Ted Williams in 1941. Meanwhile, attendance had cratered to the bottom of the major leagues. The situation became so embarrassing that the Padres had to ask the city to place tarps over the many empty seats in the upper deck. The season ended with a players strike that commenced August 12, removing any opportunity for Gwynn to improve his .394 batting average. The strike would claim the World Series among its casualties, but with a 47-70 mark, the Padres were never going to be a postseason factor. Manager Jim Riggleman left for the Cubs job in the offseason, and former catcher Bruce Bochy would commence a 25-year managerial career in the 1995 season.

The Moores Years: A pennant, Petco Park, and a prolonged exit

During baseball’s nuclear winter, the Werner group managed to find its exit strategy. After negotiations fizzled with a pair of Florida-based businessmen, Malcolm Glazer and Norton Herrick, Werner reached an agreement in principle with Texas-based software mogul John Moores in September. Moores owned a home in San Diego and pledged to attend every home game if successful in acquiring the Padres.110 The price was approximately $80 million, or less than what the Werner group paid to purchase the club from Joan Kroc.

Moores noted the timing of his purchase during baseball’s labor disruption. He said, “Everyone gets a historical footnote, and I suspect mine will be that I was the only person ever to buy a baseball team in the middle of a strike. I did it to have fun and don’t regret it for a second.”111 In making his play for the Padres, Moores teamed with former Orioles President and CEO Larry Lucchino. Moores lacked a background in baseball, and it was apparent. Lucchino would have a major hand in running the team.

Moores clearly brought deeper pockets to the club and said all the right things about being a different owner from Werner. He stated, “My goal is to stabilize the club financially so that it can be competitive on the field and accepted in the community. We’re here for the long haul, and it helps that we’re using my money and not someone else’s.”112

Werner’s unhappy tenure as Padres owner concluded on December 21, 1994, with baseball’s formal approval for the transfer. Lucchino assumed the club presidency from Freeman, and the Moores-Lucchino duo opted to retain Smith as the GM. One week later, the new ownership made an early mark as Smith engineered a 12-player trade with Houston with Ken Caminiti as the highlight acquisition. Moores commented, “We’re going to send the message forward that there’s a new direction — to field a solid, competitive, winning baseball team, and pay the money that’s required to do that.”113

In addition to ending the fire-sale era, Moores also wanted to solve the issue of San Diego’s supposedly constrained market and viewed Mexico as an opportunity to grow. Although the Padres had been on local Spanish-language radio since their inception, the team struggled to win the affection of potential Mexican fans on both sides of the border. The Dodgers had beaten the Padres to Southern California and also achieved goodwill among Mexican fans with the Fernandomania craze commencing in 1981.

When Moores and Lucchino took over, the latter was surprised to learn the team had no Spanish-speaking staff members.114 New ownership adopted the mantra, “We want to become Mexico’s team.”115 Hoping to create some of their own Fernandomania, the Padres signed the former Dodger Fernando Valenzuela for the 1995 season. In addition, Lucchino oversaw the opening of a merchandise store and ticket outlet in neighboring Tijuana, Mexico.116

The Padres also worked with the business community in San Diego and Tijuana and with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service in order to make border crossings easier for Sunday afternoon home games. Mexican fans could purchase discounted tickets and ride dedicated buses to and from Jack Murphy Stadium, and when they were at the ballpark, they were greeted with Spanish-speaking ushers and special concession areas.117

In August 1996 the Padres’ efforts to woo Mexican fans culminated in a three-game August series in Monterrey, Mexico, with Valenzuela starting and winning the opening game against the Mets. The Padres would receive a significant jump in attendance in 1996, and these efforts were seen as crucial to that result. In January 1997, the club expanded its connections across the Pacific Ocean through an agreement with Japan’s Chiba Lotte Marines intended to involve exchanges of prospects, coaches, and scouting information. In addition, Moores seemed to adopt a regular-guy persona through fan focus groups and scholarships to local schoolkids. Lucchino recognized the value of such direct engagement, noting that “[o]wnership is too often underappreciated as a marketing aspect. Fans do respond to stability, positive involvement by the owner.”118

Despite another losing record (70-74) for the 1995 season, the franchise seemed to have turned a proverbial corner. After Smith left for Detroit in the offseason, Kevin Towers took over as GM and began assembling the final pieces of an eventual division winner. Towers acquired Bob Tewksbury, Rickey Henderson, and Wally Joyner before the 1996 season and traded for Greg Vaughn at the deadline. The Padres battled to the wire against the Dodgers for the NL West crown. San Diego swept Los Angeles over the final weekend to win the NL West at 91-71 with attendance greater than 800,000 over the final full season of the Werner regime.

The division title earned the Padres their first postseason appearance since 1984, but St. Louis swept the Padres in the division series to ensure that there would be no repeat of 1984’s pennant. Individual honors went to Caminiti and Bochy in the form of the MVP and Manager of the Year, respectively.

First mooted seriously during the Werner administration, the issue of a new ballpark and its likely new revenue streams became a serious topic between the Padres and local officials during the 1996-1997 offseason. Jack Murphy Stadium had remained a shared facility with the Chargers, and the Chargers were in a much more favorable position economically than the Padres. Mayor Susan Golding and the Chargers agreed on renovations in 1995 that enclosed the stadium and increased capacity, partly for purposes of attracting a Super Bowl. There were additional suite and concessions revenue streams that favored the NFL team, to which the city also gave control of all advertising revenue at what would soon be renamed Qualcomm Stadium.

When the city and the telecommunications equipment services company agreed to a naming rights deal in 1997, the Padres did not receive any of the upfront $18 million fee received from Qualcomm. Lucchino had been attempting to make the best of the situation. He promoted the Padres aggressively and oversaw improvements such as the planting of palm trees outside the ballpark and the installation of a new JumboTron scoreboard.119

The situation was increasingly untenable for the Padres’ balance sheet. In December 1996 Golding appointed the Mayor’s Task Force on Padres Planning to explore questions related to the status of the Padres within the community, and whether a new ballpark was needed to ensure the financial viability of the club. By August 1997, Golding’s task force completed its work and concluded that the Padres needed a new ballpark, but where and how to finance it remained outstanding questions.

In response to the report, the City Council constituted the City of San Diego Task Force on Ballpark Planning with the charge of considering financing options and possible locations. After multiple public meetings and site visits, the task force delivered its report to the council in late January 1998 and the council accepted the recommendations several weeks later. The key components of the proposal were the development of a Ballpark District in the East Village neighborhood and estimated project costs of $452 million, about half of which would come from the city. The use of public money would require a public vote, and the City Council directed the city manager to work with the Padres to ensure that the issue appeared on the November 3, 1998, ballot.

Knowing a winning team might make for a happy voting public, the Padres moved to beef up the 1998 squad. The Padres had struggled to follow up their 1996 division-winning campaign, as a slow start for 1997 set the stage for a losing season. Management did not stand pat in the wake of the 76-86 season, however. To address a pitching staff that finished next to last in ERA, Towers acquired Kevin Brown from the fire-sale Florida Marlins and signed free agents Mark Langston and Greg Myers prior to the 1998 season. The new additions, along with holdovers including Caminiti, Steve Finley, and Joyner, took the payroll to $46 million, which led Moores to speculate about the team’s breakup if revenues did not keep up with expenses.120 The Padres were all-in on a successful 1998 season.

The Padres rode a fast start to a 19-7 record and five-game lead in the NL West entering May. After a blip caused the team to surrender the lead for a few days in early June, they hit another hot streak and took a 57-31 record into the All-Star break. Five Padres made the NL All-Star team. The Padres coasted to the division title, clinching on September 12 with an 8-7 win over Los Angeles in front of more than 60,000 fans.

The Padres shattered their previous attendance record with more than 2.5 million spectators en route to a 98-win campaign, and massive crowds packed Qualcomm for the 1998 postseason. They took out the 102-win Astros and 106-win Braves in the NL playoffs, but the 114-win Yankees proved too much to overcome in a World Series that ended in a sweep. The good vibes of a pennant-winning campaign carried over to the November 3 election, in which 60 percent of voters approved Proposition C, authorizing the city to enter into negotiations with the Padres for a new ballpark.

Off the field, the Padres quickly were smacked by economic realities. There were only so many millions Moores could lose and the roster was picked apart. Moores had invested in a winning roster and claimed that he did not want to break up the team but argued that the club would need to focus on player development with a plan to increase payroll for the new ballpark’s expected opening in 2002. The Padres would defend their pennant without Caminiti, Finley, and Brown, all of whom left as free agents (with the latter signing a nine-figure deal with the Dodgers), as well as Vaughn and pitcher Joey Hamilton, traded to Cincinnati and Toronto, respectively. At $15.5 million over three years, the Padres signed Sterling Hitchcock to the somewhat ironic largest free agent deal in team history. Injuries further eroded the Padres’ ability to compete at the major-league level, and the team managed only 74 wins in a 1999 season notable for Gwynn topping 3,000 career hits. Lucchino enhanced the club’s scouting and player development programs and began focusing on acquiring young talent.

If 1999 was rough, 2000 was chaotic on and off the field. Injuries continued to decimate the team; the Padres would set NL records for the number of pitchers and players used during a season. Somehow, the team scratched out 76 wins. Attendance had remained relatively steady despite the lack of success but events would create questions about whether the ballpark would be completed.

In April, it was revealed that a city councilwoman had profited from the initial public offering of a company in which Moores had controlling interest. The councilwoman eventually resigned and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors, and Moores was absolved of any wrongdoing, but this minor scandal delayed the sale of the municipal bonds to fund construction. Further, project opponents filed a series of lawsuits challenging various City Council actions and votes to advance the project. Construction on the new ballpark was halted for the year on September 29.

Moores issued a cash call to his partners for $20 million to fund expenses for the 2001 season as losses mounted. Gwynn filed for free agency after the season, but eventually re-signed with the Padres. On the bright side, Winfield was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame and later announced that he would be inducted as a Padre. In response, the club announced that his number would be retired. At midseason, Gwynn announced his retirement effective at the end of the season; in September, he learned he would become the next baseball coach at San Diego State University. Moores would pay for construction of what would become Tony Gwynn Stadium on the SDSU campus.

Gwynn played his final game on October 7 with more than 60,000 in attendance. Mr. Padre grounded out in a pinch-hit appearance in the ninth inning, but Rickey Henderson, who had signed prior to the 2001 season, doubled to lead off the first inning for his 3,000th hit. The day was about Gwynn, and Mayor Dick Murphy revealed that the address of the new ballpark would be 19 Tony Gwynn Drive.

Lucchino stepped down as president and CEO at the end of the season to join the new John Henry-Tom Werner ownership group in . Despite the changing of the guard with Bob Vizas assuming the club presidency, the stadium project got back on track. The city council signed off on a new bond issue in November by an 8-to-1 vote. The final lawsuit against the project was dismissed in January 2002, which cleared the way for the issuance of the bonds. Merrill Lynch purchased $169 million in municipal bonds on February 15, and construction restarted several days later.

The Padres moved into Petco Park for the 2004 season. (SAN DIEGO PADRES)

Originally slated to open in 2002, Petco Park was completed for the 2004 season. After five losing seasons following the 1998 World Series appearance, the Padres improved by 23 games (to 87-75 and third place) and drew over 3 million fans to their new home. The good times continued as the Padres won the NL West in 2005 and 2006, though they lost in the NL Division Series to the Cardinals each time. Bochy departed for San Francisco, and Bud Black began his own extended tenure as Padres manager in 2007. The Padres finished the season tied with the Rockies at 89-73 for the wild-card spot, but lost the tiebreaker to Colorado in an epic 13-inning clash at Coors Field. The Padres had been relevant for an extended run. Combined with the novelty of a new ballpark, attendance exceed the best mark at Qualcomm each of the first four years in the new park.

That novelty wore off quickly when the team cratered to a 63-99 record in 2008. Hemorrhaging season-ticket holders amid a rapid descent, the club saw its stability rattled further when Moores and his wife announced their plans to divorce. Under California’s community property laws, the split would be costly for Moores, and Moores placed the Padres on the market. In early 2009 former player agent and current Arizona Diamondbacks CEO Jeff Moorad assembled a group of 12 investors to buy the Padres from Moores. For purposes of the transaction, the Padres were valued at $500 million (which would involve some cash and debt assumption), and Moorad’s group intended to purchase the club over a five-year period on an installment plan through which 100percent of the club would be acquired gradually.

Moorad had been the Diamondbacks’ chief executive since 2004 and also owned 12 percent of the club, an issue that would need to be resolved. His sudden departure soured his relationship with Ken Kendrick, Arizona’s managing general partner. In fact, Kendrick initially refused to purchase Moorad’s shares.

Moorad was named vice chair and CEO, but Moores remained majority owner for the time being. The Padres appeared to have atrophied in recent seasons, and Moorad said many of the right things about regaining lost momentum. Moorad asserted, “I believe things can turn in a hurry and I’m optimistic that this club has a system in place that can certainly spark that turnaround.”121 He made season-ticket holders an early focus. The team had lost half of its season-ticket base between Petco’s opening in 2004 and 2009, and he intended to bring them back. To that end, he reduced ticket prices and increased game-day promotions. Moorad suggested that community support would be rewarded in stating that “to the extent that we feel the community is supporting the club, we’re going to invest every last dollar back into the product.”122

Moores had put $100 million into Padres operations during the delays to Petco Park’s construction, but the consequences of the losses meant cuts to the scouting and player-development budgets.123 Moorad reversed this trend. He fired Towers at the end of the 2009 season, replacing him with Red Sox assistant GM Jed Hoyer with the charge to develop players through improving the farm system; indeed, Hoyer did so before leaving for the Chicago Cubs after the 2011 season.

By 2012, Moorad’s investor group owned 49 percent of the club. Moorad had overseen negotiations that resulted in the formation of Fox Sports San Diego, a new regional sports network in which the Padres would have an equity stake while receiving $1.2 billion over 20 years for local broadcasting rights. These new revenues would put Moorad’s group over the top. In fact, Moorad seemed on the cusp of gaining control. With his assumption of control up for consideration, baseball’s owners postponed a vote on the sale to Moorad on January 12. Moores became unsettled; one baseball official said, “John was crazed that the deal with Jeff would not get done.”124

Baseball owners would prove an insurmountable obstacle, and they denied Moorad admission into their fraternity. In addition to the hard feelings with Kendrick, influential White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf “didn’t regard Moorad as ownership material”125 and apparently lobbied against the Moorad group. Other owners may have been turned off by the lack of spending since Moorad joined the club. The Padres were not only last in payroll expense, but apparently pocketed around $60 million in revenue-sharing each season under Moorad’s leadership.126 Further, Major League Baseball had an issue with Moorad’s plans to fund the final payment to Moores by tapping the $200 million advance payment from Fox Sports San Diego. MLB wanted the television money used to fund baseball operations instead of buying out Moores.127

MLB established a precedent in 2011 when it blocked a local television deal involving the Dodgers over concerns that then-owner Frank McCourt would use the proceeds to deal with his divorce instead of funding baseball operations. It is unknown if it would have been possible to work through these issues with another ownership candidate as it seemed other owners simply disliked Moorad. One insider was quoted as stating, “Jeff started off in a bad situation with the Padres because he had people in the game who don’t like him and they were looking for any reason to justify him not getting the vote.”128 In March he withdrew his application to complete the sale and resigned as Padres CEO.

The Fowler Years: Return of local ownership … and the color brown

Moores made available his controlling interest back to other interested parties, but Moorad and his partners still owned 49 percent of the team. With Moorad’s resignation, local San Diego businessman and philanthropist Ron Fowler replaced Moorad as the leader of the minority group. (Fowler had served on Golding’s task force about Padres planning.) Fowler changed gears from Moorad and assembled a new group that included heirs of the O’Malley family that had owned the Dodgers for decades. (The O’Malley-Seidler family had tried unsuccessfully to purchase the Dodgers the prior year.) By August, the new alliance reached an agreement to buy out Moores and the original Moorad-headed minority ownership group for $800 million, a deal that also included a 20 percent interest in the Fox Sports San Diego. MLB quickly approved the sale on August 16 with Fowler designated as the “control person” who would also represent the club at league meetings.

Fowler would be the first local owner since Smith’s distress sale in 1974. Two weeks after receiving MLB approval, Fowler met the local media at Petco Park with the O’Malley-Seidler family joining him. Fowler touted his local connections: “I think I understand this community and I think we can make a difference here. That’s why we’re all in.”129 He added that the transaction was an “all-cash” deal that would leave money for improving the club.

With the sale by Moores and the original Moorad faction, new ownership group effectively comprised an advisory board of seven owners controlling 80 percent of the post-sale shares, but the Fowler-O’Malley-Seidler faction appeared to be “firsts among equals” as holders of a majority of the shares within the advisory faction.130 Kevin O’Malley, son of Peter and grandson of Walter, expressed his excitement to join the baseball ownership ranks. He said, “This is a special moment for us. … We have high expectations for a first-class product on and off the field and we look forward to working with the team here to make it happen.”131

Success proved fleeting for the new ownership group, which led to changes in strategy. After consecutive 76-86 seasons in 2012 and 2013 and with 2014 on a similar trajectory, Fowler fired GM Josh Byrnes (who had replaced Hoyer) and hired A.J. Preller from Texas as his replacement. Fowler assumed the title of executive chairman in 2014 and increasingly became the most influential voice among the ownership group. The Padres had also undertaken a four- to five-year plan to modernize Petco Park, which included new seating configurations near home plate and using the historic Western Metal Supply Company building for game-day events. Fowler approved an expensive makeover of the team but the Padres finished 74-88, in fourth place. Preller almost immediately regrouped, dumping all of the marquee signings by mid-2016 and opting instead to spend tens of millions in young domestic and foreign talent.

In addition to the focus on player development, the ownership worked to pay down the assumed debt from the purchase. The club took on almost $200 million in debt, mostly related to Petco Park’s construction, when the club was purchased from Moores. By 2019, approximately 40 percent of that amount had been paid down, partly from proceeds from MLB’s sale of its BamTech technology division.132

With several young players about to break through in the late 2010s, the team waded into the deep end of the free-agent pool in a way not seen since the Ray Kroc years. The Padres signed Eric Hosmer and Manny Machado to long-term, nine-figure deals before the start of the 2018 and 2019 seasons, respectively. Neither season turned out as expected as the Padres finished in last place both years. A frustrated Fowler met with fans and media immediately after the 2019 season, in which the Padres collapsed to a 66-96 record after a 45-45 start. Fowler called the conclusion to the season “embarrassing,” and vowed that “heads will roll, beginning with mine” if the Padres failed to meet expectations in 2020.133

There were no big splashes in the free-agent market, but the club generated goodwill for an aesthetic change. After years of fan agitation, the club revealed new uniforms that would return the Padres to their brown and gold roots. With MLB staging a regional 60-game schedule in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Padres secured their first postseason berth since 2006. In the 16-team knockout bracket arranged for the 2020 postseason, the Padres eliminated the Cardinals in a best-of-three wild-card series before suffering a three-game division series sweep from the eventual World Series champion Dodgers.

Shortly after the conclusion of the season, Fowler announced that one head would roll after all. His own. On November 18, 2020, Fowler announced that he had sold part of his shares to Peter Seidler which made Seidler the team’s largest shareholder. MLB approved the same day. At 76, Fowler said, “it’s time to step back”134 although he would remain with the Padres as an adviser and continue to serve on several MLB ownership committees. Seidler commented, “I think it is great we can make this transition coming off our best season in a long, long time. Now the challenge is to keep getting better.”135 In December 2020 the Padres acquired former Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell and recent Cy Young runner-up Yu Darvish, moves quite consistent with Seidler’s challenge to keep getting better.

Last updated: April 1, 2021

JOHN BAUER resides with his wife and two children in Parkville, Missouri, just outside Kansas City. By day, he is an attorney specializing in insurance regulatory law and corporate law. By night, he spends many spring and summer evenings cheering for the San Francisco Giants and many fall and winter evenings reading history. He is a past and ongoing contributor to other SABR projects.

Sources

In addition to the sources listed in the Notes, the author also adapted his essay, “It’s a Major League City or It Isn’t: San Diego’s Padres Step Up to the Big Leagues,” from Bill Nowlin and Maxwell Kates,eds., Time for Expansion Baseball (Phoenix: SABR, 2018).

Notes

1 Holcombe B. Noble, “C. Arnholt Smith, 97, Banker and Padres Chief Before a Fall,” New York Times, June 11, 1996.

2 Bob Ortman, “Scouts Are No. 1 on Bavasi’s List of Musts,” The Sporting News, June 22, 1968, 9.

3 Bavasi revealed in a later interview with author Andy McCue that O’Malley told him to find his desired ownership group and O’Malley promised Bavasi’s group would get a team. Andy McCue, Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball’s Westward Expansion (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 300-301.

4 David Porter and Joe Naiman, The San Diego Padres Encyclopedia, (Champaign, Il: Sports Publishing, 2002), 6.

5 Porter and Naiman, 6.

6 Phil Collier, “Montreal Gets Second Franchise,” San Diego Union, May 28, 1968.

7 Jack Murphy, “Phone’s Ring Starts Tense Final Hours,” San Diego Union, May 28, 1968.

8 Collier, “Montreal Gets Second Franchise.”

9 Phil Collier, “Padres Name Preston Gomez to Manage 1969 NL Team,” San Diego Union, August 30, 1968.

10 Collier, “Padres Name Preston Gomez.”

11 Jack Murphy, “Buzzie Buys Name Padres After Hearing from a Certain Source,” San Diego Union, September 29, 1968.

12 Paul Cour, “Padres Placing High Hopes on Big Bill Davis,” The Sporting News, November 9, 1968, 51.

13 Paul Cour, “Padres’ Plum Is Homegrown DaVanon,” The Sporting News, November 30, 1968, 51.

14 Cour, “Padres’ Plum.”

15 Porter and Naiman, 6.

16 Phil Collier, “Padres Stress Youth, Speed; Avoid Older Stars in Draft,” San Diego Union, October 15, 1968.

17 Collier, “Padres Stress Youth.”

18 Collier, “Padres Stress Youth.”

19 “Padre Ducats Arrive in Big Bundle,” San Diego Union, March 13, 1969.

20 Jack Murphy, “San Diego Has Disbelievers but Bavasi Isn’t Among Them,” San Diego Union, March 28, 1969.

21 Porter and Naiman, 14.

22 Phil Collier, “Fast Start Key to Padres’ Bid for Healthier Gate,” The Sporting News, March 4, 1972, 26.

23 Phil Collier, “Buzzie Says It Again: Padres to Stay,” The Sporting News, September 2, 1972, 17.

24 Phil Collier, “Showdown Huddle? Padres and City Talk Turkey,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1972, 36.

25 Collier, “Showdown Huddle?”

26 Phil Collier, “Xmas Finds Padres Glued to San Diego Pews,” The Sporting News, January 6, 1973, 31.

27 Phil Collier, “Cure for Corkins’ Ulcer Could Be Concentration,” The Sporting News, January 27, 1973, 48.

28 Porter and Naiman, 27.

29 ”Padres En Route to Capital With Record 12 Million Tag,” The Sporting News, June 9, 1973, 22.

30 “Padres En Route.”

31 Phil Collier, “Buzzie Seeks Yen for Padre Salvation,” The Sporting News, June 16, 1973, 12.

32 Phil Collier, “Padre Kid Lefties Convert Skeptics,” The Sporting News, September 22, 1973, 10.

33 Jerome Holtzman, “‘More Study Time’ N.L.’s Answer to Padres’ Move Bid,” The Sporting News, October 6, 1973, 10.

34 Jack Murphy, “Padre Buyers May Need More Than Their Money,” San Diego Union, December 5, 1973.

35 Phil Collier, “Padre Outlook Better,” San Diego Union, December 2, 1973.

36 Phil Collier, “Padres Cancel Flight Plans, Start to Unpack,” The Sporting News, December 8, 1973, 50.

37 Phil Collier, “Padres Sweat It Out at Altar of Confusion,” The Sporting News, December 15, 1973, 45.

38 Collier, “Padres Sweat It Out.”

39 Ron Fulkerson, “City Files $72 Million Suit Over Padre Move,” San Diego Union, December 13, 1973.

40 “Danzansky, Smith Plan Meeting,” San Diego Union, December 7, 1973.

41 Jack Murphy, “Deadline on Padres Shift Is Tomorrow,” San Diego Union, December 20, 1973.

42 Phil Collier, “Padres Plight Solved by $9 Million Everett Bid,” The Sporting News, January 12, 1974, 35.

43 Phil Collier, “Everett Group Strikes Out in Bid to Purchase Padres,” San Diego Union, January 10, 1974.

44 Phil Collier, “Bavasi Unaware of Others in Line,” San Diego Union, January 13, 1974.

45 Phil Collier, “City Comes to Aid of Poverty-Stricken Padres,” The Sporting News, February 2, 1974, 30.

46 Jack Murphy, “Kroc Agrees to Purchase Padres, Seeks League’s OK,” San Diego Union, January 24, 1974.

47 Phil Collier, “Padres Get Break They Deserve, From Big Mac,” The Sporting News, February 9, 1974, 29.

48 Murphy, “Kroc Agrees to Purchase Padres.”

49 Porter and Naiman, 195.

50 Collier, “Padres Get Break.”

51 Noble, “C. Arnholt Smith, 97, Banker and Padres Chief.”

52“Lease Amended for Padres,” San Diego Union, February 1, 1974.

53 “Lease Amended for Padres.”

54 Collier, “Padres Get Break.”

55 Collier, “Padres Get Break.”

56 Murphy, “Kroc Agrees to Purchase Padres.”

57 Jack Murphy, “Padres Start New Life Under Kroc’s Guidance,” San Diego Union, February 25, 1974.

58 Murphy, “Padres Start New Life.”

59 Tom Larwin and Bill Nowlin, eds., San Diego Padres: The First Half Century (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2019), 526.

60 Larwin and Nowlin.

61 Larwin and Nowlin, 639.

62 Phil Collier, “‘I’ll Be the Judge,’ Declares Padres Boss Kroc,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1977, 19.

63 Phil Collier, “Dark’s Pipeline to Kroc Triggers Bavasi’s Exit,” The Sporting News, October 8, 1977, 26.

64 Collier, “‘I’ll Be the Judge.’”

65 Larwin and Nowlin, 642.

66 Phil Collier, “Kroc Faces Tampering Charges,” The Sporting News, September 1, 1979, 41.

67 Collier, “Kroc Faces Tampering Charges.”

68 Phil Collier, “Kroc Unfrocks Himself as Boss of Padres,” The Sporting News, September 8, 1979, 37.

69 Collier, “Kroc Unfrocks Himself.”

70 Stan Isle, “Kroc Also Big in Milk – Milk of Human Kindness,” The Sporting News, November 17, 1979: 27

71 Larwin and Nowlin, 646.

72 Phil Collier, “Padres’ Penny-Pinching Days Are Over,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1984, 12.

73 Collier, “Padres’ Penny-Pinching.”

74 “Padres Regret Kroc Didn’t Win Flag,” The Sporting News, January 30, 1984, 40.

75 Phil Collier, “Padres Calm for Clincher,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1984, 22.

76 Dave Nightengale, “Team Turmoil Turnaround?,” The Sporting News, April 28, 1986, 10.

77 ”Padres,” The Sporting News, June 23, 1986, 25.

78 Mark Kreidler, “Pop-Off Gossage Gets Some Time Off,” The Sporting News, September 8, 1986, 16.

79 Mark Kreidler, “Will Padres Be Calling Garvey Mr. President?,” The Sporting News, December 15, 1986, 51.

80 Kreidler, “Will Padres Be Calling.”

81 Jim Street, “A Quick Change for Argyros,” The Sporting News, April 6, 1987, 30.

82 Mark Kreidler, “A Speedy Severance of the Old Ties,” The Sporting News, April 6, 1987, 30.

83 Dave Distel, “Sale of Padres by Kroc to Argyros Collapses: Owner Says She Will Retain the Team This Season, Vows to Turn Faltering Club Around,” Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1987.

84 “A Woman’s Prerogative,” The Sporting News, June 8, 1987, 26.

85 “A Woman’s Prerogative.”

86 Stan Isle, “Kroc’s Commitment,” The Sporting News, January 8, 1988, 57.

87 Bill Plaschke, “The Campbell Solution: Sack Him,” The Sporting News, October 24, 1988, 38.

88 Plaschke, “The Campbell Solution.”

89 Barry Bloom, “Kroc Seeks ‘Quality’ Buyer for Padres,” The Sporting News, October 30, 1989, 46.

90 Bloom, “Kroc Seeks ‘Quality Buyer.’”

91 “Padres,” The Sporting News, January 15, 1990, 36.

92 “Padres Appoint Kapstein,” The Sporting News, March 5, 1990, 25.

93 “Kapstein’s Presence ‘Not Much of Change,’” The Sporting News, March 12, 1990, 19.

94 “Group Buying Padres Expands,” Tulsa World, June 12, 1990, accessed at: https://www.tulsaworld.com/archive/group-buying-padres-expands/article_c27fa388-bc1f-5d3b-a2d9-f47dd4fc3f55.html.

95 Barry Bloom, “…The Ugly,” The Sporting News, August 6, 1990, 15.

96 Barry Bloom, “Padres Stumble Through Ungodly Year,” The Sporting News, August 20, 1990, 10.

97 “Padres Hire McIlvaine to Rebuild Operation,” The Sporting News, October 15, 1990, 17.

98 “McKeon a Casualty of Disastrous Season,” The Sporting News, October 1, 1990, 18.

99 “McKeon a Casualty.”

100 “Padres Erase Brown From Color Scheme,” The Sporting News, August 13, 1990, 14.

101 ”Padres Erase Brown.”

102 Bob Nightengale, “Trimming the Fat,” The Sporting News, November 9, 1992, 5.

103 Bob Nightengale, “San Diego Padres,” The Sporting News, November 9, 1992, 45.

104 Nightengale, “Trimming the Fat.”

105 Bob Nightengale, “San Diego Padres,” The Sporting News, January 11, 1993, 31.

106 Nightengale, “San Diego Padres.”

107 Mark Maske, ”D.C. Group Offers Padres $150 Million, but No Sale,” August 8, 1993, accessed at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1993/08/07/dc-group-offers-padres-150-million-but-no-sale/62c9cfa6-9bab-410e-b9ba-421fdf489482/.

108 Chris DeLuca, “San Diego Padres,” The Sporting News, November 22, 1993, 45.

109 Chris DeLuca, “San Diego Padres,” The Sporting News, November 15, 1993, 45.

110 Buster Olney, “Latest Suitor,” The Sporting News, September 5, 1994, 19.

111 Ross Newhan, “The $400-Million Fan: In Philanthropist/Techo-Nerd John Moores, the Padres Finally Have an Owner Who Really Cares About the Team,” Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1996.

112 Newhan, “The $400-Million Fan.”

113 Buster Olney, “Staying Put,” The Sporting News, January 23, 1995, 39.

114 Kevin Baxter, “Padres Go for Title: ‘Mexico’s Team,’” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1996. See also: Paul E. Doutrich, “August 16, 1996: Valenzuela, Padres enjoy a baseball fiesta in Mexico,” SABR Games Project, accessed at: https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-16-1996-san-diego-padres-15-new-york-mets-10-at-estadio-beisbol-de-monterrey-monterrey-mexico/.

115 Baxter, “Padres Go for Title.”

116 Porter and Naiman: 196.

117 Baxter, “Padres Go for Title.”

118 Newhan, “The $400-Million Fan.”

119 Porter and Naiman: 196.

120 “Inside dish,” The Sporting News, April 20, 1998, 28.

121 “Moorad, Padres Agree on Sale of Team,” ESPN.com, February 3, 2009, accessed at https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=3882256.

122 “Moorad, Padres Agree on Sale of Team.”

123 Tom Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal Fell Apart,” San Diego Union-Tribune, April 4, 2012, accessed at https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sdut-how-the-padres-deal-fell-apart-2012apr04-story.html.

124 Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal.”

125 Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal.”

126 Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal.”

127 Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal.”

128 Krasovic, “How the Padres Ownership Deal.”

129 “O’Malleys Pledge to Carry Legacy,” ESPN.com, accessed at https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/8316473/new-owners-omalleys-take-charge-san-diego-padres.

130 “O’Malleys Pledge to Carry Legacy.”

131 “O’Malleys Pledge to Carry Legacy.”

132 Craig Edwards, “A Look at the Padres’ Finances,” FanGraphs, January 23, 2019, https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-look-at-the-padres-finances/.

133 Kevin Acee, “Ron Fowler Apologizes to Padres Fans, Says ‘Heads Will Roll’ if 2020 Isn’t Better,” San Diego Union-Tribune, September 30, 2019, accessed at: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/story/2019-09-30/padres-ron-fowler-apologizes-fans-heads-will-roll-myers-hedges.

134 Kevin Acee, “Padres Chairman Ron Fowler Steps Down; Peter Seidler to Take Over,” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 18, 2020, accessed at: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/story/2020-11-18/padres-ron-fowler-owner-steps-down-peter-seidler.

135 Acee, “Padres Chairman Ron Fowler.”

Stoneham the Younger

The narrative of Giants ownership had changed abruptly and dramatically on January 6, 1936, when Charles A. Stoneham died of symptoms associated with Bright’s disease. The franchise immediately passed into the hands of Stoneham’s son, Horace Charles Stoneham, who at the age of 32 became the youngest owner in National League history.1 The elder Stoneham had prepared his son well for the responsibility. Young Horace joined the Giants organization in 1924, serving for a number of years as the ticketing manager, facilities director, and travel coordinator. In 1932, with an eye to the future, his father promoted him to the front office to learn the operations of the club, working under John McGraw and Bill Terry. When the elder Stoneham passed, Horace not only inherited the ballclub, but was positioned to handle administrative duties. In his first two full years as owner, the Giants won the NL pennant, but lost to the crosstown Yankees in the World Series.

With this early success, Stoneham saw little reason to intervene in the day-to-day operations of the club, trusting in his manager, Terry, to make the personnel decisions. Terry did the evaluation, the trading and signing of players and the proof, as they say, was in the pudding. Stoneham’s main task during this period was adjusting to the culture of baseball as an owner and learning the intricacies of payroll and player development.

Horace was not completely inactive, however. In the first few months after his father’s death, he began a shakeup of the front office, replacing club secretary Jim Tierney, his father’s close associate but a man whom the younger Stoneham never trusted, with longtime Giant loyalist Eddie Brannick. Brannick had joined the Giants in 1906 as a clubhouse boy, served as traveling secretary for McGraw, and remained in that capacity under Charles Stoneham. His loyalty to the organization was not lost on the younger Stoneham. Indeed, loyalty would prove to be an essential quality for Horace Stoneham. Throughout his 40 years as owner of the Giants, he would reward and retain players, executives, and club officials because of their dedication and commitment to the organization.

As the new decade of the 1940s began, Stoneham grew more confident of his role as owner and more secure in his baseball judgment. He also began to plan for the future of his ballclub. Sensing the decline of the Giants performance when measured against the two other New York teams — the Yankees were enjoying a phenomenal run that would take them into the next decade as the most prominent team in the game, and the Dodgers were dramatically improving; after they won the 1941 NL pennant, the Giants would be in most fans’ minds the third team in the city.2

By the summer of 1955, Stoneham sensed something far more ominous in the Giants’ third-place finish and dwindling gate receipts. He began to realize that his ballpark, the aging Polo Grounds, was a great liability, dimming opportunities for his beloved club in New York City. Giants attendance for the 1955 season would total 824,000, down considerably from the 1,115,000 of the previous year’s championship season. Although Stoneham could seek some solace in baseball’s overall numbers — the mid-1950s attendance throughout baseball was down almost 40 percent from an all-time postwar high in 1948 — he could not deny the blunt fact that his New York Giants suffered the greatest slide among National League clubs despite playing in its largest market. In 1955 only the small-market teams of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati drew fewer fans.3

Moreover, Stoneham could no longer ignore the fact that his attendance problems went beyond his team’s wins and losses. He understood that where the Giants played had as much to do with the club’s present circumstances as how they played. Despite its tradition and history, the Polo Grounds, both as a facility and a location, was past its prime.4 A dilapidated stadium situated in what many considered a deteriorating neighborhood, the Polo Grounds would require major renovations to bring it up to the standards of the day. One of the oldest parks in baseball, it predated even Ebbets Field and was showing its age in seating, fan facilities, façade, and pedestrian traffic, especially the egress. After a game the crowd had to pour onto the playing field to exit through the center-field gates.5 Repairs and remodeling would be costly if Stoneham wanted to improve fan comfort, and these expenses would cut into his already dwindling bottom line.

Repairs and renovation of the ballpark, however necessary, were only part of Stoneham’s stadium woes. Even more troubling was the changing nature of the neighborhood surrounding the park. In the late 1940s, a number of housing projects were planned for Harlem, the first of which was Colonial Park, which opened in 1950 opposite the Polo Grounds. By the mid-1950s, middle-class white fans came to perceive that the area around the park was becoming dangerous and a trip to the ballpark seemed like a risky affair.6 Stoneham believed fans might feel safer if they could drive to the ballpark. Though he had spent the majority of his life in Manhattan with its extensive and reliable transportation system, Stoneham sensed that future American life would be shaped and determined by the automobile. He watched the boom in postwar automobile production and sales, due in large part to meet the needs of young families leaving the cities for the suburbs.

At the end of the 1955 season, with all of these concerns troubling his daily operation of the team, Stoneham began to weigh the future of Giants baseball in New York. He entertained a number of options. Recalling that the Giants were landlords to the Yankees in the early years of his father’s ownership, he pondered becoming a tenant of the Yankees.

Stoneham also had another card up his sleeve in the form of an idea for a new ballpark to be shared by both the Giants and the Yankees. The idea was more of a pipedream, doomed from the start since it required public financing that the city would not provide and cooperation from the Yankees, who were happy in their present location. During the late spring and summer of 1956, he also entertained what was surely the most far-fetched and elaborate scheme for a ballpark, even one intended for the Giants.7 The notion, put forth by Manhattan city politician Hulan Jack, was to build a 100,000-capacity stadium to rise above the New York Central Railroad’s West Side Yard that would also provide parking for about 20,000 cars. Jack argued that he had planners and investors to advance the project and thereby keep the Giants in Manhattan. Stoneham is on record as showing interest, meeting with Jack and his committee, but expressing his characteristic caution.8 As the cost estimates for the project continued to rise, the city’s enthusiasm fell and the railway company remained distant; plans for the so-called “stadium on stilts” faded away.9

These suggestions about Stoneham’s solutions to the Giants’ ballpark woes were always devoid of particulars and served as diversionary tactics, allowing him to play a waiting game and consider his alternatives. Stoneham gave no public indication of real concern, and certainly none of panic; it was business as usual for the New York Giants. He simply behaved publicly as he always had done, generous to a fault, providing hospitality for sportswriters, and standing rounds at Toots Shor’s famous Manhattan saloon that catered to New York sports celebrities, bantering hopefully about his ballclub. With rumors flying about the Giants moving out of the Polo Grounds, and even out of the city, Stoneham would calmly dismiss everything as speculation, saying he had a lease with the Coogan family and he planned to be in New York for “years to come.”10

At the same time Stoneham insisted that the Giants would stay put in New York, and were committed long-term to the Polo Grounds, he began entertaining a radical idea, something that just two years before would have been unthinkable. He gave serious consideration to the idea of moving the team out of New York. His first thoughts were to plan simply, minimize complications, keep costs manageable, and hold his cards close to his vest. By early 1956, he knew he could not remain much longer in his present location. Minneapolis, home to his Triple-A farm team, the Millers, and a major Midwest city, seemed a very attractive option.11 As a Giants franchise, the Minneapolis Millers gave Stoneham rights to the city’s territory.

But as he contemplated his move to the Midwest, Stoneham did so in his customary wary and discreet manner. Making up his mind to move and selecting a date to do so were two very different undertakings for Stoneham. With his lease with the Coogan family for the Polo Grounds securely in hand, he could afford to sit back and let the action come to him. Whenever he was asked about the Giants’ future, he responded as the loyal son he was, suggesting that things might work out somehow and the Giants could be in New York for a long time to come. Even with his awareness of the problems with the Polo Grounds, Stoneham was not quite ready to establish a deadline, or to go public with any decision. Admitting to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley in a confidential, informal conversation in March 1957 that he had made up his mind to move to Minneapolis, he did not feel an overwhelming urge for any public pronouncement just yet.12 His waiting game would prove momentous. In the late spring of that year, he would be lobbied by three different parties, each of them urging him to expand his horizons westward another 2,000 miles to consider San Francisco and the lucrative California market.

As Stoneham considered his options, the City of San Francisco began its plans for major-league baseball. In 1954 its voters passed a bond measure to build a new stadium and in 1956 newly elected Mayor George Christopher formed an official city task force to attract a major league team. By mid-1957, in conjunction with the mayor’s office in Los Angeles, Christopher and his cohorts began a push to bring big-league baseball to California. Knowing that Los Angeles was courting the Brooklyn Dodgers and their owner Walter O’Malley, Christopher began to consider attracting the other New York National League team, the Giants. In mid-May of 1957, after some encouragement from LA Mayor Norris Poulson and O’Malley, Christopher approached Stoneham with an offer of a new stadium with ample parking and the promise of an enthusiastic fan base waiting for big-league baseball. Weighing his options over the summer, Stoneham decided to forsake Minneapolis in favor of what he thought was a better market with more economic advantages. In August, once he had received an official letter of invitation from the City of San Francisco, Stoneham agreed to move to California for the 1958 season.13

The Giants arrived in San Francisco to great fanfare in April 1958 and for the next 10 years14 played great baseball to enthusiastic crowds. Stoneham profited from the move and was happy in his new location, especially when he moved into his new facilities at Candlestick Park, which seated over 40,000 fans and had parking for over 10,000 vehicles. A unit of stock in the National Exhibition Company (the Giants’ holding company) sold for $125 in 1957, prior to the move out west; in 1964, that same unit sold for $725.

A foggy Candlestick Park, circa 1965. (Photo courtesy of Dave Glass via Flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 license.)

Stoneham’s new home turned out to be a far cry from what Vice President Richard Nixon claimed was “the finest ballpark in America” when it opened in 1960.15 Indeed, the ballpark would become something of an albatross for the Giants organization for years to come, with its bad weather, its remote location, and its soulless character. It was trouble from the very beginning, even during its planning and construction, when the city rushed to complete the project. It made questionable land deals with the landowner, Charles Harney, who would also become the builder of the ballpark. Harney lost considerable enthusiasm for the project after the city decided to call the ballpark Candlestick Park, after its location on San Francisco Bay’s Candlestick Point, rather than the Harney Stadium he expected. The completion of the project, in time for the 1960 season, was fraught with rancor and disagreement between builder, architect, and the city, causing various amenities to be cut back or eliminated entirely. Nonetheless, the Giants open to good crowds and played competitive baseball for the first 10 years there, despite the adverse conditions.16

In 1968 things began to change, however, marking the beginning of the end for the Stoneham years in San Francisco. Ominous circumstances were converging, any one of which, taken on its own, might have been manageable; together they were overwhelming, especially for an old-fashioned owner like Stoneham, whose business proclivities and personal bearing were not best matched with crises. Pressure that began with one event in the winter of 1967 would continue to build with others over the next few years and lead to Stoneham’s undoing, forcing an unthinkable decision: to sever a lifelong connection with his beloved baseball club.

The most significant of these events, one that would have disastrous results for Stoneham’s Giants, came in the guise of baseball’s progress: the relocation of the Kansas City Athletics to Oakland for the 1968 season.17 Maverick owner Charles O. Finley had been itching to get out of the Midwest since he bought the team. He had mediocre attendance and a terrible television contract.18 He coveted Northern California and the Bay Area as a prime location after watching the Giants’ success there. The American League felt the same way, having been caught off-guard by the National League’s appropriation of the California market in 1958 when the Giants and the Dodgers moved west. The junior circuit moved into Southern California in 1961 with the expansion Los Angeles Angels and saw Northern California as a good location for another team. Finley was granted permission to move to Oakland at the American League fall owners’ meeting on October 18, 1967, when they also authorized expansion to Seattle and Kansas City no later than 1971. The latter approval by the owners was in part to mollify angry Kansas City folks who were threatening litigation in response to Finley’s exodus.19

The A’s arrived in California with great fanfare in the winter of 1967. Finley greeted a welcoming group of 400 reporters and dignitaries at the airport, promising a long and successful stay in the Bay Area. Sportswriters in San Francisco appeared impervious to any downside for their home team in Finley’s move and, adopting a “the more, the merrier” attitude, extended a warm welcome to the A’s.20 Not so Horace Stoneham, who felt immediately threatened. His remarks stood in sharp contrast to all those excited about a new baseball team in the Bay Area and would prove remarkably prescient for decades to come. “Certainly the move will hurt us. It is simply a question of how much and if both of us can survive. I don’t think the area at the present time will take care of us both as much as (the Athletics) think it will.”21 Taking a more politic and diplomatic stand, Chub Feeney, Giants’ vice president and Stoneham’s nephew, said he welcomed the A’s move and hoped it would work out for everyone, including the Giants.22 Like many in the city, Feeney thought it was too early to pass judgment.

It didn’t take long for the Giants to feel the pinch of the A’s presence across the bay. In 1968, the A’s first year in Oakland, the Giants drew 837,220, down over 405,000 from the previous year. This pattern would persist over the next seven years, Stoneham’s remaining time with the club. Only once after the A’s moved to Oakland — in the playoff year 1971, when the Giants won the National League West title — would Stoneham’s team draw over 1 million fans to Candlestick. In 1974, attendance fell to an abysmal 519,987.23 Only twice before — in 1932 and in the war year 1943 both at the Polo Grounds — did the Giants draw fewer home fans.24 Faced with this new reality, Stoneham was uncharacteristically blunt in his response. “Finley, the A’s and the whole American League are partners in villainy.”25 Sharing the Bay Area market with another major-league ballclub was proving disastrous to the Giants’ ability to maintain financial health.

In addition to the A’s, Stoneham sensed yet another looming problem that would cause him further anxiety: His team was aging, especially his best players. Moreover, the Giants’ finances no longer resembled those of the profitable early years in San Francisco. Simply put, Stoneham was running out of money. The major leagues’ days of television contracts, merchandising, and playoff revenue-sharing lay in the future. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the gate was still the primary source of income for ballclubs, and since 1968 the Giants had been drawing poorly. As he looked to a new decade of shrinking revenue, Stoneham had to cut his costs, which made stripping the team of big-name and high-salaried players a practical, however painful, necessity. Orlando Cepeda left in 1966 before the club’s fiscal woes were apparent, easing payroll pressure. Cy Young Award winner Mike McCormick was traded in 1970.26 Gaylord Perry was dealt to Cleveland after the 1971 season (where he was a Cy Young Award winner the next year), and shortstop Hal Lanier was sold to the Yankees for cash.27 All-Star catcher Dick Dietz was traded to the Dodgers in 1971.28 Willie McCovey was sent to San Diego in the fall of 1973 and Juan Marichal was sold to the Boston Red Sox that December. Dave Kingman, who arrived in September of 1971 to be a new Giants power hitter, was sold to the Mets after the 1974 season.29

Shedding the high-price players posed difficult decisions for Stoneham, but no one trade or player sale brought with it the agony Stoneham felt when he realized he would have to part with Willie Mays. The blunt reality came off the bottom line: The Giants could not afford to keep Mays, at least in the manner that Stoneham intended. Once the two-year salary for Mays was cobbled together — $165,000 for the 1972 and 1973 seasons — Stoneham knew he would have to find Willie a new home, a place where he would be happy, where he could be guaranteed this two-year salary obligation, and where his future would be secure. With the Giants revenue fading fast, Stoneham put all of his effort into getting Willie settled, and quickly.

During the spring of 1972, Stoneham entered into secret negotiations with Joan Whitney Payson, the New York Mets club owner, and M. Donald Grant, the club’s chairman, to trade Mays to the Mets. The Mets were the only club Stoneham contacted because he felt that Willie should be back in New York, where he began his great career, had so many wonderful years, and was a legend. A crucial part of the trade for Stoneham involved assurances from Payson and Grant that Willie would be given some kind of extended contract with the ballclub once his playing days were over. As befitting a sentimental and old-fashioned owner, Stoneham felt the need for secrecy in the event that the deal with the Mets might fail and Willie’s pride would be hurt, the result of feeling discarded by a cash-poor owner.30 The attempts at secrecy failed, however, and newspapers on both coasts caught wind of the story.31

On May 11, 1972, the finalized negotiations became official news. Mays was traded to the Mets for a minor-league pitcher named Charlie Williams; there was also mention of an additional unspecified amount of cash from the Mets, rumored to be between $50,000 and $200,000.32 In a gesture that conveyed the highest form of respect, Stoneham brought Mays in on the final hours of deliberation with Payson and Grant, and then ushered him to the press conference at the Mayfair House announcing the trade.33 In his remarks, the Giants owner tried to put on a brave face but could hardly hide his disappointment. “I never thought I would trade Willie, but with two teams in the Bay Area, our financial situation is such that we cannot afford to keep Willie and his big salary as well as the Mets can.”34 Grant followed by saying that the Mets planned to keep Mays around for a long time, securing his future in baseball. The player himself spoke briefly, that he was happy to be back in New York and looking forward to playing for the Mets, and that he was grateful to the Giants and to Stoneham for all they had given him.35 The press conference ended and with it one of the most fabled chapters in Giants history was over.

After the Mays trade, things hardly improved for Stoneham. In 1973 he spent most of his time denying rumors that the team was for sale.36 He was losing the public-relations battle with the A’s, who were enjoying unparalleled success — three straight World Series championships — while the Giants finished well off the pace in the National League West during the same years. He lost at the gate as well; in 1974 and 1975 the Giants’ home attendance was the lowest of any season since the team moved west, barely clearing the 500,000 mark each year. To add to all of the other distractions, his real-estate venture in Casa Grande, Arizona — a project he hoped to turn from a spring-training site into a golf resort with adjacent homes — was stalled, diverting precious capital from the running of the ballclub, “soaking up money as the quickly as the desert soaks up the rain,” as one Giants’ front office employee put it.38 After the 1974 season, Stoneham announced a $1.7 million loss to the stockholders of the National Exhibition Company.39

There was no longer any way to gloss over the obvious: The Giants were in trouble and Stoneham simply did not have the resources — nor perhaps the resolve — to solve the club’s problems. In the spring of 1975, he approached the other owners in the National League with grim news. He had enough money to meet only two months of payroll and needed a loan from the league to finish the season. At the same time, he announced his intention to sell the team, hoping to find a local buyer to keep the Giants in San Francisco.40 With this announcement, Stoneham gave notice that a 57-year family connection to Giants baseball had ended. A new era was about to begin, but the future looked anything but secure for the San Francisco Giants.

New San Francisco Giants owners Bob Lurie, left, and Bud Herseth model souvenir T-shirts after purchasing the team in 1976. (San Francisco Examiner/Newspapers.com)

Enter Bob Lurie

Throughout the summer and fall of 1975, Stoneham waited in vain for an offer to keep the team in San Francisco. Bob Lurie, a local businessman, was interested but needed a partner. Meanwhile, Stoneham grew anxious. Finally in the winter of 1975-76, a legitimate offer came from out of town, in fact from another country. A group of Canadian businessmen, some of whom were connected to Labatt Brewing Company, offered on January 9, 1976, to buy the Giants and move them to Toronto for the 1976 season. Newly elected Mayor George Moscone couldn’t imagine losing the team and put all his efforts into finding local ownership. He approached Lurie and contacted Bob Short, a Minneapolis businessman and former owner of the Texas Rangers, to help form a partnership. By late January they had agreed in principle to counter the Canadians’ offer in the hope that the major leagues would want to keep the team in San Francisco. All that remained was the approval of the NL owners who, under Los Angeles owner Walter O’Malley’s influence, were predisposed to keep the Giants in San Francisco. Everything appeared settled.

A special meeting of the NL convened on February 24, whose sole purpose was to approve the sale of the Giants. With Short in a Minneapolis hospital recovering from a bad fall, Lurie and Moscone attended the meeting and Moscone made a presentation before the owners. After the brief presentation, the mayor and Lurie waited outside the meeting room for what they assumed would be a pro-forma approval. It was with some surprise that the owners’ deliberations took longer than expected. When the owners finally came back to Moscone and Lurie, their approval had a big string attached. It was in fact a conditional approval of the sale, and the condition would prove unbearable for the partnership. The owners, troubled by Short’s history as an American League owner, preferred to deal only with Lurie as a fellow owner.41 Therefore, they demanded as a condition of the sale that Bob Lurie would act and function as the primary owner, the one who would vote at NL meetings, effectively putting Short in a secondary role in the partnership.42  

It did not take Short long to respond. He immediately and emphatically rejected the league’s condition. Conversations over the next few days to reach some understanding and agreement between him and Lurie left both of them at an impasse.43 On March 2 Short sent a telegram to Lurie with a brief message dissolving the partnership. Short also sent telegrams to Moscone and Chub Feeney repeating his thinking that, given his long experience as a major-league executive and Lurie’s limited exposure to the business of baseball, he should be the primary owner. If he couldn’t, then he was out of the partnership.44

On the afternoon of March 2, Chub Feeney placed a call to a Lurie, asking for an update on the progress of the sale. A stunned Lurie explained the difficulty and asked for a 48-hour extension to find a new partner among the city’s business community. After contacting the owners, Feeney told Lurie that the league would grant him five hours. Feeney explained that the owners were too anxious about the proximity of spring training and league play to wait any longer for ownership issues. As Lurie was scrambling to find another local partner, Corey Busch, the mayor’s secretary, received a phone call from Phoenix. Someone named Bud Herseth, a cattle dealer unknown to anyone in the mayor’s office, or to baseball for that matter, was on the line asking about the sale of the Giants and if he might get involved as a partner. He had read about Bob Lurie, the difficulties of the sale, and would be interested in becoming an owner. Busch was astounded, put Herseth on hold and broke in on the mayor’s meeting. The mayor got on the line and after a few minutes decided that Herseth was serious and worthy of a follow-up. He told Herseth that someone would contact him within the hour.45

Immediately Moscone called Lurie, who then placed a call to Herseth. After a 45- minute conversation, they agreed in principle to form a partnership with Herseth providing half of the $8 million selling price. There would be no disagreement about who would be voting at the NL meetings; Herseth was fine with Lurie as the chief owner who would represent the business side of ownership. All that remained was for Herseth’s finances to be vetted. When the NL owners were satisfied with Herseth’s reliability and financial legitimacy, they approved the new partnership. The headlines the next day in the Chronicle’s sports section proclaimed the news: “Beef King Saves Lurie, Giants.”46 One writer called it “the greatest save in Giants’ history.”47 A breathless Lurie gave his account to the newspaper:

“Yesterday I was $4 million shy of the agreed sale price. Then I heard about Bud . … I called him and he said he had $4 million. I informed Feeney of this beautiful development. Chub called the owners and we got unanimous approval. … It’s all set, we own the Giants.”48

Lurie’s head was swimming, but he prevailed. He was a new owner of the Giants and the team would remain in the city.

Bob Lurie was a good fit for the Giants and San Francisco. A native son, a successful businessman who knew the social scene, an avid golfer, and a former member of Stoneham’s board of directors who knew the Giants culture reasonably well, he seemed poised to have a good run with the team. But the Lurie years would turn out to be quite uneven. After struggling his first two years with organizational issues, he eventually parted ways with Bud Herseth, buying him out in early spring of 1979. His next few years dealt primarily with managerial changes and finding the right mix in the clubhouse. The Lurie teams were occasionally good and surprising — 1978, 1981, and 1982 were good years with favorable won-lost records and first-division finishes for the ballclub. Attendance in those years was reasonable, although the Giants still hovered near the bottom of the league. After 1985, the worst season in Giants history, either in New York or San Francisco — when the club lost 100 games — Lurie made a change in management that would define his remaining years with Giants as successful and competitive, on and off the field. In September 1985 Lurie hired Al Rosen as the new GM/president, and the pair hired Roger Craig to become the team manager. With those moves, Lurie ushered in the Humm Baby era, when winning baseball came back to the city and the Giants would go to the postseason twice and eventually to the World Series.49

But even with this success, Lurie could not shake his biggest problem as owner, Candlestick Park, with its cold and windy weather, its remote location 10 miles from the city center, and its spartan and bleak appearance and atmosphere. Throughout his first 10 years of ownership, he tried everything to improve the place, only to finally realize the Giants would have to have a new ballpark at a different location. Starting in the fall of 1987, Lurie would go before the voters of San Francisco twice (1987 and 1989), Santa Clara County once (1990), and San Jose once (1992), to seek public funding to build a new ballpark. In every case the Giants lost at the polls. Knowing he couldn’t continue to run a successful franchise while playing at Candlestick and seeing no real possibilities for a new facility in the Bay Area, Lurie decided it was time for him to get out of baseball. Discouraged, he announced in early June 1992, that the team was up for sale. He arranged to take members of his front office to New York to meet with Commissioner Fay Vincent to find some remedy for his predicament. Back in San Francisco in mid-June of 1992, Lurie felt as if he had a clear direction.

In dealing with the Giants’ dilemma, Commissioner Vincent applied the four-point standard developed by baseball in 1990 to govern franchise movement: The organization has been losing money over a substantial period; there has been declining attendance over a period of three years; the stadium is inadequate or unsuitable for baseball; and the team resides in a community that has demonstrated a lack of interest in baseball by vote or otherwise.50 Vincent reiterated these criteria to the press and added that the Giants met all of them “squarely.”51 He said: “I think the history of transfers leads one to the conclusion that baseball ought to be careful, but I think there are circumstances        under which I am prepared to acknowledge that a transfer should be looked at. … San Francisco has my permission to look at these options.52

While he would subsequently refashion his meaning of “options,” Vincent initially gave all indications to Lurie that the Giants could pursue moving out of Candlestick to remedy their present situation. At the press conference after his meeting with Lurie, the commissioner confounded the issue somewhat when he added that this permission did not mean that the Giants had “automatic approval to move.”53 In stressing this last point, Vincent undoubtedly had baseball protocol in mind; all franchise sales and transfers are subject to approval by owners in both leagues. The ambiguity of Vincent’s position would, however, be a bone of contention later in the year when offers came in to buy the Giants. Nonetheless, Lurie, Rosen, and Corey Busch left the June meeting with Vincent feeling they had been given a clear go-ahead to shop the team and consider relocation. As Busch explained it, the commissioner had, in effect, granted them “a hunting license.”54

Lurie waited in vain for someone from the local community to come forward with an offer to buy the Giants and keep them in the Bay Area. But by late July, hearing nothing from locals, he began negotiating with a group from the Tampa/St. Petersburg area who wished to buy the team and move the Giants to Florida. Plans developed quickly. On August 6 a group from St. Petersburg flew to San Francisco to meet with Lurie and Rosen. By evening the parties had reached agreement: The Giants would be sold to the Florida group and begin the 1993 season in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area.

While the Florida newspapers and business community exploded with delight, the San Francisco Bay Area reacted with shock, disappointment and bitterness. Mayor Frank Jordan, claiming that the deal was far from settled, began mobilizing support for a counteroffer from the San Francisco business community. Back in New York, National League President Bill White, acting on behalf of baseball in the wake of Commissioner Vincent’s resignation, told Mayor Jordan that the National League was prepared to receive a counteroffer from a San Francisco group, but in a timely fashion. White told the mayor he had three weeks, which meant somewhere around the second week of October 1992.

With White’s deadline fast approaching, the investment partners, led by real-estate magnate Walter Shorenstein, which included the likes of Charles Schwab, Don and John Fisher, the owners of Gap clothing stores, and Peter Magowan, the CEO of Safeway, met in Shorenstein’s office on Saturday, October 10, to confront two major crises. One had to do with the calendar. White’s deadline for a competing offer was October 12. That gave the San Franciscans two days to meet the deadline. Shorenstein made one or two calls and raised a bit more capital. Larry Baer, a CBS official and a friend of Magowan’s who was working behind the scenes to help the partners, called Kevin O’Brien of KTVU, the longtime broadcaster of the Giants, and got another contribution. Shorenstein also urged the general partners to up their individual antes. In a matter of hours, the group had a substantial base of capital to go forward.55

The other crisis came in the form of a difficulty that tugged at the very identity of the group, leading to an overwhelming question: Who among the city’s movers and shakers assembled that day in Shorenstein’s office would take on the role of chief managing partner and run the franchise? There are many accounts of how this question was answered. Most describe the practicalities, that most of the partners — Shorenstein, Schwab, Don and John Fisher, for example — did not have the time or the inclination to run a baseball club, and asked Magowan if he would do it.56 Another account has it a bit more dramatically. “All at once, as if by divine providence, the heads of everyone at the meeting turned in the direction of Peter Magowan, the 51-year-old chairman of Safeway, Inc.”57 Magowan’s own, more secular version suggests that he was drafted, chiefly by Shorenstein and Baer, to secure the progress that had been made, and that if he did not accept the position, all of the group’s effort would be wasted.58 By any account, however, the move turned out to be a momentous one, solidifying the group and providing strength in leadership. Magowan was an experienced executive, but he also brought to the group a deep love and understanding of baseball, and a lifelong connection to the Giants. This affection for both the Giants and the game of baseball would energize him in the short term for the negotiations ahead, and it would prove in the long run to be a powerful guide in his role as head of the Giants’ franchise for years to come.

Armed with an agreement cobbled together over the weekend, Magowan, as newly designated chief managing partner, flew to New York on Sunday night, October 11, accompanied by Larry Baer. The offer that landed on President White’s desk the next day totaled $95 million and represented San Francisco’s official counter to the St. Petersburg bid. Magowan explained to the press after he met with White. “It is a strong, credible offer from a strong group of investors, made up almost entirely of local people.”59 In an ironic twist, one of the locals was none other than Bob Lurie himself, whose $10 million short-term loan to the partnership, the same provision he had extended to the Florida group, made him in effect the largest single contributor.60 Magowan added that he expected a decision from the baseball owners within a month.

The delivery of the competing bid did little to quiet the drama connected with the Giants sale. First there were cries of foul play coming from the Floridians, saying that White, an ex-Giant after all, was hardly a disinterested party. Next came waves of lawsuits, beginning with one from the City of San Francisco against Bob Lurie for breaking the lease on Candlestick; this was followed by one from St. Petersburg investors against San Francisco, claiming that theirs was the only legitimate bid, since Bob Lurie, the Giants owner, agreed in writing to deal only with them. Not to be outdone, the City and County of San Francisco sued St. Petersburg for interference with the contract Bob Lurie held with Candlestick Park. Tampa Bay responded, this time by naming Mayor Jordan. San Francisco then filed a counterclaim, seeking legal fees from the Tampa Bay investors and the City of St. Petersburg because they both had signed indemnification agreements with the major leagues against any damages or claims that might occur in the process of buying or selling a franchise. Law Professor Jeffrey Brand explained that the indemnification agreements would stop all the litigation in its tracks, since all of the parties, the Floridians, Bob Lurie, and the San Franciscans, had signed agreements.61 Moreover, any future development of franchise location in either city would effectively end the legal wrangling.62

Nor was Bob Lurie quiet in the days approaching the owners’ vote. He and Corey Busch began a marathon schedule in an attempt to meet with each of the owners to explain the details and benefits of the Florida offer. Much has been made about Lurie’s professional commitment to his St. Petersburg buyers, that he had given his word not to consider another offer until theirs had been given its full development. Undoubtedly, this eleventh-hour visit around the league testified to that promise. But there was also the matter of business. The Floridian offer was considerably higher than the Magowan/Shorenstein offer and owners would appreciate that. Moreover, Lurie pointed out, the San Francisco offer contained some contingencies, such as getting a loan at a financial interest rate acceptable to the buyers, that would put him further at risk.

Two days before the meeting, the San Franciscans strengthened their hand by dropping the three most restricting contingencies, one of them being the condition of a favorable interest rate, and raising their total offer to $100 million. They also received substantial help from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. In a letter to Bill White in late October, Mayor Jordan outlined certain concessions the city would give to the Giants regarding Candlestick, including a waiver on stadium rent and the payment by the city of all utility and field-management costs.63 These would considerably ease the costs of playing games at Candlestick and help the Giants’ overall bottom line, something that would lessen the concerns of other owners.

At the November 10 meeting of the National League, the owners rejected the St. Petersburg/Tampa bid by a decisive 9-4 vote. The leading voice in opposition to the sale was Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley who, like his father in 1976 when Toronto interests sought the team, did not want to lose the Dodgers/Giants California rivalry.64 The owners’ decision freed Bob Lurie from his obligation with the St. Petersburg groups; he was now able to consider other offers for his club. A joint statement issued by Magowan and Shorenstein hinted of optimistic relief. “If Bob Lurie should decide to sell the Giants today, our group is ready to acquire the franchise.”65 Lurie, for his part, was quick to respond, indicating that he would review the $100 million offer made by the San Franciscans. For someone who had been through an emotional wringer over the past two months, Lurie sounded remarkably composed:

“I congratulate Peter Magowan, the entire San Francisco group and everyone in the Bay Area who worked so hard to keep the Giants in San Francisco. I know the feeling you have today. I had the same wonderful feeling in 1976.

… I will not be restrained from expressing my happiness that the anxiety created by the events of the past several months is finally over for Giants fans, whom I have always considered to     be the greatest fans in baseball.”66

Lurie remarked that while he did not expect his review of the Magowan offer to take more than a few days, he wanted to give it his due diligence since he was its largest single investor. Bud Selig, acting on behalf of the owners, said that as soon as Lurie accepted the offer, baseball would vote on the sale, probably at the December meeting.

Reactions around San Francisco ranged from ecstatic to guarded euphoria, in keeping with a city that loves a party but cultivates a sense of cool. At Pat O’Shea’s Mad Hatter, the crowd was giddy, with an enthusiastic Mayor Jordan working the crowd and leading the “Let’s Go Giants” cheers, hoping to cash in politically on the recent turn in the team’s fortunes. In fact, unlike some of his mayoral predecessors, including Christopher and Moscone, Jordan played a minor role in the latest chapter of Giants history in San Francisco, leaving the heavy lifting to the men of finance and commerce like Magowan, Shorenstein, and the Fisher brothers. In the “Save Our Giants” movement, Jordan was more facilitator than innovator. At Perry’s on Union Street, the champagne was on the house, and orange and black balloons floated along the top of the ceiling; the mood was one of civilized revelry. At a corner of the bar sat Chub Feeney, Horace Stoneham’s nephew, former Giants vice president and former NL president, a prime witness if there ever was one to the bumpy, twisty path of Giants history, going back even to its New York days. A beaming Feeney raised his champagne glass and announced to those around him, “I am delighted.” The celebration spread throughout the city. Bars around the downtown center were jammed. Sports radio talk shows were overwhelmed with happy and relieved fans.67

Feelings were reversed in St. Petersburg and Tampa. The frustration of coming so close and then being jilted again grated on fans, bringing back the sour taste of losing the White Sox in 1988. Some said it was more of the same, a lack of respect for central Florida as a big-league venue. Others complained that the rejection was a slight on American values, that Bob Lurie should have been able to sell to the buyer of his choice; they chided Florida Senators Connie Mack III and Bob Graham for not responding sooner in a challenge of baseball’s antitrust exemption.68

Mack and Graham were instrumental in scheduling a Senate hearing in early December in Washington, but little came of it. Bud Selig, chairman of the owners’ Executive Committee — in effect the acting baseball commissioner — testified in front of the subcommittee on antitrust, monopolies and business rights, chaired by Ohio Senator Howard Metzenbaum. Selig defended baseball’s decision to keep the Giants in San Francisco, pointing out that in matters of franchise transfers Major League Baseball prefers to ban relocation except in dire circumstances. Selig also suggested that baseball’s unique antitrust exemption creates great stability in the sport:

“I am very proud of baseball’s record on franchise stability. Because of baseball’s exemption, it has by far the best record of professional sports in this area. No baseball club has been permitted to relocate since the Washington Senators moved to Texas in 1972.

… [B]aseball has not abused its antitrust exemption. … We do not allow a club to relocate simply so that the owner can earn greater profits. Indeed, the National League rejected the move to Tampa-St. Pete despite the fact that it would have netted Bob Lurie an additional $15 million.”69

California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer expressed the relief and happiness of San Franciscans and Bay Area residents that the Giants would not be moving. The two Florida senators went on record to register their disappointment about St. Petersburg’s loss, but little headway was gained by the hearings. The subcommittee had no intention of challenging baseball’s long-standing exemption to antitrust laws, nor to reversing any action by baseball regarding franchise relocation.

Despite the jubilation in San Francisco, official business lay ahead. “It is still Bob Lurie’s franchise,” Larry Baer said.70 But things were indeed falling into place. After a period of review and consideration, Lurie accepted the San Francisco offer. Then it was a simple matter of bringing the agreement to the owners for their approval. Having given so much time and consideration to the Giants’ case, the owners found little to trouble them. The discussion at baseball’s winter meeting was largely pro forma. The combined NL-AL assembly voted 27 to 0 to approve the sale and the transfer of the Giants from Bob Lurie to the Magowan partnership. Once again, at the eleventh hour with a local purchase, the Giants would remain in San Francisco. And once again, under yet another ownership, the franchise faced an uncertain future in the same ballpark that had troubled them for over 30 years.

The Magowan Years

With Magowan as chief managing partner, Giants ownership entered a new phase of organizational structure, away from the single-owner model to an administration that is more corporate, with a board of directors and the head officer of the franchise emerging from the board and reporting back to them. For the next 15 years, from 1992 through 2007, Peter Magowan would head and run the organization, with Larry Baer as his chief assistant. The new ownership hit the ground running. They hired Dusty Baker to manage the club and signed Barry Bonds to what was then (in the winter of 1992) baseball’s most lucrative contract, six years at $43.75 million; they refurbished Candlestick as best they could with new paint, improved concessions stands with an upgraded menu, a new grass playing field, padded fences to replace the chain-link, and 2,500 new seats in left field so fans could catch home-run balls; they made the place more fan-friendly by hiring more ushers and conducting periodic sweeps throughout the games to clean up wind-blown litter. More important, perhaps, they embarked on a bold new plan to find a new ballpark downtown.

Magowan and Baer began their planning slowly at first, in conversations in the fall of 1995, musing about their favorite baseball venues and sharing impressions of the parks they had visited. They then moved to more practical considerations to develop a strategy to go forward. Given the recent history of the Giants’ failed ballots on public financing, Magowan understood that a new stadium could not be built with public money. As both he and Baer explained the problem, “[W]e needed a new approach; we had to get the community to see the ballpark in a new light. And that meant one thing: private financing.”71 But the new approach would require more than creative thinking; it would require the hard work of diplomacy, working the corridors of City Hall and downtown businesses, and diligence in winning over the skeptics in the community. Privately constructed ballparks were a rarity in recent baseball history. The last one to be built was Dodger Stadium, finished in 1962.

The daunting practical side of campaigning for the ballpark was eased somewhat by an accompanying exercise of conjuring up the perfect stadium and of dreaming about what it would look like. Both Magowan and Baer had a penchant for the old, traditional locales like Fenway Park in Boston or Wrigley Field in Chicago. Combining an aesthetic sense with an historical one, they conceived of the ballpark as a special place, reflecting both the uniqueness of the sport itself and the environs where it would be built. Their planning grew out of the traditional side of baseball. “We wanted our park to evoke the feeling of the best of the old parks, with Wrigley and Fenway as our models. … Both were intimate, grass-field parks. Both had distinct features that let you know where you were.”72

The Giants had their location; the Port of San Francisco had agreed to lease them a 12.7-acre bayfront parcel in China Basin, south of Market Street but close to the Embarcadero. A sense of this location became a powerful concept for both Magowan and Baer as seen in their instruction to the stadium’s architectural team, Hellmuth, Obata, and Kassabaum, Sport, Venue and Event (HOK-SVE). The firm had built Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Jacobs Field in Cleveland, and the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis.73 “We contacted the only architect we wanted to work with: Joe Spear of HOK Sport. …We urged him to dream and to draw, to create something fitting for the site. What we envisioned was a ballpark more compelling, more distinctive than any other of recent memory.”74

Magowan and Baer wanted that location to permeate the design not only of the ballpark’s façade, but also the playing field. China Basin is tied to San Francisco’s maritime history as a place where nineteenth-century clipper ships sailed to and from China, giving the location its name. By the late twentieth century, the area had evolved from an industrial waterfront to warehouses and offices. The 12.7-acre parcel set aside for the ballpark was bordered on one side by King Street, a major traffic artery, and on the other by the edge of the bay, in the proximity of warehouses and some offices. It was seen by many in the city as an area primed for development. As Magowan and Baer explained, “The best ballparks … are created not by an architect; they’re created by a site imposing itself on the architect.”75

With his deep interest in Giants’ history, Magowan also wanted the design of the park to honor the team’s heritage, from its days in New York as well as its time in San Francisco. Spear obliged that interest with countless examples of the ballclub’s rich and storied past. The recent past is represented in various locations outside the park by a number of nine-foot bronze statues of former San Francisco Giants, all of them Hall of Famers: Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal, and Orlando Cepeda. On the exterior wall of the right-field façade, world championship titles from New York and San Francisco are painted, along with NL pennant years, and plaques of various players. The waterway edge of San Francisco Bay behind the right-field wall, named McCovey Cove in honor of the Giants’ left-handed home-run slugger, would prove to be a unique and popular feature of the ballpark, where kayakers and boaters would gather to wait for “splash hits,” home-run balls that land in the water.76 In a large stone adjacent to McCovey Cove, plaques commemorate highlight moments in each of the seasons the Giants played in San Francisco. The pictorial exhibit on Giants’ history on the club level runs chronologically from right field, featuring the early days in New York with John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, running clockwise throughout the years and ending in left field with AT&T Park. The sense of baseball history extends even to the San Francisco Seals, the old Pacific Coast League team; their beloved manager, Lefty O’Doul, has a plaza named for him outside the right-field entrance to the ballpark.

Magowan also worked with Spear on the interior playing field, especially on how it would be influenced by its location and the dimensions of the site. Features of the playing field would evolve from its own small dimensions and the proximity of the water. Magowan thought that the restriction of space could dictate an interesting irregular outfield that would have an impact on how the game would be played. Unlike football or basketball, where the playing dimensions are fixed, baseball, aside from the infield measurements, always had irregularities in the old parks like Fenway, the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field, and Shibe Park in Philadelphia. At the China Basin site, the right-field dimensions would be restricted by the close proximity of the water, only 309 feet from home plate in the corner, but would quickly run away from the plate toward right-center, which would be 421 feet at its deepest. The left-field foul line would be 339 feet and 399 in straightaway center field. There would be sharp angles in both right-center and left-center. The right-field wall would be 24 feet high (another historical gesture — an homage to Willie Mays, who wore number 24) to prevent easy home runs down the line, and also add to the dramatics of “splash hits” that land in McCovey Cove. Magowan’s interest in the fans’ perspective would limit the dimensions of foul territory as well, since the seating is designed to get the fans as close to the action, especially behind home plate and near the infield.

The dreaming came easily to both Magowan and Baer, as did their collaboration with Spear. They now faced the difficult parts: how to get public support for their planning, and then find a way to pay for it. The first step was to put a ballot measure before the San Francisco voters to gain approval for the construction of the ballpark. While it would be built with private funding, the Giants still needed public approval to remove certain restrictions that applied to the Port’s China Basin site and to change some of the infrastructure before they could begin construction. The Board of Supervisors authorized a special March 1996 election in which Proposition B would come before the voters of the City and County of San Francisco. Prop B, as it came to be known, involved land-use restrictions, the most important of which were to increase the limitations on building height from 40 to 150 feet and to waive parking requirements near the ballpark.

In the buildup to the vote, Magowan and Baer wasted no effort in cultivating strong citywide support for the measure. While the terms of Prop B differed from previous referenda in making no demands for public money to build the park, Magowan and Baer were wary about possible negative residue carrying over from the 1987 or 1989 ballpark ballot defeats. They hired a professional political consultant, Peter Hart, who recommended polling in those neighborhoods that voted “no” in the 1987 and 1989 ballpark referenda. As part of the campaign, they approached three important community leaders in the city to head a “San Franciscans For a Downtown Ballpark” committee, State Senator Quentin L. Kopp, Roberta Achtenberg, and Rev. Cecil Williams, each of whom represented a different constituency in the city’s social and political fabric.77 The campaign then began to solicit support from a number of individuals who could coalesce into strategic groups and be listed in the official San Francisco Voters Pamphlet. Leaving no stone unturned, Magowan and Baer managed to convince nine people who voted no on the two previous city ballpark measures to stand as another group in the Voters Pamphlet entitled “Old Foes, New Supporters of a Downtown Ballpark.”78 Weeks prior to the vote, Magowan and Baer made their way around town with a scale model of the new ballpark, displaying it at prominent venues for voters to see.

All the planning, organizing, polling, and campaigning paid off for the Giants in a stunning victory at the polls. Proposition B was approved by San Francisco voters by a substantial majority of 66 percent. The local papers celebrated the news. “Giants Ballpark: Home Run” ran the headlines in the San Francisco Examiner; “S.F. Voters Say Play Ball” was the headline in the Chronicle.79 Politicians, campaign workers, Giants officials, and average baseball fans celebrated all over town, including at the Double Play, a bar where supporters of Proposition B toasted the home team.

Once the vote was approved, Magowan and Baer could get to work on the financing. The projected cost of building the ballpark was $357 million. Magowan explained that from the outset the plan to raise capital was multifaceted. The first stage was a brilliant marketing ploy aimed at 1996 season-ticket holders. Over the following winter they received a promotional package in a cardboard box shaped like home plate. Inside was a pop-up view of the new ballpark, a film showing an architect’s rendering, with information about the design and construction, and a brochure on the charter seat program. The mailing campaign proved quite successful. The sale of charter seats coupled with an advertising campaign provided much-needed capital. Magowan and Baer were pleased with the results: “We raised $75 million by selling licensing fees at $5,000 for the best seats.”80

They then moved to get corporate sponsorship for ads within the ballpark. Naming rights were $50 million; other advertising brought in $50 million. With this amount of capital commitment, they looked to borrow the rest. Their first choice was Bank of America, an old San Francisco bank with ties to the Giants. Walter Shorenstein owned the Bank of America building and Bob Lurie was one of the tenants. But Bank of America said no. They then pursued another bank with a local history, Wells Fargo, but they also said no.81 Finally, Magowan and Baer traveled to New York City and presented their plan to Chase, which approved the loan. The City of San Francisco also provided some help. Using a tax-increment financing plan, the city provided $12 million in infrastructure (amenities outside the ballpark including closing streets, street lighting, a transit stop, and utilities connections).82  

AT&T Park in San Francisco, circa 2009. (Photo courtesy of Eric Molina via Flickr.com. Used under Creative Commons 2.0 license.)

************

Magowan and Baer had accomplished what had been previously thought improbable. They had overcome all the disappointments, false starts, and near misses of recent Giants attempts at trying to build a new ballpark. They had managed to get City Hall, the community, local businesses, and neighborhood groups to support the idea of a downtown baseball venue at a location agreeable to all. With public approval and the crucial financing in hand, they now had a “shovel ready” project. On December 11, 1997, they broke ground at China Basin and the building of the new ballpark was on its way. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph of California had paid $50 million for the naming rights; the new stadium would be called Pac Bell Park. Magowan and Baer hired Kajima, a Japanese construction management firm, to coordinate the building of Pac Bell. Kajima in a sense “rode herd” on the structural engineers and the construction company, Haber, Hunt & Nichols.83 The two Giants executives visited the construction site almost on a daily basis to keep up with the progress, a far cry from Horace Stoneham’s passive connection to the building of Candlestick.84 The attention to detail and the superb management of the project produced spectacular results. Pac Bell Park opened on April 11, 2000, 27 months after the groundbreaking ceremonies. The Giants finally had their downtown home. Coming full circle from Opening Day on the West Coast 42 years before in Seals Stadium, the Giants’ opponent in the first game at Pac Bell Park was the Los Angeles Dodgers, a fitting historical echo at the dawning of a new century of baseball in San Francisco.

Once Pac Bell Park opened in 2000, there was a dramatic shift in attitude, perception and the team’s fortunes. To many in San Francisco it was love at first sight. Players marveled at the playing field and locker-room facilities. Taken by the ambience and location, fans flocked to the park, establishing sellouts for every home game. The longtime voice of the Giants, Lon Simmons, suffered through many cold nights at Candlestick; when he first saw Pac Bell Park, he remarked, “Finally the Giants have a ballpark that looks like San Francisco.”85 The neighborhood around the park throbbed with life and activity. Mike Krukow, one of the Giants’ broadcasters, noticed the way the ballpark immediately connected with the city’s character. “It was an old soul the day it opened. You had the feeling it was in San Francisco even before the bridges.”86

The coherence and sheer beauty of the new ballpark brought the deficiencies of Candlestick into sharper focus. Everything about Pac Bell accentuated the gap between the new and the old: the location of the ballpark amid a thriving neighborhood; the attractive combination of brick and steel in the façade; the proximity of downtown; the views of the Oakland hills from the upper decks; the sight of the Bay Bridge from the right-field seats; even the weather was better, due to adjustments to the ballpark’s configuration after some wind studies. There was nothing like any of this at the remote location of Candlestick, 10 miles from downtown. After only one month in the new ballpark, players, fans, broadcasters, and sportswriters alike shuddered to think of Giants baseball at Candlestick.

The dramatic comparison of appearance and the location between Pac Bell and Candlestick extended also to the fortunes of the home team. For the 40 years the Giants played at Candlestick, they went to the postseason five times; they won division titles three times and the NL pennant twice. They won no World Series. Once they moved into Pac Bell Park in 2000, things changed quickly. In their first four years there, the Giants went to the postseason three times and won a NL pennant. Overall, in the 16 years (as of 2015) that they have played at AT&T Park (the ballpark changed its name in 2004 to SBC Pac Bell, and then in 2006 to AT&T Park), the Giants have been to the postseason seven times, have won four pennants and three World Series.

The move to the new ballpark has strengthened and cemented the Giants connection to the city of San Francisco, as well as enhanced its status as one of the great franchises in baseball. According to national journals like Forbes or business internet sites like bizjournals.com, the Giants rank in the top five major-league baseball franchises for profitability, team worth, success on the field, and overall stability. A good example of that stability can be seen in the smooth succession of recent corporate management. When Peter Magowan retired in 2008, Bill Neukom became chief managing partner; and then in 2012, when Neukom left, Larry Baer became the chief executive of the franchise, an organization that no longer is run by a single owner like Stoneham or Lurie, but has a board of directors to whom the chief managing partner reports.87 During this period of change, the ball club has remained not just efficient and secure, but phenomenally successful.

Last revised: September 5, 2018

ROB GARRATT is an emeritus professor of English and American Literature. A lifelong Giants fan, he is the author of “Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants.”

Notes

1 Stoneham was born in April 1903.

2 Robert E. Murphy, After Many a Summer (New York: Union Square Press, 2009), 38-42; Frank Graham, The New York Giants: An Informal History (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), 248; Andrew Goldblatt, The Giants and the Dodgers: Four Cities, Two Teams, One Rivalry (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2003), 82-84.

3 The Giants drew 824,112 in 1955. Cincinnati drew 693,662 and Pittsburgh 469,397. By contrast, Brooklyn drew 1,033,589 and the New York Yankees 1,490,138..

4 Stew Thornley, Land of the Giants (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000), 102, 112; Goldblatt, The Giants and the Dodgers, 138.

5 Up until the late 1940s, fans could walk along with the players and umpires, who were heading toward the clubhouses in center field, to reach the gates in left-center and right-center. After an altercation between Leo Durocher and a Brooklyn fan, Commissioner Happy Chandler ruled that fans would have to wait until the players and umpires cleared the field before they would be allowed to use the center-field exits. Thornley, Land of the Giants, 102.

6 Goldblatt, The Giants and the Dodgers, 138-139.

7 Arthur Daley, reflecting on the project, which would be huge, remarked that there was a limit to “giantism,” even for the Giants. New York Times, May 15, 1956.

8 New York Herald Tribune, April 12, 1956.

9 For a good summary of Jack’s idea see Murphy, After Many a Summer, 178-181.

10 The Sporting News, May 15, 1956. See also The Sporting News, February 8, 1956.

11 The Sporting News, May 30, 1956.

12 walteromalley.com, “Historical Documents,” March 23, 1957.

13 The full details of the move have been treated in a number of studies. Stoneham was also in conversations with Walter O’Malley at the time and the encouragement by the Dodger boss had some effect on Stoneham’s decision. See Andy McCue, Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers and Baseball’s Westward Expansion (Lincoln, Ne: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 357; Robert F. Garratt, Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 16-28.

14 Duns Review, May 1964: 44.

15 San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 1960. (Hereafter SFC).

16 For a more complete discussion of the travails of Candlestick’s origins see Garratt, Home Team, 43-59.

17 The Sporting News, November 4, 1967.

18 Art Rosenbaum, SFC, October 12, 1967.

19 SFC, October 19, 1967.

20 San Francisco Examiner, October 12, 1967; October 14, 1967; October 19, 1967 (hereafter SFE); SFC, October 12, 1967; October 15, 1967; October 20, 1967.

21 SFC, October 19, 1967.

22 SFC, October 12, 1967.

23 The overall total attendance for Giants and A’s baseball in the Bay Area between 1969 and 1975 remained about what the Giants were drawing from 1960 to 1968, the year Oakland arrived. This is surprising, especially when one considers the great baseball Oakland was playing in the early 1970s when they won three consecutive World Series.

24 John Thorn et. al., eds, Total Baseball, Sixth Edition, 107.

25 Shirley Povich, Washington Post, February 20, 1973.

26 baseball-reference.com/players/m/mccormi03.shtml.

27 baseball-reference.com/players/p/perryga01.shtml; baseball-reference.com/players/l/lanieha01.shtml.

28 baseball-reference.com/players/d/dietzdi01.shtml.

29 davekingmanfan.com/.

30 Charles Einstein, Willie’s Time: Baseball’s Golden Age (Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004), 329.

31 New York Herald Tribune, May 6, 1972; SFE, May 6, 1972, New York Times, May 10, 1972.

32 SFC, May 12, 1972; SFE, May 12, 1972.

33 Los Angeles Times, May 11, 1972; Boston Globe, May 11, 1972.

34 The Sporting News, May 20, 1972.

35 James S. Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend (New York: Scribner’s, 2010), 508.

36 Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1972.

37 1976 San Francisco Giants Media Guide, 495.

38 John Taddeucci, interview with the author, June 12, 2014.

39 Los Angeles Times, April 30, 1975; SFE, April 29, 1975.

40 The Sporting News, May 24, 1975.

41 For a truncated, albeit opinionated view of Short’s ownership activities. see Glenn Dickey, “Don’t Prolong the Agony,” SFC, January 26, 1976

42 SFC, February 26, 1976.

43 SFC, March 2, 1976; SFE, March 3, 1976.

44 SFC, March 3, 1976; Los Angeles Times, March 3, 1976.

45 Corey Busch, interview with the author, June 17, 2014.

46 SFC, March 3, 1976.

47 San Francisco Giants Magazine, 1978.

48 San Francisco Giants Magazine, 1978.

49 “Humm Baby” was a phrase manager Roger Craig used throughout 1986 spring training whenever he saw a great play, a good at-bat, or good hustle from his team. The phrase stuck as a description of the Rosen/Craig era in Giants baseball history.

50 New York Times, June 12, 1992; The Sporting News, June 22, 1992.

51 New York Times, June 12, 1992.

52 SFC, June 11, 1992; St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, June 19, 1992.

53 Los Angeles Times, June 12, 1992.

54 Michael Tuckman, “Sliding Home,” California Lawyer, April 1993; Corey Busch, interview with the author, June 17, 2014.

55 Richard Rapaport, “Fast Balls and High Finance”: California Business, September 1993, 55.

56 SFE, October 13, 1992.

57 Tuckman, “Sliding Home”: 66.

58 Peter Magowan, interview with the author, June 25, 2013.

59 SFC, October 13, 1992.

60 Bob Lurie’s contribution was in the form of a four-year loan. SFE, October 16, 1992.

61 Jeffrey Brand, “Off the Field: A Legal Donnybrook”, California Lawyer, April 1993.

62 St. Petersburg/Tampa was awarded an expansion franchise in 1995.

63 Mayor Frank Jordan to President William White, National League, October 20, 1992. Frank Jordan Papers. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

64 Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1992; Peter O’Malley, interview with the author, September 22, 2011.

65 SFC, November 11, 1992.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

68 SFE, November 11, 1992.

69 U.S. Senate. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Monopolies and Business Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary. One Hundred Second Congress, second session, on the Validity of Major League Baseball’s Exemption from the Antitrust Laws, December 10, 1992.

70 SFE, November 16, 1992.

71 Peter Magowan and Larry Baer, “The Miracle at China Basin,” in Joan Walsh and C.W. Nevius. Splash Hit!: Pacific Bell Ballpark and the San Francisco Giants, (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001), 19.

72 Ibid.

73 Maureen Smith, “From ‘The Finest Ballpark in America’ to ‘The Jewel of the Waterfront:’ The Construction of San Francisco’s Major League Stadiums,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, Vol. 25, No. 11, 118.

74 Magowan and Baer, Miracle at China Basin, 19.

75 Ibid.

76 McCovey Cove was particularly crowded during the period when Bonds was chasing the home-run record.

77 Quentin Kopp, a conservative politician, was wary of using public funds for private projects and did not support the other two ballpark initiatives in San Francisco. Roberta Achtenberg, a former Board of Supervisors member, was a prominent attorney and Democratic politician, and the first openly lesbian government official approved for a government position by the United States Senate. Rev. Cecil Williams was pastor of Glide Memorial Church and a leading advocate for African-Americans, gays, and lesbians. Williams’s church grew to a congregation of 10,000 and provided many social services in the city.

78 Germaine Wong, San Francisco Voter Information Pamphlet and Sample Ballot. (San Francisco: Office of the Registrar, the City and County of San Francisco, 1966), 63-65.

79 SFC and SFE, March 27, 1996.

80 Peter Magowan, interview with the author, June 25, 2013.

81 Peter Magowan, interview with the author, June 3, 2015.

82 Kevin Delany and Rick Eckstein, Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums, (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 195. Tax-increment financing (TIFs), used throughout the country by local municipalities to promote development, diverts property taxes on the land into the construction costs. See Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into Private Profit. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998), 175.

83 Kajima News and Notes, Summer 2000, Vol. 13: 3. Newsletter of the Kajima Corp.

84 Peter Magowan, interview with the author, March 29, 2016.

85 Quoted in Brian Murphy, San Francisco Giants: Fifty Years, (San Raphael, Ca: Insight Editions, 2008), 179.

86 Ibid.

87 For a more complete discussion of recent Giants ownership and corporate structure see Mark L. Armour and Daniel R. Levitt, In Pursuit of Pennants (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 368-384.

The St. Louis Cardinals won a World Series championship in 2006, their first season at the new Busch Stadium. (Kevin Ward/Flickr.com. Used by permission: CC BY-SA 2.0.)

Introduction

The St. Louis Cardinals have achieved a level of success in Major League Baseball that has been outdone only by the New York Yankees. Through the 2021 season, the franchise has won 11 World Series, 19 National League pennants, four American Association pennants, and the 1886 World Series versus the Chicago White Stockings — a winner-take-all battle with bragging rights included. This level of success has been the catalyst for the franchise to be identified as a major asset to the city of St. Louis and the surrounding metro area. The Cardinals are as much a part of the community fabric as the “Birds on the Bat” worn on their uniform.

For the fans known as Cardinal Nation, following the Redbirds is a religion passed from generation to generation. Proudly wearing their Cardinal red, they have cheered with relish their favorite players, in victory or defeat. Reciting the names of Hall of Famers such as Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, and Ozzie Smith, plus members of the Cardinals Hall of Fame such as Willie McGee, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, and current players Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright, is akin to reciting the Litany of the Saints before a Catholic Mass.

In nearly 150 years, the team’s owners have been as varied as the fans. Click on a link below to scroll down to that chapter.

• Chris Von der Ahe (1882-1898)
• Robison Brothers (1899-1911)
• Helene Hathaway Robison Britton (1911-1916)
• “The Cardinal Idea” (1917-1919)
• Sam Breadon (1920-1947)
• Fred Saigh Jr. (1948-1952)
• Anheuser-Busch (1953-1995)
• Bill DeWitt Jr. (1995-present)

Chris Von der Ahe

St. Louis Brown Stockings (American Association), 1882
St. Louis Browns (American Association) 1883-1891
St. Louis Browns (National League) 1892-1898

Chris Von der Ahe was born in Hille, Germany in 1851. He came to St. Louis by way of New York in 1867 and found work as a grocery clerk. He married Emma Hoffman, a native Missourian of German descent, in 1870 and they had a son, Edward. The grocery business was very successful, serving the German residents and quarry workers. It became so profitable that the ambitious Chris bought the store from his partner for $1,125 in 1872. He expanded the business by including a saloon and a beer garden, located a block and a half from the Grand Avenue Grounds, at the corner of Grand and Dodier, then the premier baseball site in St. Louis. The saloon became a popular destination for politicians, fans and the ball players before and after the games.1

Von de Ahe started buying real estate in the neighborhood. He got involved in politics, becoming a party activist and a supporter of mayoral candidates.2 St. Louis was a fast-growing city, reaching a population of 350,518 in the 1880 census and German ancestry figured prominently in the city’s political and social life.

Professional baseball made its debut in St. Louis in 1875. Two teams represented the city in the National Association that year, the Red Stockings and the Brown Stockings. The Red Stockings played at Red Stockings Park located at Gratiot at the west side of Compton Avenue in midtown St. Louis.3 The Brown Stockings were led, and substantially financed by $20,000 from the club’s president, J. B. C. Lucas. a St. Louis banker and grandson of Jean Baptiste Charles Lucas, who was a major developer of downtown St. Louis.4 Their home park was the Grand Avenue Grounds near Von der Ahe’s beer garden.

The Red Stockings generally used local amateur players hoping to outdraw their rival by pointing to the Brown Stockings’ use of imported talent. However, they paid the price for that decision when playing against their veteran opponents.5 After posting a 4-15 record by July 4, the Red Stockings ceased operations as a professional club but continued to play other amateur nines around the country for the remainder of the season. The Brown Stockings finished fourth with a roster that featured pitcher George Bradley, shortstop Dickey Pearce, outfielder Lip Pike and outfielder Ned Cuthbert. Troubled by gambling, players jumping from team to team, and teams refusing to complete their schedules, the National Association collapsed after the 1875 season. Lucas and the Brown Stockings moved to the new National League. Unlike the National Association, it was a league to be closely managed by the owners and run as a business.

Although the 1876 season didn’t end with a pennant, the Brown Stockings finished second, percentage points ahead of Hartford. Their own George Bradley pitched the League’s first ever no-hitter in St. Louis beating that Hartford squad 2-0 on July 15.6 For the 1877 season, the team fell below .500 and Lucas thought a house-cleaning was in order. Lucas signed four players from the Louisville team, which had ceased operations, and picked up others. Expectations for 1878 championship were high. But before they could ever don St. Louis togs, several of the Louisville players were suspended for life for their involvement in fixing games. The scandal soured St. Louis Base Ball fans on Lucas, whom they thought knowingly signed tainted players. Lucas was so disgusted with the innuendo that he and his associates shut down the Brown Stockings. 7

From 1878-1881, watching semipro teams at the Grand Avenue Grounds, was one place where St. Louis fans could go to get their base ball fix. Von der Ahe knew nothing about the game and was confounded by the enthusiasm of the fans. But he was very happy when players and fans came to his saloon for post-game drinks. Ned Cuthbert, who was now running a semipro team called the Brown Stockings, was a regular patron and became friendly with Von der Ahe. Before the 1880 season, Cuthbert approached Von der Ahe and asked him if he would front the money for the rent at Grand Avenue Grounds so that his Brown Stockings could play there. Von der Ahe would be repaid from profits of the games.8 Near the end of the season, Von der Ahe obtained a new lease on the ballpark, promising to make improvements to it with the hope of getting membership in the National League.9

That offseason, Von der Ahe formed the Sportsman’s Park and Club Association and improved the Grand Avenue Grounds with more seats and new buildings. The Association was composed of Von der Ahe, who was controlling shareholder with at least 51 percent, beer producer William Noelker, newspaperman Al Spink, saloon owner John Peckington, and Congressman John J. O’Neill.10 The first game at the renovated diamond was Sunday May 22, 1881.

According to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “The preparations for the contest were very hurriedly made, the baseball diamond especially showing need of water and a roller. The infield was so rough that perfect play thereon was out of the question. In the positions assigned to the pitcher and catcher however a smoother state of affairs existed and the outfield recently mowed was all that could be desired.”

The game featuring two local semipro teams attracted 2,500 spectators.11 On October 23, 1881, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat used the name Sportsman’s Park for the first time in promoting a game at the diamond on Grand Avenue — a game between two semipro teams.12

The revenues from games for the 1881 season were divided with the Association members receiving the revenues from ticket sales of reserved seating plus concessions. The players’ share was based on the walk-up attendance. In the beginning, the player earned about $3.75 per game. As the season wore on, with judicious scheduling by Al Spink, the club’s secretary, and with the Brown Stockings playing winning baseball, growing attendance provided players with income between $150 and $175 per month.13

Von der Ahe was not happy that some of the players only showed up for the weekend games when attendance was largest. The club had to get fill-in players for the weekday games so the quality of play was not as good and the crowds were smaller. The players who missed those games argued that they had regular jobs and couldn’t risk losing them to play ball during the week. Von der Ahe ultimately kept only the players who could play full time. Spink obtained more players and the “New Brown Stockings“ finished a season that lasted into November.14

At the end of the 1881 season, the partnership split profits of almost $25,000 in a back room in Von der Ahe’s saloon. Seeing how owning a baseball team could increase profits as well as his prestige, Von der Ahe bought out the other partners for $1,800. The total value of the franchise was roughly $3,700.15 His first act as owner was to sign Charlie Comiskey, first baseman of the Dubuque Rabbits, to a new contract for $150 a month.16

Von der Ahe wanted to take his new team into an organized league. The established National League, however, required three things that the Brown Stockings owner couldn’t accept. The league banned Sunday baseball, alcohol sales, and required admissions cost at least 50 cents. As a result, Von der Ahe sought like-minded owners in cities that would allow Sunday games, 25 cent admissions and beer sales. They would cater to the working class rather than the privileged. He found such an owner in Denny McKnight of Pittsburgh and on November 2, 1881, they and owners in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville and Philadelphia created the American Association. Von de Ahe was named a director on the Association’s Board.17

At Sportsman’s Park, Von der Ahe turned the right-field corner into a beer garden which included space for lawn bowling and a handball court. The beer garden required its own ground rule. Until the 1888 World Series, it was part of the playing field. The outfielder could go into the seats to retrieve a fair ball but had to throw it to a fielder in the pitcher’s box before a runner could be put out.18 In addition to the renovations Von der Ahe planned to have the park wired for electricity.19 He wanted Sportsman’s Park to be a multi-use facility, with space for track and field meets, soccer and lacrosse.20

The first game of St. Louis’ American Association season and first as the franchise occurred on May 2, 1882 at Sportsman’s Park against Louisville. Von der Ahe’s Brown Stockings honored the traditional name and came onto the field wearing crisp white uniforms with brown stockings and caps. Von der Ahe emphasized the connection by bringing in Ned Cuthbert as the manager. A crowd of 2,000 was treated to the franchise’s first win, 9-7. They were also entertained by Joseph Postlewaite’s band between innings. The band, which performed crowd favorites was conducted by umpire Charley Houtz, who pulled double duty.21

Focusing on maximizing beer sales at the ballpark, Von der Ahe delegated the procurement, training and discipline of players to his on-field managers. Cuthbert resigned due to ill health (consumption) in late September.22 To help him out financially, Von der Ahe had a benefit game and dinner for his friend.23

For 1883, Von der Ahe hired Ted Sullivan who had an organized, regimented way of running a ballclub. Von der Ahe felt the Browns, as they were now called, had lacked discipline in their first season. But Sullivan quickly antagonized the players with fines or threats of fines. Two players, Pat Deasley and Fred Lewis, attacked Sullivan after being accused of breaking curfew. The players had been drinking and playing pool after an August 11 game in Columbus. After a heated exchange, the two players chased Sullivan around the block and beat him. Both players were jailed by police and later released on bail. Von der Ahe found out but didn’t discipline Deasly or Lewis, who had been an expensive acquisition.24 Sullivan resigned, feeling unsupported by Von der Ahe and angry at the insinuation that he caused dissension among the players. To fill the vacancy, Von der Ahe named Comiskey manager for the rest of the season.25

Discipline issues didn’t disappear with a different manager for 1884. Instead of keeping Comiskey as player-manager, Von der Ahe brought in Jimmy Williams, the secretary of the American Association. Von der Ahe said price was no object as he would double the $45,000, he said he spent on the Browns.26 Again Fred Lewis was in the eye of the storm. He was arrested on the morning of July 2, 1884 accused of assaulting “a lady of the evening.” Upset with Lewis’ behavior during the heat of a pennant chase, the other Browns players wanted him off the team.27 Von der Ahe settled for a heavy fine, since Lewis was one his better players.28 Williams, tense and on edge as the play of the club deteriorated, resigned September 4. Charlie Comiskey for the second time in two years took over as interim manager.29

Despite the off-field issues, fan attendance was strong for Von der Ahe’s club, with 135,000 in 1882, 243,000 the following year and 212,000 in 1884, all higher than the National League average those three years. Von der Ahe said he had his own method of counting attendance not using turnstile count but of the number of barrels consumed. “Veil, Ve Sold so many barrels ve must have had a crowd of such and such size.”30 Newspapers loved to report Von der Ahe’s sayings in his heavy German accent.

In June 1883, Von der Ahe challenged an American Association rule with a popular gesture. The rule was “the visiting team, employees and umpires are guaranteed their monies if a game is called. The fans are NOT entitled to getting their money back.”31 That rule came into play on June 20 when rain delayed the game after a half inning of play. The game was called after a 30-minute wait. After the announcement around 200 irate fans stormed the ticket office and then Von der Ahe’s office demanding rain checks or their money. Von der Ahe, at first, pointed to the rule posted on the ticket window.32 The next day, feeling that the rule was unfair, he announced rain checks would be issued. “the fans of St. Louis won’t pay for what they don’t see.”33

Before the 1885 season, Von der Ahe took the interim tag off Charlie Comiskey. He felt that as player-manager, the first baseman could instill discipline off the field while playing winning baseball on it. Von der Ahe did his part by demanding players board in buildings he owned so he could keep an eye on them. Not missing an opportunity to make or save money, he garnished the players paychecks for room and board.34 Despite anger from some players, the Browns laid waste to the American Association from 1885 to 1888, winning four straight pennants. The pinnacle moment for Von der Ahe and the Browns was winning the 1886 World Series. It was a winner-take-all affair agreed to by Von der Ahe and Al Spalding of the Chicago White Stockings. The Browns bested the White Stockings four games to two.

Winning the last game at home on an extra-inning wild pitch touched off the fans:

“The wildest celebration prevailed, the crest multitude hanging around the scene of battle and making demi-gods of the brown-legged heroes. When the ball-players took their carriages, the people followed them and the scene of excitement was transferred to the central part of town,” reported the Chicago Inter-Ocean.35

Von der Ahe led the parade. As was his custom on big moments at the ballpark, he wore “a silk hat, his portly figure in his Prince Albert coat, striped trousers and spats trailing his two fawn-colored greyhounds.”36

Von der Ahe’s owner’s share came to $6,960.05 while there was $580.05 for each of the 12 players.37 The spoils of victory were displayed in the windows of Mermod & Jaccard Jewelery Company. “The magnificent solid silver Winan Trophy, … the World’s Champions banner and other victorious emblems of the Browns … have been placed in the windows so that all in the world that loves base ball and admires its champions can see what their merits have obtained for them.”38

The Browns, and especially Von der Ahe, became the toast of the town. The Browns’ owner took full advantage by throwing nightly parties at his saloon “which bugged the eyes out of North St. Louis” according to the St. Louis Star-Times. Asked why he threw all the parties, the Browns’ owner said, “money dos ist to spend.”39

The Browns got a “bump” in attendance from the World Championship as 244,000 fans, a 17 plus percent increase over 1886, turned the turnstiles to watch the Browns win a third consecutive American Association pennant. St. Louis could not win a second consecutive World Championship, though losing, to the Detroit Wolverines 10 games to 5.

The Browns’ championships also had ended the hopes of Henry V. Lucas, the brother of the J.B.C. Lucas who had owned the original Brown Stockings in the National Association. Henry Lucas had formed a team, called the Maroons, in the short-lived Union Association. The Maroons had signed some of Von der Ahe’s players and ran away with the association’s 1884 pennant. But the Maroons success revealed a severe lack of competitive balance in the Association and the league folded after that season.

Lucas wanted to stay in major league baseball and felt his team could compete in the National League. The league extended a membership to the Maroons for the 1885 season despite Von der Ahe’s protest that the National Agreement between the National League and the American Association said a second team couldn’t be put in a city if one was already there.40 The Maroons found stiffer competition in the National League, finishing last in 1885 and sixth in 1886. They were also outdrawn by the Browns in both seasons. The Browns’ season totals were greater than the National League average total attendance for those two years. The Browns also dominated exhibition series with the Maroons in those years. With St. Louis fans following a winner instead of Lucas’s poor team, the Maroons folded after the 1886 season.

With three consecutive American Association pennants and a World Series title, Browns players wanted to be compensated. After seeing the NL’s Chicago team sell two of its stars — catcher Mike “King” Kelly and pitcher John Clarkson — for $10,000 each, Von der Ahe saw he could get inexperienced players for less money. He felt Comiskey could get the best of their talents and still win in 1888. So, without telling Comiskey, he sold four of his stars — Doc Bushong, Curt Welch, Bob Caruthers and Dave Foutz — for $21,250 and three players. Comiskey was furious, but realized he would be hard pressed to find a player-manager position elsewhere to make his $8,000 salary. He stayed with Von der Ahe.

The 1888 St. Louis Brown Stockings won 92 games and won their fourth consecutive American Association pennant. However, they lost in the postseason World’s Series to the New York Giants of the National League. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

The fans were not as forgiving as Comiskey. The 1887 attendance would be the high water mark for the remainder of Von der Ahe’s ownership, as he would not be hesitant to sell players. With success, Von der Ahe became more and more vocal when the team wasn’t playing well. He did not worry about their feelings and was willing to interrupt play to call them out during games. He also liked to show them who was the “boss President.”41 The majority of the time Comiskey was able to defuse the situation and calm Von der Ahe down. When the team was winning pennants, it was easier to do.42

One of the times that Comiskey couldn’t defuse a volatile situation was the day before a game in Kansas City. Von der Ahe fined second baseman Yank Robinson $25 for using foul language while in uniform. Robinson had cursed a gatekeeper who wouldn’t permit delivery of a pair of padded pants Robinson had ordered for that day’s game. The offended gatekeeper went to Von de Ahe’s box and the owner climbed onto the field and confronted Robinson. Robinson said if Von der Ahe didn’t rescind the fine he would skip the team train to Kansas City that day. Robinson’s teammates supported him because they thought that no punishment should have occurred and they refused to board the train as well. Browns’ secretary George Munson eventually persuaded all except Robinson to take the evening train.43

Von der Ahe said the punishment was warranted because Robinson was in uniform and what he did was inexcusable, although he also said he wished he had disciplined Robinson in private. Still, Von der Ahe would not relent and Robinson would have to pay the fine despite players and fans asking the owner to drop it. Robinson was equally stubborn and said he would not pay it. Von der Ahe also complained that if all the fans who supported Robinson had come to the ballpark instead of telling him how to run his club there would be fewer empty seats. Von der Ahe said that the players who caught the late train would have to reimburse the club. He said he had already paid for the scheduled train including sleeping arrangements and it was not his fault that the players missed the earlier train.44

It was high-handed incidents such as this that fueled the creation of the Players League for the 1890 season. Led by New York Giants shortstop John Montgomery Ward, the Players League was formed to compete with the established National League and American Association teams. The objective of the PL was to provide its players with increased salaries which the established leagues limited through the reserve clause.45 Comiskey and a number of Von der Ahe’s players signed with the Chicago Pirates of the Players League.

Von der Ahe dismissed the idea the Players League could damage the American Association, and he had especially strong words for Comiskey.

“There is a mistaken impression, that it was due to Comiskey’s skill that the Browns were successful. That is not so. On the contrary he was a drawback to the team. He raised a number of rows in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Philadelphia and … kept me in hot water,” Von der Ahe said. Comiskey “was of a very ugly disposition and could never gain the goodwill of his players. He is a good ballplayer, but … not the brains of the St. Louis Club, by long odds.” Still not finished, Von der Ahe added, “I think that he is the ungrateful of all men. … I raised his salary from seventy-five dollars a month to five thousand a season and an interest in my team. In return, for my kindness, he left me in the hour of need.” Von der Ahe claimed he had youngsters on the Browns that could play just as well for less money.46

Von der Ahe used six managers during the 1890 season, and virtually all teams in the three leagues lost money. The Players League folded and four Association teams failed. Comiskey came back to manage in 1891 for a $6,000 contract from Von der Ahe and $4,000 raised by Browns boosters.47

Von der Ahe expressed optimism for the 1891 season. “The American Association is on a stronger basis financially than it has been for years. Both Boston and Chicago will be represented with good clubs, while Philadelphia and Washington will have better teams than either city has in a long while.” 48 He was overly optimistic. The Chicago team would fold before the season started. In fact, 1891 was the tenth year of the Association and only Louisville and St. Louis had been in the league every year.

By the end of the 1891 season, it was apparent the American Association’s days were numbered.49 The National League, which had paid higher salaries to keep players from jumping to the Players League was pushing hard for a settlement which would allow it to bring salaries down. The League owners held the upper hand because their teams were on more solid financial footing than the Association clubs.50

On December 12, 1891, the American Association passed into history. The National League took in the Association teams from Baltimore, Washington, Louisville and Von der Ahe’s St. Louis Browns.51 St. Louis was given membership in the “new” League because the NL owners felt it was a “ far better baseball city” probably “more supportive of their team than Pittsburg or Cleveland” and “for baseball owners money counts for more than friendship or sentiment,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said.52

Von der Ahe, who had wanted into the National League since he bought the Browns, pushed for Sunday baseball, 25-cent admissions and beer sales in St. Louis, Cincinnati and Louisville. He won those issues, but lost on others. All the Association clubs had to put their players in a pool, with the National League teams getting first choice at signing them. By not being allowed to protect its existing players, St. Louis suffered against the other League teams.53 Von der Ahe also couldn’t retain Comiskey, who signed a three-year agreement with the Cincinnati Reds for $20,000 and a share of the club’s profits. Von der Ahe offered Comiskey his old salary for one year which Comiskey refused.54

In the February 5, 1892 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, statistician Clarence Dow, predicted that the Browns would finish last in the National League. “While it has some strong individual batters and fielders, it has a number of misfits,” Dow said.55 Two days later, Von der Ahe replied, “this same statistician put us in seventh place last year and had we not been thrown down by a trio of drunkards we would have won the pennant. … It would be well to bear in mind that paper teams seldom win pennants.”56

Von der Ahe’s eye for talent was not good. When a scout brought a young player to him, Von der Ahe turned the player away, saying “Dot little fellow … Take him over to the Fairgrounds and make a hoss yockey out of him.”57 The player was John McGraw. Without Comiskey to help him find talented players and keep them in line, Browns’ fans were the ones to suffer as they watched their team finish in 11th place.

The National League adopted a split season in 1892, seeking to give fans hope in cities that had done poorly in the first. Before the second half began, the League’s owners enacted a resolution to cut player salaries 20 percent, blaming poor attendance in most of the cities. Von der Ahe used this as an opportunity to cut salaries five to 15 percent but retroactive to the start of the season, meaning his players suffered a salary reduction of 10 to 30 percent. 58

Comiskey criticized Von der Ahe’s micro-managing. “You have a strong team at every point … in Jack Glasscock you have a first-class man. But he is not going to be successful … to the interference of President Von der Ahe … coming down from his private box. … The aggregation of players was on pins and needles while Mr. Von der Ahe was on the bench. In their anxiety to show up well they became nervous. The old players understood this and didn’t mind it. For new players, they aren’t used to it. … Chris himself will be the biggest sufferer. … If the present state of affairs continues … the sport will be dead in this greatest of baseball towns.”59

Over time Comiskey would be proved half-right.

On April 27, 1893, the Browns and Chris Von der Ahe opened New Sportsman’s Park.60 It was located at Natural Bridge Road and Vandeventer Avenue, not far from the old park and the Fairgrounds. Von der Ahe said the new park was built because he was concerned the increasing value of the Grand Avenue Grounds park would lead the owners to sell it. Von der Ahe signed a 15-year lease for the new site. It would save him $3,000 per year and gave him the right to make improvements as needed.61 Plans for a cafe, restaurant and saloon were on the drawing board. Street car lines ran directly to the grounds with another loop built around it.

Designed by Architect August Beinke, of Beinke and Wells, the grandstand measured 164 feet long and 60 feet wide. The pavilions were of equal width, 100 feet long, and the grandstand was 65 feet tall up to the press box. Iron columns and trusses supported the peaked roof, with the front columns set back to provide an fewer obstructed views of the field. Opera chairs were used in the grandstand and put on platforms to provide better views.

On the north and south ends of the grandstands were private boxes running 25 feet back from the front. The ballpark also had a bicycle path which encircled the park with a quarter-mile track and a one hundred yard sprinting stretch along the north side of the park. The baseball diamond was laid out by Augustus Solari and the infield contained Kentucky bluegrass, with the players locker rooms located on the first base side of the field. There was large open space at ground level with a barroom which could hold 1,600 patrons, and was the only place to sell liquor in the park.62 The cost of the wooden structure was $50,000.63 Capacity was 14,500.64 Home plate was laid with a buried time capsule of newspaper articles and mementos of the Browns’ pennant years and World Championship.65

Despite playing in a new ballpark, the large uptick in attendance that Von der Ahe hoped for didn’t occur. It was only 1.3 percent. Von der Ahe, still wanting to maintain his free-spending lifestyle, took on more financial risks. He tried using New Sportsman’s Park for other events, but they weren’t profitable. In one case, he was sued for not paying performers in a Civil War reenactment that he brought into the ballpark during the summer. He lost that suit and had the added expense of repairing the playing field torn up during the reenactment.66 He also lost money on a Wild West Show. Von der Ahe lost the suit because it was proved he had assumed all the show’s expenses when he purchased the show at auction.67

As these financial failures mounted, Von der Ahe traded or sold his better players. He also got involved in a costly, and revealing, lawsuit with his son. The suit was over who had ownership of properties the elder Von der Ahe had used to secure loans totaling $21,700.68 In the course of his testimony, the younger Von der Ahe described his father’s lifestyle as extravagant, citing $4,000 spent on a trip. He said his father used the club’s treasury for financing non-team projects and he didn’t account for the money or pay it back. His father was also in debt to Northwestern Savings Bank for $44,000 and the property to secure the loan had a value of $16,000.69 The ballpark and club were only insured for $20,000.70

Members of the Fourth Estate didn’t hide their distaste for the way Von der Ahe ran the club, saying he lost his nerve when negotiating with the National League for membership in 1892. “The career of the St. Louis Club as a member of the 12-team League has been marked by reverses during every season. It has never held a respectable position after the second month of play. St. Louisans have been loyal to the club in its adversity in the hope that the man who downed the League would show some of his former energy and liberality in building up the team.”71 In conclusion Von der Ahe had been more interested in 25-cent admissions, Sunday games and beer than in protecting the playing quality of his team.

Von der Ahe thought the criticism was unfair, but he was undeterred. He said he was staying in baseball and would not selling his best player, pitcher Theodore Breitenstein. If and when he did sell the Browns, his asking price would be $100,000.72 He continued to pursue other financial ventures. At the New Sportsman’s Park he built a race track and a “shoot the chutes” ride where flat-bottomed boats slid down a water ramp into an artificial lagoon. The race track made his fellow National League owners uneasy because of the gambling connection.73 These ventures were financed in part with $23,000 in loans to the Sportsman’s Park and Club from friend Edward C. Becker, a retired grocer, investor, venture capitalist, and Von der Ahe’s “guardian angel.”74

Sensing that he was about to be ostracized by National League owners for his operation of the Browns plus his other endeavors involving New Sportsman’s Park Von der Ahe skipped the League meeting in New York in February 1896. To avoid a volatile confrontation, he sent his lawyer Walter Hetzel instead. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported “the National League has become indignant with the way Von der Ahe has operated the team. League magnates have a growing understanding that St. Louis fans are hoping that the baseball team can be taken from Von der Ahe or it will soon become a part of St. Louis baseball history.” The paper predicted that if the League took the franchise from Von der Ahe, it would have the “hearty good will and cooperation of the better element in the city. The League owes it to itself and to St. Louis, one of the best baseball towns in the country to allow it to attend games on a proper basis and not under the conditions Von der Ahe has dictated.”75

The cartoon above from the St. Louis Post Dispatch clearly illustrated that Von der Ahe’s desire for cash at the expense of putting a competitive team on the field outweighed ostracizing by League owners, condemnation by a certain local newspaper and an angry fan base. He was not afraid to sell any player, including Breitenstein, the St. Louis-born pitcher who was arguably his best player and main gate attraction. Breitenstein went to Cincinnati for $10,000.76 The Post-Dispatch said the trade not only dimmed the hopes for 1897, but reduced the value of the club if Von der Ahe decided to sell. The paper estimated Von der Ahe could get no more than $50,000 for the team.77 It reported rumors he had approached the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Co. to take the Browns off his hands for $65,000, but had been turned down.78

Despite the cash influx, Von der Ahe was facing further debt woes. On February 21, 1897, the New Sportsman’s Park’s roof caught fire and spread to the stables, where 150 horses were kept. None of the horses perished. The fire also damaged the boarding houses and Von der Ahe’s “Shoot the Chutes.” Von der Ahe had let the insurance on the buildings and track expire. He had only recently sent in the renewal but hadn’t received a reply from the insurance company that there was a policy in force. As a result he feared there would be trouble collecting insurance for the fire damage. Von der Ahe’s secretary, B.S. Muckenfuss, told a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter, that the cost of the damage would be $2,500.79

Creditors were taking action against Von der Ahe and the Sportsman’s Park Club and Association. In one instance, Aetna Iron Works, a company that manufactured architectural, ornamental and structural iron, won a court judgment.80 The sheriff set an auction for some of the Sportsman’s Park and Club property.81

Von der Ahe knew creditors would get virtually all the assets if he sold the club, so he decided to restructure the Sportsman’s Park Club and Association (SPCA), making himself a preferred creditor.82 On January 12, 1898, through a deed of trust, Muckenfuss was named president and J.W. Peckington secretary of SPCA.83 Von der Ahe’s claims against the organization totaled $108,962.There were 28 other creditors with unsecured claims between $125 and $3,925 and an additional dozen with unsecured claims between $7 and $90.84

But the deed of trust did not supersede mortgages held on the ballpark, other judgements held against the association, Edward Becker’s note for $23,000 and $20,000 in bonds. Under terms of the lien for Aetna Iron Works judgment, Von der Ahe had to sell the Browns and the organization’s property within six months.85

Just three months after the deed of trust reorganization, another fire struck New Sportsman’s Park. The fire started as flames from the restaurant kitchen set several large awnings stored under the pavilion ablaze. It took only 28 minutes for the grandstand, pavilion, and the 300-foot bleachers.86 The losses were $60,000 but the ballpark was insured for only $34,600.87 Von der Ahe lost valuables and personal papers totaling about $30,000. Fans entering the ballpark for the next day’s game saw crews working around the clock to get temporary seating finished.88 Von der Ahe said a new grandstand with easy access in and out was going to replace the burned one, but because of the high cost of iron, it would be made of wood.89

In July, Von der Ahe finally thought he had a buyer for the Browns when Edward C. Becker, friend and “guardian angel” agreed to pay $50,000 for it. There had been no takers for the team other than Becker, who was Von der Ahe’s last hope as he pressed against the deadline of the Sheriff’s auction. Immediately there were rumors flying about what players Becker would obtain for the Browns.90

However, after buying the Browns, Edward Becker changed his mind and called off the purchase. This was despite the creditors being satisfied and the transfer papers agreed upon plus other issues being resolved. It was rumored that Cleveland owner Frank De Hass Robison wanted to buy the St. Louis franchise and move it to Cleveland while placing the more successful Cleveland club in St. Louis, where Robison thought the St. Louis fan base would be more supportive.91 John D. Johnson, the broker of the sale with Becker, was angry Becker had left Von der Ahe hanging. He said it had been Von der Ahe’s last chance to sell the club through private channels rather than the sheriff’s auction. He also surmised that Becker changed his mind because he felt that he would have gotten a better deal at a public sale. Johnson said he was going to head East to round up capital to purchase the club. This possibility allowed Von der Ahe to win an additional six-month delay in the sheriff’s sale.92

The axe fell on Chris Von der Ahe on January 5, 1899 when the Mississippi Valley Trust Company foreclosed on Von der Ahe and the Sportsman’s Park and Club Association’s mortgage.93 Von der Ahe tried to argue that the Browns franchise was not secured by the mortgage.94 On January 23, the judge ruled against Von der Ahe and reinstated the Sheriff’s auction.95 An appeal was overruled on February 6.96

Before the auction, the National League owners took steps to give Frank De Hass Robison clear title to the Browns National League membership. They voided the Browns’ league membership because of its failure to pay League dues plus unpaid player-transaction fees. The League then allowed Robison to pay the Browns’ league dues and debts to reestablish the Browns’ membership.97

The machinations didn’t work, at least at first. When the March 14 auction ended, the club had been bought by G.A. Gruner, treasurer of the Phil Gruner & Bros. Lumber Company, for $33,000. Gruner was representing the creditors group and said the team would be run in their interest.98 Three days later, Gruner changed his mind. The latest buyer was Von der Ahe’s old and erratic supporter, Edward Becker, who paid $35,000 for the team and the ballpark.99 A week later, the worst kept secret in St. Louis was confirmed. Robison paid Becker $40,000 for the Browns, the lease, the ballpark and other property and proceeded with his plan to move the Cleveland players to St. Louis.100 Later, it would become clear that the deal only brought Robison 400 shares in the team, while Becker retained the other 600.101

For St. Louis fans, the Cleveland players coming to St. Louis would give them a chance to watch the kind of competitive winning team they had been pining for since the days of Comiskey and the American Association.102

The Robison Brothers

St. Louis Perfectos (National League), 1899
St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1900-1911

Frank De Hass Robison was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1852, the son of Martin Stanford Robison and Mariah (Allison). He spent his boyhood in Dubuque, Iowa. He married Sarah Carver Hathaway, of Philadelphia in 1875 and they had a daughter with the given name Helene Hathaway. He attended Delaware University for a short time.

Robison and his father-in-law, Charles Hathaway, started Hathaway & Robison to build and operate streetcar systems. The business was headquartered in Cleveland, but built systems around the United States and Canada. In 1889, Robison personally undertook the formation of the Cleveland Railway Co. and constructed 26 miles of lines. Four years later, Robison merged his company with Marcus A. Hanna’s Woodland and West Side Railway to form Cleveland City Railway.103 However Robison lost one million dollars in the merger when his broker fraudulently sold the stock to Hanna and kept the proceeds. Robison sued Hanna but it would take ten years before he won a financial judgement and was awarded a fraction of his losses.104

Robison entered professional baseball in 1887 when he organized the Cleveland Blues of the American Association. Two years later, the team moved to the National League and was renamed the Cleveland Spiders. Robison built League Park on his cable car line which allowed both increased ridership on the trolleys and greater attendance at the ball games.105 Despite success on the field with a team that included Cy Young, Bobby Wallace, and Jesse Burkett, finishing in the first division of the National League from 1892 through 1898, and beating the Baltimore Orioles in the 1895 Temple Cup series, attendance was sporadic.

Frank Robison left the Spiders in the hands of his younger brother. Martin Stanford Robison, and named after his father, was born March 30, 1854 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was generally known as Stanley. He never married.106

For his first season of ownership in St. Louis, Robison had contractors get the ballpark ready for the “new” St. Louis Browns. The field was manicured to look better than it had been under Von der Ahe’s ownership. There was a complete makeover of the grandstand and new bleachers replaced the old.107 The capacity of the ballpark at Vandeventer and Natural Bridge Avenues increased to 15,200.108 In another change from the Von der Ahe regime, New Sportsman’s Park was renamed League Park.109

On April 15, 1899, when Robison’s St. Louis team took the field for Opening Day, they were not wearing brown but a different primary color. “The Clevelands … had on their white stockings and gray trousers, A Dingy Effect Contrasted With The New White Suits and Cardinal Stockings And Caps For The New St. Louis Team,” the Post-Dispatch reported.110

Robison didn’t give his team a nickname but the sports writers of the day did. On May 13, 1899 the Post-Dispatch called Robison’s team the “Perfectos.”111 The nickname “Cardinals” appeared nearly a year later in the April 3, 1900 edition of the St. Louis Republic.112 But other nicknames, such as the “Red Caps,” continued to appear.113

Official credit for coining the “Cardinals” nickname was awarded to the Republic’ s reporter, Willie McHale. According to a John Wray column in the October 5, 1931, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Willie’s brother, P.J., told the following story: “A Chicago girl named them during the middle of the season….when the St. Louis team came out on the field, road gray uniforms, bright red trim walking across the field was a pretty picture. Nor did the picture escape the eyes of the Chicago Miss who clapped her hands enthusiastically and exclaimed to her companion, ‘Oh, isn’t that a lovely shade of cardinal.’ McHale caught the explanation and a moment later had flashed over the telegraph wires to St. Louis in his introduction of the game that “The Cardinals” were confident of victory.”114

Regardless of the nickname Robison’s 1899 team had a successful season at the gate — 373,909 fans — setting a franchise record. When the National League got rid of the joint ownership rule in 1900, it folded the Cleveland team and Stanley joined his brother in St. Louis. The brothers Robison eyed adding players from Cleveland and the three other teams the National League had axed after the season.

Robison was not shy in his interest in obtaining John McGraw to add to his “stable of stars” which included Cy Young, Bobby Wallace, Jesse Burkett and Emmet Heidrick. Since Baltimore was no longer a member of the National League, McGraw and his teammates Wilbert Robinson and Bill Keister had been assigned to Ned Hanlon’s Brooklyn Superbas. Brooklyn and Baltimore had had a joint ownership arrangement like the Cleveland-St. Louis combination.

After the League meetings Robison approached Hanlon about obtaining McGraw and Robinson. During the course of negotiations, it was revealed that McGraw was trying to get Baltimore into a revived American Association as he had the lease rights to the Baltimore playing field. He said he would only to return to the National League for a $5,000 salary. His buddy Robinson would have to be signed as well and paid $3,500. McGraw also demanded $3,500 of the purchase price if Brooklyn sold his rights and Robinson $500 if his rights were sold.115 On March 10, 1900, Robison obtained the rights to McGraw, Robinson and Keister by paying Brooklyn $19,000.

Negotiations between Robison and McGraw were contentious. McGraw said he didn’t want to play in St. Louis and said Robison would blacklist him if he didn’t. However, Robison saw McGraw as someone to build the St. Louis team around and wanted him to manage it.116 Robison and McGraw agreed to a $100 per game salary with free agency at the end of the season. Wilbert Robinson received a salary of $3,500 and a $2,500 bonus and also would not be reserved. In addition, Robison had to pay $500 to the bartender who ran McGraw and Robinson’s establishment in Baltimore while they were away playing for St. Louis.117

McGraw and Robinson did not see any game action until May 12, 1900, the Cardinals’ seventeenth game, citing personal business in Baltimore.118 By the time they did play, the Robisons were feeling the pain of a street car strike that had started May 8. The violent nature of the protesters and workers was making fans leery of going to League Park.119

Robison didn’t get a great return from McGraw and Robinson. Although there were other factors that resulted in the Cardinals’ falling far short of the pennant, it was the contentious dealings with McGraw that stuck in Robison’s craw. Insult was added to injury when McGraw refused to take over as manager when Patsy Tebeau resigned in August, saying it was unfair to him to take over with the team in seventh place. McGraw also disagreed with Tebeau’s replacement, Louis Heilbrunner, who wanted McGraw to be the player-manager, making roster moves during games and levying fines as needed. McGraw wouldn’t do that, saying it wasn’t his responsibility.120 Robison found out it was McGraw’s way or no way and realized he had paid a heavy financial price shelling out $35,300 to obtain him.

After the season, it was reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Robison had failed to pay some of the players their remaining salaries by the deadline of October 19, five days after the season ended. As a result, the players who had been reserved on September 30 — Heidrick, Mike Donlin, Burkett, Cowboy Jones, Jack Powell, and Wallace — were now free agents.121 They could sign with any National League team or a team in the new American League.122

In addition to McGraw and Robinson, who were free agents because of their 1900 contract terms, Robison lost Cy Young and Mike Donlin to the American League. Robison was able to re-sign three of his best players — Jesse Burkett, Bobby Wallace and Emmet Heidrick. He purchased Patsy Donovan to manage and play outfield.

To get the money to sign these players, Frank Robison borrowed $18,500 from his brother Stanley to be paid back in 60 days.123 The loan was secured with 185 shares of Cardinals stock.

Robison failed to pay back the loan and Stanley announced the 185 shares had been transferred to him.124 That started a rumor in Chicago that foreclosure on the Cardinals was imminent and potential suitors were coming forward to make offers for the franchise.125

Despite the rumors, the Robison brothers still held on to the Cardinals. “Everything was lovely” between Becker (600 shares), Frank (215 shares) and himself (185 shares), said Stanley Robison. He also downplayed the foreclosure and sale rumors by saying, “it was merely a business transaction and the stockholders of the club are the only parties interested in it.126

On May 4, 1901, League Park caught on fire and caused more financial headaches for Robison. Despite the panic from 3,000 fans in attendance, there were no injuries as Cincinnati and St. Louis players responded by calmly directing fans away from the flames. The cause of the fire was a lighted cigarette carelessly dropped from one of the private boxes onto the wooden grandstand. Once the blaze was extinguished — after a futile attempt with a non-working fire hose — the damage was $30,000. The Robisons did not have full insurance coverage.127

Robison’s insurance claim took almost two years to settle as it required a court judgment. The $20,000 that was received did not cover the damage.128 The last game of the homestand was played the next day at Athletic Park, despite having a bicycle course and not being suited for baseball.129

Since the ballpark at Vandeventer and Natural Bridge had suffered three fires in five years, the City of St. Louis building commissioner wanted it rebuilt with concrete and steel and denied the Robisons a building permit to use wood. But a steel and concrete facility needed more time to be constructed and wouldn’t be finished before the Cardinals returned home in three weeks.130 Robison circumvented the building commissioner by taking the plans for a wood structure to the St. Louis mayor and then to the city’s board of appeals. He got his building permit. The new wooden grandstand was to be built with the fans closer to the ground and more exits than before.131

The financial losses in 1900 and the out of pocket expenses to rebuild League Park put Robison behind the eight ball in trying to keep his best players from jumping to the Cardinals new cross-town rivals, the American League Browns. American League president Ban Johnson wanted to compete directly with National League reams and moved his Milwaukee team to St. Louis for the 1902 season. Robert Hedges of the Browns was wooing Burkett, Wallace, Heidrick, Powell, Harper, and Padden.132 Veteran pitcher Willie Sudhoff said he was dissatisfied with Robison’s salary offer and would jump the Cardinals for a better one.133 Rumors were circulating that Hedges was willing to pay Wallace $6,000, Burkett $5,000 and Heidrick $4,000 and that those amounts were too rich for Robison to pay.134 When the 1902 season opened, the Cardinals had lost all seven players to the Browns. In addition, first baseman Dan McGann jumped to Baltimore.

Robison sought an injunction to keep the players from jumping to the Browns. He argued the jumpers were still under contract to the Cardinals. He said Wallace and Heidrick were in the second year of multi-year contracts, and Harper had signed a contract for 1902 in August of 1901.135 On May 6, 1902, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge John Talty rendered a permanent denial of Robison’s injunction request against Harper and Wallace saying that Robison failed to prove that Harper had a set of unique talents versus other ballplayers, and that Harper’s and Wallace’s contracts were written to favor Robison, restricted their personal liberty and violated the current anti-trust laws. In a separate action, Circuit Judge Daniel Fisher dismissed Robison’s injunction request against Heidrick in an oral decision.136

The Browns outperformed the Cardinals in both the standings and attendance in 1902. Hedges challenged Robison to a postseason “City Series,” with the winner receiving a trophy worth $2,500. Robison, still smarting over the losses in court, standings and attendance, didn’t accept the challenge.137 Robison changed his mind during the off-season and came to an agreement with Hedges to hold “City Series” games starting before the 1903 regular season started.138

In early 1903, Robison finally received his damage settlement from Mark Hanna and Little Consolidated Railway Co. of Cleveland after years of negotiations and court appeals. The award of $175,000 was a fraction of the $1 million embezzled from Robison ten years ago.139

Robison used part of the settlement to buy Edward C. Becker’s 600 shares in the Cardinals. With the purchase, Frank Robison had controlling interest in the Cardinals with 815 shares. Stanley Robison still held 185 shares.140

Despite his majority of the shares, Frank Robison became less and less involved with the management of the Cardinals. He was in Cleveland to take care of his ill wife. The reduced settlement with Mark Hanna, losses suffered in operating the Cardinals and the League Park fire left him in financial straits. To regain financial solvency, Robison quietly, and over the next few years, sold shares in the Cardinals to his brother, ending up the minority shareholder. In public, he told everyone that he still was the largest shareholder of the Cardinals and the decision maker. Eventually, that got Stanley’s goat and their relationship suffered. On August 27, 1906, Stanley announced he was the president of the Cardinals with total control.141

Stanley Robison had worn many hats for the Cardinals — treasurer, vice-president and even field manager. So he knew his way around a clubhouse and offices. He knew what it took to make the fans come to the ballpark. On July 7, 1901, when he was the Cardinal treasurer, he wrote an opinion piece that allowing men to watch the game in their shirtsleeves would boost game attendance. He gave the example that 21,000 men who attended the July 4 morning and afternoon doubleheader, were not wearing their coats because of the oppressive heat and were seen in shirts and shirt waists. Stanley said he would prefer men go coatless and unbutton their collars and shirtwaists on hot days rather than to risk the loss of attendance by 25 to 50 percent.142

Attendance was an abiding concern for Stanley Robison but he knew trailing the Browns in attendance was caused by on-the-field performance. Before the 1909 season, Stanley sent an SOS to John McGraw knowing the Giants’ manager was looking to improve his pitching staff.143 Pitcher “Bugs” Raymond, outfielder Red Murray and catcher Admiral Schlei were sent to McGraw for Hall of Famer Roger Bresnahan.

The catcher was made the player-manager and centerpiece of the team as Stanley signed him to a three year $25,000 contract.144 Eventually, he insured him for $50,000.145 With Stanley’s declining health, Bresnahan was given total responsibility for the operation of the Cardinals.146 One of Bresnahan’s first decisions was to cancel the “City Series” to better prepare his players for the full season. Despite the potential revenue loss of $15,000, the Cardinals owner agreed. “It isn’t that I am trying to get back at Mr. Hedges for calling off the fall series. Mr. Bresnahan thinks it’s best to give all the time in preparing the team for the opening of the regular season. He doesn’t want to have anyone in bad shape and as we are starting a new era. … I think it best to give Mr. Bresnahan all the chance in the world to have the club ready at the start.”147

Expecting more fans to come through the turnstiles, Robison upgraded League Park with a larger grandstand, opera chairs, and “monster” bleachers in right field. The seating capacity of the park was increased to over 20,000.”148 In his first two years, Bresnahan helped Robison and the Cardinals make money. The franchise made $40,000, in 1909 and $60,000 in 1910 despite finishing seventh both years.149

Things took a tragic turn for the Cardinals’ franchise when on March 24, 1911, at his sister-in-law’s house in Cleveland, Stanley Robison passed away. The cause of death was reported as a stroke. Robison had been ill for two years.150

In his will, Stanley Robison left the Cardinals to Frank Robison’s wife and daughter. Garry Herrmann, chairman of the National Commission, baseball’s ruling body, quickly made the announcement that despite the will, the team would not be owned or controlled by a woman. He assumed the Robison women would sell the team. Respecting the grieving process, Herrmann stated that the decision would not be made immediately.151 Herrmann would be proven wrong on several counts, mostly because the niece, Helene Robison Britton, wanted to be involved.

Helene Hathaway Robison Britton

St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1911-1916

Helene Hathaway Robison Britton was born January 30, 1879 to Frank De Hass Robison and Sarah Carver Hathaway Robison in Cleveland Ohio. Helene at an early age became immersed in baseball. She traveled with her father’s team on road trips and was their mascot at the games.

Baseball dictated her life so much that she scheduled her wedding to Schuyler Britton, a member of Cleveland’s upper crust, after the 1901 season to ensure her father could escort her down the aisle. The Brittons made their residence in Cleveland. They had two children, Frank De Hass (1903) and Marie (1907).152

On the day her uncle died, Helene Britton sent a telegram to Garry Herrmann telling him that “Uncle Stanley had passed” and asking him “Will You Please Be A Pall Bearer?”153 Four days after the funeral, the New York Times ran a story about Herrmann’s change of heart towards Britton’s owning the Cardinals. Herrmann said that Britton would not be prevented from owning the team, but that it would be up to Britton to have a male be her proxy at League meetings.154

The will provided that the stock in the American Baseball and Athletic Exhibition Company of St. Louis, Missouri (the Cardinals corporate name) be divided between Helene Britton and her mother, Sarah Carver Hathaway Robison. Helene Britton would get three quarters of the shares. It also provided that Helen’s children would inherit ownership of the Cardinals upon the death of their mother and grandmother.155

The same day President Herrmann made his announcement, Charles Weeghman, a Chicago restaurateur, offered her $350,000 for the ball club, League Park and the surrounding grounds.156 Three days later another offer was received from James McGill, president of the Denver Club in the Western League.157

But Helene Britton had no intention of selling the Cardinals and she made that crystal clear in a joint statement with her husband Schuyler on April 6, 1911. Speaking for his wife, Schuyler said, “The St. Louis National League Ball Club is not for sale. Britton has decided to retain the ball club. … She has received numerous offers for the property but all were turned down. The baseball property is not for sale at least for the time being.” As her husband read the statement, Britton nodded her head in agreement, and the Cardinals remained the family business.158

Like her father and uncle, Helene Britton would not move to St. Louis.159 She maintained her residence in Cleveland with her mother and traveled to St. Louis as necessary for meetings and ball games such as Opening Day.160

During her first week as an absentee owner, she delegated the off-the-field operations of the Cardinals to Herman D. Seekamp. He served as temporary club president overseeing the operation of the Cardinals and being their liaison with the National League until the Cardinals; board of directors could convene.161

At that meeting of April 6, 1911, chaired by Britton, she announced that Ed A. Steininger, whom she knew through his friendship with her uncle, would be the president of the Cardinals. Steininger had a contracting business that did most of the work at League Park. He announced that he was a fan only and all baseball-related transactions on and off the field would be the responsibility of manager Roger Bresnahan. He also announced that building new stands at League Park would be dealt with at a later date as other matters took priority.162

Being the first woman owner in baseball, Helene Britton made news not only in the sports pages. Two weeks after becoming the owner and confirming she would not sell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch society page columnist and sketch artist Marguerite Martyn published an interview with Britton. “The interest in baseball among women is growing steadily. Why shouldn’t the superiority of our national game over the sports peculiar to other nations be recognized and encouraged by women? They owe it to the men, their sons and husbands, to encourage them in a diversion so healthy, so clean, so stimulating to the heroic in their natures. It won’t do women any harm, either, to cultivate in their own ideas of masculinity, all those really manly qualities … which are brought to the fore in baseball. On the other hand, women’s presence at the game, as elsewhere, will have the desired civilizing effort,” Britton said.

She noted her uncle had removed the park bar, a money-maker, “to make the grandstand more pleasant and attractive to women fans.”163

After meeting with president Steininger and manager Bresnahan, Britton did two things to increase the attendance of women at League Park. The first was to sell tickets at a drug store located in the city’s business district. She felt that it would be a safer venue to buy tickets instead of venturing into a saloon.164 The second was instituting “Ladies” Day on April 15, 1912. All ladies with a male escort would be admitted to the grandstand free. Under her uncle’s ownership, tickets for women had been 25 cents less than the regular admission fee.165

Britton’s first year as owner was an eventful one, on and off the field. The Cardinals had their best record since 1901 when her father was president, drew a franchise high in attendance as a National League team, and made a profit of $127,000.166 Just as her father had endured a near tragedy with the League Park fire in 1901, she had to endure a near tragedy when the team survived a horrific train wreck on the morning of July 11. The train had been delayed a couple of times by Bresnahan’s demand that the Cardinals sleeper cars be moved from behind the engine. That decision saved their lives as the cars that replaced them endured the brunt of the wreck, which killed 12, including the engineer, and injured 47. The Cardinal players assisted in finding the injured and those that died. They were hailed as heroes but to a man they didn’t feel like heroes.167

League Park was renamed Robison Field for her father and uncle that same year. In appreciation for the team’s finish and optimistic prospects for the future, Britton gave Roger Bresnahan a five-year contract extension which also gave the Cardinal manager a percentage of the profits.168

On December 12, 1911, at the Waldorf Hotel in New York, Britton became the first woman to attend a National League meeting.169 She was accompanied by Steininger, who was her proxy. She witnessed Steininger cast her vote which reelected incumbent National League president Thomas Lynch.170

She wasn’t intimidated in the owners’ presence and she brought order and manners to the meeting, something that had never occurred, the New York Times reported. The League owners deferred to her and refrained from smoking cigars during the meeting. She said she wasn’t bothered by it as her father and uncle smoked, so she told the other owners they could smoke if they wished, and they didn’t waste the opportunity to smoke, puffing away as usual.171

She took her place with the rest of National League magnates when a group photo was taken December 12, 1911 at the Waldorf Hotel.

But things still didn’t go smoothly with her male colleagues in St. Louis. In April 1912, Britton and her mother obtained an injunction to stop Steininger from using his proxy at the board of directors meeting. They said he wouldn’t vote according to their wishes and she felt Steininger had shown a lack of transparency.172 There was inadequate information regarding the expenditures, revenues and dividend payments of the Cardinals and the financial information was locked in a safe to which she had no access.173 The court ruled in favor of the women.174

St. Louis Cardinals owner Helene Britton, top center, poses with other National League team owners at the winter meetings in 1913. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

Steininger wasn’t the only Cardinal official to feel Britton’s ire. The good feelings between Bresnahan and Britton began evaporating in 1912. It started when the Cardinals’ manager didn’t notify her about the change in training camp from Jackson, Tennessee, where it was raining and made field conditions unplayable to Jackson, Mississippi. When Britton asked Bresnahan why he had switched camps, he was so disgusted with her demands for an explanation that he didn’t tell her it was for the players’ benefit.175

Things got worse when Britton told Bresnahan that any trade had to be cleared first with the new president James C. Jones, an insurance attorney who replaced Steininger. Jones was very tight-lipped about giving information about his role in the front office.176 As a result, no major trade occurred during the season. The breaking point for Bresnahan came August 15 when the Post-Dispatch reported Britton had revoked a trade that would have sent Miller Huggins and George Ellis to Cincinnati for outfielder Mike Mitchell and outfielder Charles (“Tex”) McDonald. Bresnahan felt that Huggins had slowed down and with Lee Magee playing well at second he could get Mitchell, a top outfielder who he liked. Britton nixed the deal because she liked Huggins and thought he had the makeup of a good on-the-field leader. Bresnahan said he would not make any more deals to improve the club, since they wouldn’t get approved anyway.177

Bresnahan’s profit-sharing clause hamstrung Britton’s operation of the Cardinals office staff. The clause stipulated a cap of $10,000 total in salaries for the president, secretary, treasurer, groundskeeper, press agent and attorneys. Britton could not spend more until Bresnahan got his 10 percent of the net profits. But attorneys’ fees alone exceeded $10,000.178 Knowing that Bresnahan’s contract was hurting the team, Britton fired Bresnahan and hired Huggins.179 The move was expected to save Britton $8,000 a season with Huggins getting paid $6,000.180 The remaining years of Bresnahan’s contract were settled for $11,500 each, and the Cardinals paid that in January 1913.181

Britton had a somewhat troubled marriage but reconciled with her husband in August 1911.182 A year and a half later she felt that it was necessary to get Schuyler involved in running the Cardinals, and in February 1913 she announced that Schuyler was the new Cardinals’ president. replacing Jones.183 The Post-Dispatch reported Schuyler had learned how to run a baseball franchise in a story headlined “He Has Been Groomed to Head the Cardinals.”184

The big question the Brittons faced was when wooden Robison Field would be replaced with a concrete and steel park. Schuyler made an announcement in July 1913 that construction on a new concrete grandstand would start in two months. The October home series against Cincinnati would be moved to the Reds park and the fall City Series games versus the Browns would all be played at Sportsman’s Park. Plans called for a single-deck grandstand to be constructed first with a second deck added when the Cardinals won a pennant.185 With the season’s average game attendance falling to 2,750, those plans were shelved and the Cardinals continued to play their games at Robison Field. It was estimated a new ballpark would cost the Cardinals $150,000. The idea was broached that a lease to play at Sportsman’s Park would cost less and it was available for half the season when the Browns were on the road, but for the moment that idea went nowhere.186

The inability to draw fans to a substandard Robison Field grew worse when the upstart Federal League started play in 1914 with a team in St. Louis. A brand new stadium was built for the Terriers, called Handlan’s Park, located at Grand and Laclede Avenues.187 Curiosity was so high that when the City Series game was rained out, St. Louis fans flocked to the new ballpark for an open house.188

The Terriers opened their season on April 16, 1914 in front of 20,000 fans at Handlan’s Park. The Cardinals had opened two days before only 3,000 fans at Robison Field.189 Handlan’s advantages were its downtown location with good access for residents on the south side of the city.190

Trying to keep the Cardinals competitive in a city that now had three major league teams, the Brittons opened up the purse strings for 1914. The team’s three best players, Magee, Pol Perritt and Ivey Wingo, collectively doubled their salaries to prevent them from jumping.

It didn’t work. It was the Cardinals’ best finish as a National League team, but didn’t come close to what they had drawn with Bresnahan as player manager in 1911. With lower revenues, higher salaries and its two competitors in more attractive ballparks, the Brittons began to discuss selling the team.191

The Brittons’ Robison Field problems kept getting worse. A March 1915 citation from the St. Louis City Building Commissioner in March 1915 specified that the bleachers at Robison Field were unsafe and must be repaired before games could be played there.192 As a result, all the games spring City Series with the Browns were played at Sportsman’s Park. The Cardinals were racing the clock to complete the repairs but Schuyler Britton said he wasn’t worried because the club had sold only two tickets in advance and the bleachers would be ready for the home opener April 22.193

The Brittons had been discussing a move to Sportsman’s Park, but Schuyler Britton announced on April 9, 1915 that the Cardinals would play their entire 1915 home season at Robison Field. The lease to rent Sportsman’s Park from Robert Hedges, the Browns owner, would cost $12,000. But, according to Schuyler, it wasn’t about the rent, “I have made arrangements to rush the work on the stands, and we will have the ballpark looking fit by the time the club returns from the opening road trip. We received lengthy petitions from fans and the neighbors asking us to stay. I’m afraid our team would lose identity by going to the Browns’ park.”194

The Federal League situation in St. Louis was getting more complicated. Phil Ball, owner of the Federal League Terriers, met with American League President Ban Johnson to discuss buying the Browns, because Robert Hedges wanted to get out.195 Ball’s original plan to buy the Cardinals had been stymied by the Brittons’ insistence on keeping the team.196 Johnson sounded positive regarding his discussions with Ball.197

Schuyler Britton was adamant that he would sell the Cardinals for a profit and would not be pressured to sell. At the end of the 1915 season, executives from the three leagues got together to hammer out a plan for peace. The reports were that Ball would buy the Browns and the Cardinals would lease Sportsman’s Park from him for the 1916 season.198

On December 23, 1915, peace was achieved. Ball bought the Browns from Hedges, leaving the Cardinals in Helene Britton’s hands and still playing at Robison Field. Most Federal League players could be purchased at auction.199 Huggins wanted to purchase some Federal players to strengthen his talent-challenged club but Schuyler Britton refused to add payroll. He also considered the Federal League players jumpers or scabs.200 Schuyler’s obstinance would hamper the current team and future plans to sell the franchise.

Britton had two suitors for the Cardinals and Robison Field. The first was Henry Ford (Harry) Sinclair, Tulsa oil tycoon and one of the financial backers of the now defunct Federal League. Sinclair felt that the St Louis National League franchise played in an outdated ballpark and lacked talent. He offered $325,000 and walked away when Britton insisted on $425,000.201 The second was a syndicate from St. Louis represented by Henry Weisels, head of Weisels Gerhart Realty Co.202 The Weisels’ syndicate didn’t want to go any higher than $375,000.203 Schuyler Britton said he stopped negotiating with Weisels when he found out the real estate mogul only wanted to Robison Field to divide the property into lots to build bungalows.204 Weisels planned to play at Sportsman’s Park.205

A mystery buyer surfaced and quietly disappeard, discouraged by Schuyler’s take-it-or-leave-it pricing and inflated view of what the team was worth.206 Fans were getting frustrated with the uncertainty. Reporter J.V. Linck summed up that frustration with a rhyme in the February 15, 1916 St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

“We’d like to see the Cardinals change hands or else an end
Of stories of these pending deals which nothing do but pend;
If Britton’s going to sell we hope he will not long delay.
If not, we hope he’ll get a team which winning ball can play.207

The 1916 season came with the Cardinals still in Britton’s hands and went with no winning ballclub on the field and at the gate.

In November 1916 Helene Britton filed for divorce from Schuyler after five years of trying to keep the marriage intact. Her petition alleged that her husband was an alcoholic and when drunk would verbally abuse her, that he promoted a toxic environment at the house inviting friends that she considered uncivilized who were loud and vulgar and that he provided no financial support for the family, and instead wasted her family fortune.208 Her divorce from Schuyler was settled, February 12, 1917.209

On that day, Britton was elected president of the Cardinals, quashing the rumor that Browns’ executive Branch Rickey would be the next president and business manager of the club.210 She disparaged Schuyler Britton’s operation of the Cardinals, saying he prevented progress of the club, but didn’t elaborate.211 For her part, she said she would be taking “a very active interest” in running the ball club. Huggins would continue as manager but the roster would be upgraded. The club was not for sale.212

A week later, she returned to her theme. “There is no chance for Mr. Weeghman to buy Hornsby or Meadows or anybody else that will be of any assistance to Mr. Huggins in building up the Cardinals. I have been annoyed by such reports before, but I wish to take this occasion to deny for all time that we intend to dispose of any available assets for cash. We are ready, willing and eager to make a trade. … But no more sales, no more cash transactions.”213

That winter, the rundown Robison Field was the subject of a letter written by N. Hollander Hall, St. Louis’ 21st Ward alderman, to National League President John Tener. Hall asked Tener to work for a new ballpark whether or not Britton remained. He said Stanley Robison had new plans for a ballpark in 1906, but those plans had never been acted on. Robison Field, he said, was in as bad a shape as it had been under Von der Ahe and the residents of the ward deserved a facility that complimented the improvements made to their neighborhood. He implored Tener to act as the league had done when they removed Von der Ahe from ownership of the franchise.214

In a retort, Britton said that no improvements would be made to Robison Field as the club had finished last in attendance in the National League in 1916.215 As 1916 came to a close it became apparent that, contrary to her vow in November, Britton was listening to offers to sell the franchise. A team that was considered to be a “woodpile” and a ball park better suited for kindling, was still getting interested buyers as impending sale rumors ran rampant.216

Britton said her asking price for the Cardinals would be $500,000. This was despite Phil Ball paying $75,000 less for a better ball club and a ballpark with a concrete grandstand.217

Helene’s Britton’s efforts to sell the club were hampered by the threat of a strike by players belonging to the “Fraternity of Baseball Players.”218 The strike ultimately was canceled and the union broken by the National Commission.219 Finally with the United States heading into the World War and military conscription on the horizon, Britton would be hard pressed to get her asking price.220

On February 27, 1917, James C. Jones, former president of the Cardinals announced that he represented a group called “the Cardinal Idea” that had an option to purchase the team from Britton for $350,000.221

The “Cardinal Idea” Ownership

The St. Louis Cardinals (National League) 1917-1919 and Branch Rickey

The “Cardinal Idea” was fan ownership through the purchase of subscriptions. Each subscription would purchase a share of stock at $50.00 per share. Jones’s goal was to raise $500,000 through the sale of ten thousand shares. That money would be put towards the $350,000 purchase price of the ballclub and provide working capital to operate the Cardinals.222

Interested parties could solicit information from Jones by filling out a form that ran in the newspaper. The form said each share purchased also would entitle the subscriber to a free season pass for a young male to attend games at Robison Field during the 1917 season.223 The program was called the “Knot-Hole Gang” and its objective was to create a new generation of Cardinal fans. It would be an annual program.224

On March 5, 1917, Jones gave Britton a check for $25,000 which triggered a 60-day option period. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported one hundred ten members of the business community contributed an average of $227.27 each to raise that money. The next payment of $150,000 was to be funded by additional subscriptions. If that payment was not made, the group would forfeit the $25,000 and the team would revert to Britton.225

Jones launched a campaign of luncheons to entice attendees into buying shares. Britton helped by paying for the luncheons, including the cost of clerical staff to sell the share subscriptions and miscellaneous items. Britton’s gesture saved Jones and the syndicate close to $17,000. At a banquet held at the Mercantile Club in St. Louis on March 30, three hundred attendees were informed that $178,850 in stock was purchased — enough to make the first payment of $150,000 to Britton, during the first week of April.226

When he wasn’t pitching the idea of owning stock in the Cardinals to St. Louis business executives, Jones was looking for someone with a baseball background who could handle the daily off-field operations of the team. His search led him to Branch Rickey, business manager of the Browns. Jones was attracted to Rickey because he had a reputation for having a good baseball acumen and a keen nose for talent.227

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch had praised Rickey for his success during the 1914 season and called him “Dr. Branch Rickey, Professor of Baseball.”228 Rickey had gained accolades for his new training methods.229 The newspaper noted the teetotaling Rickey was so praised for his efforts that a non-alcoholic beverage called the “Branch Rickey” was sold at a local drugstore. The concoction was a squirt of orange syrup with shaved ice and carbonated water in a glass.230

Rickey was in demand as a speaker at functions around the St. Louis area.231 Jones was also attracted to Rickey because he knew of Rickey’s dissatisfaction with his contract under Phil Ball. Ball had taken away Rickey’s field manager’s duties and made him the business manager while taking away his profits clause.232 Rickey negotiated an out clause that Ball would agree to let him go if Rickey found a better career opportunity.233

Rickey and Jones came together, and on March 21, 1917 at the Mercantile Club, Branch Rickey was introduced as the new president of the Cardinals and implementer of the “Cardinal Idea.”234 His contract was for three years at $15,000 per year.235 But Ball obtained an injunction to prevent Rickey from going to the Cardinals.236 To avoid a court battle that would reveal the bitter disagreements between Ball and Rickey, attorneys representing the two reached an out of court settlement.237 Rickey finally got to work for the Cardinals, on April 7, 1917.238

The financial situation that Rickey inherited was a shoestring at best. The subscription campaign had fallen far short of Jones’ $500,000 goal.239 When the Articles of Association were filed by the new legal entity for the Cardinals, the “St. Louis National Baseball Club,” they listed 7,500 shares were held outstanding with a value of $187,500.240 Purchasers had not been bullish on paying $50.00 a share, and even a $25.00 per share price couldn’t change enough minds to buy up the remaining preferred shares.241 The majority of shares were held by Jones, with 3,276 common shares, and Fred N. Chaney manager of the St. Louis office of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, with 2,450 preferred shares.242 These two shareholders held 76.3 percent of shares outstanding.

Herman D. Seekamp, secretary and treasurer under Stanley Robison and treasurer under Helene Britton, held 284 shares or 3.8 percent. S.R. Ward, St. Louis businessman, held 280 shares or 3.7 percent. Branch Rickey and three others held 200 shares each or 10.7 percent of shares outstanding. Nineteen other shareholders held only 410 shares outstanding or an average of 22 shares each.243 The inability of all the shareholders to step up to the plate led the Board of Directors to issue notes for the remainder of the $175,000 owed to Britton.244 The final payment was due in May 1920.245

The first season for “The Cardinal Idea” owners and Rickey as president, resulted in the best season since 1914. But Rickey was unable to sign Miller Huggins to an extension. Huggins turned down a $10,000 (plus a percentage of the profits) offer for 1918 to go to the Yankees, who bettered Rickey’s offer with an extra year.246

Rickey made the decision to raise revenue for the 1918 season by limiting the bleacher seats to 1,000 and increasing that seat’s ticket price to 30 cents.247 In wartime, that didn’t work. Bleacher fans stayed away instead of paying the higher price. A war tax also cut into revenue. Showing his patriotism, Rickey also wanted to have the Cardinals support the war effort by raising money for the third Liberty Loan Fund drive and put the solicitation for additional subscriptions on the back burner.248

Finding the money to retire the debt to Britton was proving problematic.. Rickey said that when money came in from the sale of stock subscriptions, it should be used to pay Britton rather than build up the team.249 Cash flow was so bad that in May when the second note payment was due only $10,000 was paid, $40,000 short. Britton allowed a 60-day extension to July.250 During that time, the shareholders were sent a letter stating they had four days to increase their holdings by one-third to raise $60,000 or the club would be sold at auction.251 Only one unnamed shareholder came forward.252 On July 1, Ben G. Brinkman, board chairman of the Cardinals said that the team had received another extension from Britton.253

Three possibilities loomed for the Cardinals: First, the “Cardinal Idea” people would somehow raise $60,000, with $40,000 paid to Britton; Second, a buyer for the club could come forward. Rumors were that James C. McGill, president of the Indianapolis Club of the American Association, and St. Louis capitalist Russell E. Gardner were prospective buyers; Third, the $60,000 would not be raised. The club would revert to Britton. She could at her discretion foreclose on the team and sell it to the highest bidder. 254

On July 14, the Cardinals announced that another subscription drive had only netted $16,000 in new pledges. Since the subscription goal was not met, those pledges were returned. Two days later, a new strategy was developed at a meeting with board members Rickey, Jones, Ben G. Brinkman, and George H. Williams. These attendees, representing the largest stake holders in the club, agreed to make pledges in exchange for notes against the club.255 By becoming creditors, $75,000 was raised. The principal and interest on these notes would come due January 5, 1919. Britton received the $40,000 remaining on the second payment.256

The Cardinals limped to the 1918 season finish line in last place. Only Boston and Brooklyn kept them out of the National League attendance cellar in a season shortened by World War I. Player losses to military service or in essential industries hurt a team already thin on talent.257 The last day of the season, Brinkman announced that in addition to discussing the club’s financial situation, the board was going to consider adding field manager’s duties to Rickey’s plate, saving a salary. However, Rickey was getting ready to take a leave of absence to serve as a Major in the Chemical Warfare Division.258

Jones said with a net loss between $25,000 and $30,000 for the season any hopes of building a new Cardinal Field were shelved, but the club would not be playing in Sportsman’s Park, and not moving to Kansas City.259 Heading into 1919, the Cardinals were in debt for $90,000 to its noteholders due January 25 plus $125,000 owed to the newly re-married Helene Britton Bigsby.260 If they couldn’t come up with a plan to raise $215,000 they would end the first month of 1919 in foreclosure.

Going into the board of directors meeting in January 1919, the Cardinals faced foreclosure. Club secretary W. G. Schofield said the common stock in the Cardinals had no market value and the one asset with value was the land under the stadium. Schofield also said that if foreclosure was enacted players would probably be distributed in a dispersal draft. Those shareholders not holding notes against the Cardinals were at risk of losing their money. There were 634 shareholders who had bought blocks of shares with values between $25-$500. Since they didn’t participate in the note issue, their claims to proceeds from the foreclosure would be third after Bigsby and the shareholders who had extended credit by issuing notes.261 Branch Rickey, back from France, felt the club would not be sold.262 He said he was handling baseball matters and to save money on 1919 spring training expenses the Cardinals would train in town at Washington University’s Francis Field.263

At the meeting held on January 28, 1919, the Board of Directors agreed to satisfy the shareholders holding the $90,000 in notes, but terms of the settlement were not announced. The team would not be sold, with the present owners remaining in charge. Rickey stated that he would perform the presidential and managerial duties under the terms of his old contract or he would take what he thought the owners felt he was worth at the end of the season.264

The star power of Rogers Hornsby helped the Cardinals turn a profit in 1919 with strong road attendance despite finishing last in the league in home attendance.265 The owners made the May 1 deadline for the $50,000 payment owed on the note to Helene Bigsby.266 The Knot-Hole Gang program had its largest participation since the program began in 1917. A total of 37,178 members attended games sitting in right field. Season ticket books issued by stockholders increased to 1,550 after a drop of 25 percent from 2,000 due to the war.267

On January 13. 1920, the Cardinals announced that Branch Rickey would step down as president of the Cardinals but remain field manager and assume new duties of business manager and vice president of the club. The board chose auto dealer and shareholder Sam Breadon as the Cardinals new president. Breadon had bought shares in the Cardinals because he felt the franchise was a civic asset, but he was also a creditor. The majority of his $20,000 investment was in notes totalling $18,000.268 Breadon also named the 21 members of the board of directors. Branch Rickey who was an initial board member and shareholder retained his seat on the board.269

It didn’t take Breadon long to assert his influence as president of the Cardinals. In May, he announced $100,000 in team stock had been exchanged to retire the debt owed to the noteholders. In addition, shareholders were required to accept additional stock in exchange for any notes they held on the Cardinals. Breadon said there would be no cash redemption of the notes but he offered to buy back their shares, increasing his ownership in the Cardinals. Proceeds from that sale were directed by the shareholders and board of directors to make the final payment to Helene Bigsby. The payment of $115,000, included $40,000 in accrued interest on notes she held and was delivered to her on May 13, 1920. The total purchase price paid to Bigsby was $390,000. The team now had no outstanding long-term debt.270

Breadon, through his buyout plan, became the largest individual shareholder of the Cardinals holding, 4,211 shares (36.4%) out of the 11,580 outstanding. James C. Jones was the second largest shareholder with 3,595 shares or 31.0 percent.271 Breadon streamlined the Cardinals board of directors reducing the number of seats on the board from 21 to 7.272 Breadon’s said he wanted to expedite decision-making as he felt too many opinions slowed down the process.

Breadon continued buying out shareholders, purchasing the holdings of Jones and board member John A. Leschen, totaling 4,155 shares. On May 8, 1922, Breadon announced he owned 8,366 shares, 72.2 percent of the total.273

Sam Breadon

St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1920-1947

When Sam Breadon became primary owner of the Cardinals it was a match of ragtag ballclub with a man who had a rags to riches story. Breadon was born in New York City on July 26, 1876.. His father William was Irish and mother Janet (Wilson) Breadon, Scotland. He was one of eight children and grew up along the docks near Greenwich Village. His father delivered beer for a brewery.

When Sam was still a boy, William died. Sam finished grammar school at the Old Ninth Ward grade school and then went to work to help support his family.274 He had a melodious tenor voice and as a youngster he sang in the choir at New York Episcopal Church. He would continue to sing in barbershop quartets and got tagged with the nickname “Singing Sam.”275

Not satisfied with his life working in a $125 a month white-collar job, he headed west to St. Louis in 1900, and worked as a mechanic for $75 a month.276 Breadon had three characteristics to succeed — confidence in himself, knowing when to take risks, and the ability to make tough decisions, which were needed after he lost his job working on cars.277 With his source of income gone, he had only 15 cents a day.278 He took a chance by renting a popcorn stand during the 1904 World’s Fair. The stand made a total profit of $35.00.279

Using his experience as an auto mechanic, Breadon opened his own garage. Pioneer automobile dealer Gus Halsey used the garage, was impressed with Breadon’s work and honesty, and offered him a job with the dealership.280 Breadon worked his way up and eventually bought the dealership. In the late aughts and early teens, he established his Western Automobile Company as the prime distributor of the Pierce Arrow automobile in the area.281 He served as treasurer of the St. Louis Auto Dealers Association.282

Being an auto dealer made him a rich man and a notable fixture in St. Louis.283 He married twice. His first wife, Frances Josephine (Christian) Breadon gave birth to a daughter. Frances was granted a divorce from Breadon on January 30, 1912. She cited her husband’s lifestyle and the company he kept.284 Later that same year, Breadon married Rachel (Ray) Wilson. They adopted a daughter, Janet, during the marriage.285

Within his first year as Cardinals’ owner, Breadon had to figure out how to move the Cardinals from bottom feeders to the top of the National League food chain. His first objective was finding a home for the Cardinals to play. Looking to increase paid attendance and continue the Knot-Hole Gang program, Breadon knew that the park at Natural Bridge and Vandeventer Avenues, now called Cardinal Field, was not suitable. It was the last wooden stadium in major league baseball and replacing rotten boards in the grandstand was never-ending.

Building a new ballpark was going to take time and money. City building codes required concrete to be used as the main material and the cost to build a new ballpark was estimated at $400,000, more than Helene Britton Bigsbee had received for both the franchise and the Cardinal Field real estate. For the Cardinals, recently out of debt, a new stadium would add costs and inhibit Rickey’s ability to put a competitive ballclub on the field.286

Unlike Schuyler Britton and James C. Jones, Breadon wanted the Cardinals to play at Sportsman’s Park. He started talking with Phil Ball, owner of the Browns and Dodier Realty Company, which operated the park. On June 24, 1920, Breadon announced an agreement for the Cardinals to play their home games at Sportsman’s Park, saying that the lease would provide cost certainty and give Rickey’s team the ability to play in an up-to-date facility.287 Breadon signed a lease for 10 years at $20,000 per year.288 On July 1, 1920, the Cardinals returned to the site they had called home for the first 11 seasons of their existence.

The Cardinals maintained their administrative offices at Cardinal Field, but didn’t announce any long-term plans for the venue.289 The park was still used for amateur soccer matches and baseball tryouts.290 In 1922, the St. Louis Board of Education, which wanted the site for a high school, began negotiations with Breadon and eventually bought the land for $212,000.291

The Cardinals began showing improvement on the field and at the gate under Branch Rickey. The 87 wins in 1921 were a the most wins for the franchise since they were the Perfectos in 1899. The team’s home attendance of 536,998 in 1922 (when the team spent nineteen days in first place) surpassed the attendance record set in 1911 when Roger Bresnahan was player-manager.

Relations between the Cardinals and the Browns soon turned sour. The Browns wanted to increase seating capacity at Sportsman’s Park after a successful 1922 Browns’ squad drew 712,918 fans and Ball had to turn away customers.292 The Browns’ owner felt adding 10,000 grandstand seats and 500 box seats would remedy that dilemma. However, he needed the financial support of Breadon and the Cardinals.293 The Cardinals turned down Ball after that 1922 season because there was no stipulation in the 1920 lease that the Cardinals had to share in any expenses to upgrade Sportsman’s Park.294 Ball tried to convince Breadon that the Cardinals’ growing success would increase attendance and would justify the cost.295 Breadon’s refusal led Ball to revoke the lease agreement early in 1924, citing a late payment and insufficient liability insurance.296 He hoped Breadon would want to renegotiate.

Instead, Breadon filed an injunction to keep Ball from enforcing the eviction notice while the Cardinals played their 1924 home schedule.297 Ball and the Browns filed their own injunction to keep the Cardinal employees from trespassing on Sportsman’s Park.298 The court quickly gave Breadon the injunction he sought.299 Four months later, the court ruled the Browns’ contention that the Cardinals violated the lease was a ploy to raise the rent and force them to pay a share of increasing capacity at Sportsman’s Park. It granted the Cardinals permanent access to Sportsman’s Park through the remainder of the lease.300 A year later, Phil Ball went ahead with plans to expand the seating capacity to 34,000 seats.301 His decision was aided when Breadon decided to assume an additional $10,000 a year in rent through 1930, to help pay for the renovations.302 Breadon had also increased his leverage on the Browns by purchasing land at Spring and Chouteau Avenues for a proposed ballpark to begin construction in 1929.303

Construction completed for the 1926 Spring City Series and included new concrete ramps and a screen extending to the top of the second deck of the grandstand that limited the number of baseballs being lost as souvenirs.304

When negotiations for the lease extension started at the end of the 1929 season, things were amicable between Breadon and Ball. In fact, Breadon exercised the renewal option a year early and signed another ten-year lease with the Browns. The Cardinals would pay $35,000 per year, a $5,000 increase. Breadon said signing the lease extension would put to rest rumors the Cardinals would move to Kansas City or other cities. With financial markets plummeting and banks beginning to fail, Breadon said he felt plans to build the 40,000 seat “Breadon Bowl” at Spring and Chouteau, were unfeasible at best. 305

Rickey had returned from World War I with the conviction the Cardinals couldn’t compete with the big-market New York Giants and Chicago Cubs who bought promising players from independent minor league operators. Instead, the Cardinals would have to grow their own. He began in 1919 with a working agreement with the Houston Buffaloes.306 Rickey continued the plan after Breadon took over ownership of the Cardinals. The team purchased a half interest in the Syracuse Stars of the Class AA International League in 1921.307 The following year they purchased a controlling interest, sixty percent, in the Ft. Smith Twins of the Western Association.308 Using the additional capital from the sale of Cardinal Field, Rickey kept acquiring more teams or affiliates.309

Rickey had scout Charley Barrett sign collegiate and high school players who had flown under the radar and then assign them to teams in what became known as the farm system. The first fruits from the farm, harvested from 1922-24, included Jim Bottomley, Ray Blades, Les Bell, and Flint Rhem. With the continuous bumper crop of players brought to the majors Dizzy Dean, Joe Medwick, Terry Moore, Enos Slaughter, Mort and Walker Cooper, Red Schoendienst and the “Greatest Cardinal of Them All,” Stan “The Man” Musial. The backbone of nine pennant-winning teams and six World Series titles was assembled during Breadon’s ownership elevating the Cardinals to the penthouse after years in the outhouse.

Before all that happened, Breadon, had to turn down a megadeal for the Cardinals’ drawing card Rogers Hornsby after the 1920 season. The deal proposed by Giants’ manager John McGraw would have sent four players plus $200,000 for the Cardinals star. But when Breadon asked for McGraw favorite, third baseman Frank Frisch, McGraw, calling from Cuba, was so stunned he hung up the phone. The deal offered by McGraw was considered the richest offered for one player at the time.310

When the 1922 season started the Cardinal players were wearing a new logo — two cardinal birds on a bat over the team nickname. It was to change the perception of the nickname, from the color to the birds.311 The logo came from an idea Rickey got from table decorations at a monthly dinner held by the Fellowship Club of the Presbyterian Church in Ferguson, Missouri, where he was keynote speaker.312 What greeted him at the table was a decoration of cardboard cardinals on a twig and he noticed that all the tables had the same decoration. They were created by Allie May Schmidt, a member of the church. She got the “Ah ha” moment for the centerpieces when she saw cardinal birds on snow covered tree branches outside her window. The decoration gave inspiration to Rickey, who thought a Cardinal “Birds on the Bat” logo would be a striking addition to the team’s uniform and provide a distinctive image.313 Rickey’s idea was to have two pugnacious cardinals looking at each other on a bat.314 Allie May’s father, Edward, a commercial artist with Woodward and Tiernan Printing Co., worked up some sketches incorporating Rickey’s idea and it didn’t take long for the two of them to create the logo with the design shown below.

As the 1920s proceeded, the novelty of playing in a new ballpark wore off as the Cardinals slid backwards into their old losing ways. Attendance fell in 1923 and1924. Breadon relieved Rickey of his on-field duties on May 30, 1925 with the club in last place and a record of 13-25. Despite Rickey’s disappointment with the demotion, Breadon said he was on good terms with Rickey and that Rickey agreed to continue handling the business affairs of the club. Breadon installed Rogers Hornsby as player-manager.315The change did wonders on the field as the team went 64-51 the rest of the season. and attendance had a substantial increase from 1924.

1926 was the season that it all came together for Breadon, Rickey, the Cardinal players and their fans. The Cardinals took first place for good on September 17, and a week later clinched their first National League pennant and first championship in 38 years.

Breadon was joyous. “Nothing could make me happier than winning the pennant…. When I took charge of the club seven years ago, I did it with the hope of winning a championship for St. Louis. It’s been a long, hard fight but that ambition has finally been realized, he said”316

Breadon’s joy would only increase as the Cardinals won a dramatic Game 7 in New York to become world champions, the franchise’s first since 1886.

A celebration not seen since the 1918 armistice soon enveloped downtown St. Louis. Sixth and Locust was jammed with revelers numbering between 150,000 and 200,000. Traffic laws became obsolete as fans snake danced though the street in impromptu parades and rode on top of cars. Fireworks were set off all over St. Louis.317

St. Louis Cardinals owner Sam Breadon, far left, and manager Rogers Hornsby, far right, pose for a photo before Game One of the 1926 World Series at Yankee Stadium. Also pictured are, from left: Mrs. William Niekamp, Rachel Breadon, and Jeanette Hornsby. (SABR-OTTOSON PHOTO ARCHIVE)

Breadon and Cardinal fans had a little over two months to enjoy the taste of victory. Hornsby wanted a new three-year deal to take the place of the upcoming final year of his contract. Breadon first declined the offer, saying Hornsby should fulfill the remaining year on the current deal. He then counteroffered an increase to $50,000 for the last year of the current contract. He also offered additional shares in the Cardinals to Hornsby. But Hornsby didn’t take the offer because he felt he was risking enough of his money in team ownership and wanted to be compensated as he felt a player-manager should.318 Hornsby already was on the team’s board of directors and the second largest individual shareholder with 1,167 shares (10.3 percent).319 Late in December, Breadon changed his strategy, in part because McGraw finally agreed to include Frisch in the trade, and sent Hornsby to New York.320 “I realized it was a sensational trade, but it had to come,” said Breadon, “I learned at the conference with Hornsby today that a settlement was impossible… I feel very sorry that I could not come to terms with Hornsby, but there was no use further dickering and I felt the best thing I could do was to make the best trade I could get for him.”321

The fans were not happy and that unhappiness extended into the Cardinals’ board room. “The deal is an insult to the fans of St. Louis and board of directors of the club,” said Mark C. Steinberg, one of the directors. “Is there no way for this deal to be stopped?” asked Harold Bixby president Chamber of Commerce. “I think Breadon has made a mistake in his own interests,” charged John C. Pritchard director of the city’s Public Utilities. One fan had faith in Breadon and asked fans to be patient, “As one of those associated in the founding of the Cardinal baseball team, I have absolute confidence in Mr. Breadon. I am not familiar with the real merits of the controversy, but am very sure he thinks he has done the best thing for the club. Those disposed to criticize Mr. Breadon should withhold judgement for a while and see how the matter turns out. Mr. Breadon’s judgement in the matter is my judgement,” said George H. Williams, former United States Senator and a former member of the Cardinals’ board of directors in 1917-1919. 322

With Hornsby traded, he had to sell his shares as baseball rules stipulated a person couldn’t own stock in more than one team or while playing for another. Under an earlier agreement between Breadon and Hornsby, Hornsby was to receive $43.00 per share. However, with the franchise coming off a World Series title, Hornsby felt the club had increased in value and his selling price was $105 per share. Breadon thought Hornsby’s asking price was too rich.323 Over the coming weeks Breadon raised the price he was willing to pay, but the offers were not even close to what Hornsby wanted. The National League got involved in February 1927 and ruled that unless Hornsby sold his stock to back to the Cardinals, he would not be able to play for New York. If they still wanted Hornsby, the Giants would have to contribute some cash.324

They did. On April 10, the National League announced that the transaction had been completed. Hornsby dropped his selling price to $100 per share. The Cardinals paid $87 of that amount and the remaining $13 per share was paid by the Giants and the other League teams on an agreed upon ratio. Branch Rickey became the second largest shareholder in the team holding 1,133 shares or 11.2 percent. With Hornsby’s shares becoming treasury stock, Breadon’s controlling ownership share increased to 81 percent holding 8,231 shares.325

Sam Breadon was hopeful his new second baseman would be able to fill Hornsby’s shoes. Over the next eight seasons Frisch did more than that. St. Louis sportswriter Bob Broeg dubbed him the “Pilot Light” as the Cardinals won pennants in 1928, 1930 and a World Championship in 1931.326 Frisch was player-manager of the 1934 World Series winning team. Hornsby remained a great hitter, playing for three teams in three years from 1927-1929 and helping the Cubs to the World Series in 1929.

Breadon and the Cardinals reaped more benefit than the Browns out of the additional capacity at Sportsman’s Park. The tenant outdrew the landlord from 1926-1943. It wasn’t until 1944, when the Browns stood at the top of the mountain overlooking all the other American League teams, that they could claim the St. Louis home attendance crown in their own ballpark.

But Breadon also wanted to have the St. Louis Cardinals brand reach farther than the Knot Hole Gang and area fans. He focused on the growing medium of radio. It started when fans bombarded KMOX with letters requesting broadcasts of Cardinal games. Breadon approved the idea for the 1926 season and Thomas Patrick Convey gave his first game reports and scores on May 11, 1926.327 But, the broadcasts were dropped because KMOX and Breadon concluded the cost of the phone line from the stadium to the radio station was too high.328

Fans’ thirst for baseball broadcasts increased after hearing Graham McNamee’s calls of the Cardinals-Yankees World Series that year, and Breadon put the game accounts back on KMOX for 1927. 329 With Garnett Marks (aka Rhino Bill), the games were on radio for good except in 1934 when Breadon forbade broadcasts because of the perceived negative effect on attendance in 1932 and 1933.330 KMOX wasn’t the only station showcasing the Cardinals. From 1926-1940, the others were WIL and KXOK, with the latter as the flagship station. 331

To keep the games on the air plus pay for broadcast rights, the radio stations developed sponsorships. In 1940, Hyde Park Brewery was a Cardinals’ sponsor with games on the Hyde Park Brewery Network. The network’s flagship station was KXOK (1250 AM ) in St. Louis with broadcasters Ray Schmidt, Alex Buchan and former manager Gabby Street.

Other stations in the network were WTAX (1240 AM) in Springfield IL; WSOY (1340 AM), Decatur IL; KFRU (1400 AM) Columbia, MO; KFVS (1210 AM) Cape Girardeau, MO; and KWOC (930 AM) Poplar Bluff, MO.332 This network was in addition to KMOX and KWK broadcasting games in St. Louis.333 By the end of the 1947 season, the broadcast territory of the Cardinals had grown to 27 stations in seven states, the largest of any team in the Major Leagues.334

Breadon also used the new medium of television in 1947. The Cardinals premiered on KSD-TV, which aired the City Series game between the Browns and Cardinals on April 12, 1947.335 The first regular season game was aired on Friday afternoon April 18, 1947 when the Cardinals played the Cubs at Wrigley Field. It had a pre-game show with Harry Caray and Street.336

The Cardinals were able to dodge the financial woes of the first two years of the Great Depression with on-field success driving attendance in 1930 and 1931. But poor performance and the worsening depression led attendance to fall to 279,219 in 1932 and 256,171 in 1933. A tight pennant race in 1934, and a favorable schedule which had the Cardinals home for most of the last week of the season brought attendance up to 325,056.

Wearied of struggling financially, Breadon lost his zest for owning the Cardinals.337 A month after the Cardinals’ 1934 World Series win, the Daily News in New York published a story that Oklahoma oil tycoon Lew H. Wentz had received a two-week option to buy the team. Breadon’s asking price was at least $1 million for the franchise plus farm clubs. Wentz was familiar with the Cardinals’ Pepper Martin, who hailed from Oklahoma, and had gotten to know Dizzy and Paul Dean on train trips he took with the club during the 1934 World Series.338

On December 2, 1934, Wentz announced he would not buy the Cardinals because of the franchise’s inability to draw well at home.339 Three days later, Breadon explained that the option had expired, and he had regained his desire to own the Cardinals. It would take a substantial offer by Wentz for him to sell the franchise.340

Three weeks later it was reported Rickey sold his 1,133 shares in the Cardinals to Clarence Howard Jr., a venture capitalist, for between $66,000 and $86,000. Howard, became the second largest shareholder in the club with 1,195 shares (11.8 percent). His purchase caused rumors that he would buy out Breadon, but he, too, decided the $1 million price tag was too high.341

Branch Rickey’s baseball acumen and his ability to make deals netted him the top spot in compensation paid to baseball executives and players in 1934, according to Congressional reports. Rickey’s compensation was $49,470. It exceeded the salaries paid to New York Giants’ owner Charles Stoneham ($45,000) and Detroit Tigers’ owner Frank Navin ($40,000). Sam Breadon paid himself $18,000.342 When asked about their compensation for 1934, both Breadon and Rickey gave no comment as was their custom regarding financial dealings about the Cardinals.343

Sam Breadon didn’t have the deep pockets of Philip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, nor did he have the New York City population that the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers enjoyed. However, he did have the farm system. If Breadon felt the Cardinals weren’t looking successful financially for a particular year, or to make a good year financially better, they sold their stars with the confidence that the farm system had replacements. From 1932-1940, Breadon and Rickey engineered 36 transactions that involved cash considerations coming back to the Cardinals worth at least $490,000.

The Cardinals’ success on the field helped create a financial windfall for Cardinal shareholders, especially Sam Breadon. The firsr dividend declared by the Cardinals board of directors was for the 1922 season and $35,000 was distributed to the shareholders.344 Breadon having 72 percent of the shares received $26,250. As his percentage of shares increased, Breadon got bigger slices of the dividend melon. The dividend payments of the Breadon years ranged from a low of $20,304 to a high of $121,920, with Breadon reaping the majority each time.345

Breadon and Rickey became caught in Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s crosshairs when the farm system came under investigation during 1938 spring training. Landis felt teams were hoarding players to keep them from other major league teams and denying those players a path to the big leagues.346

At the crux of Landis’s investigation was that Rickey and Breadon allegedly controlled multiple teams in at least four minor leagues. Landis fined the Cardinals more than $2,000 and released 100 players under the team’s control, none of whom could re-sign with the St. Louis organization for three years.347 It wasn’t a fatal blow to the franchise. Only four of the released players made it to the majors and only one, Pete Reiser, became a star.

During his first 16 years of Cardinal ownership Breadon was able to pull double duty as he still ran his auto dealership. In 1936, as he was about to turn 60, he sold the company.348 “I’ve just got too much to do,” he said, “and I am definitely out of the automobile game for the rest of my life.” The ballclub will be my only business venture, he added, and “it looks as if it will be enough to keep me occupied.”349

The first objective Breadon pursued was night baseball. He saw the attendance at night games in Cincinnati was larger than the weekday games.350 However with major league owners slow to approve the concept, Breadon had trouble persuading the Browns, now controlled by the estate of Phil Ball, that installing lights at Sportsman’s Park was a worthwhile expense. His break came when Donald Barnes bought the Browns in 1936, making it a condition that he be allowed to stage night games.351 When American League president Will Harridge announced that teams could play one night game against each of the other seven teams, Breadon had an ally.352

Wrangling over the costs and how they should be shared occupied Breadon and Barnes for almost four years. The negotiations were tangled by talks over extending the Cardinals’ lease on Sportsman’s Park. Eventually, they settled on extending the lease through 1950 at $35,000 annually.353

The Browns played the Cleveland Indians on May 24, 1940 in the first night game played at Sportsman’s Park. Breadon’s dream of night baseball became a reality as the Cardinals played their first night game at home on June 4, drawing 23,500 fans. The seven night games that season at Sportsman’s Park drew a total of 91,666 and an average of 13,095. For the seventy day games, the Cardinals drew 232,412 with an average of 3,320.

In early 1941, St. Louis Post-Dispatch sports editor J. Roy Stockton reported talk of a divorce between Breadon and Rickey. When Stockton asked around in the Cardinals’ offices, all he got were denials.354 Further details came out in June and put teeth in the rumor. At the February shareholders meeting, Breadon announced that he was skeptical that anyone in the organization including Rickey would be signed to a long-term contract.355 Rickey’s 1942 contract, the last year of a five-year deal, was for $50,000, with bonuses increasing it to $80,000.356 Breadon was concerned the impending World War II would cause baseball to be suspended and a long-term contract with Rickey would hamstring the team. Rickey, seeing there was no chance to get another five-year deal with the Cardinals, started talking with other clubs, including the Browns. The talks hit a snag when Rickey asked for contract language that said he would get paid even if baseball was shut down by the war.357

As the 1942 season ended, the Brooklyn Dodgers approached Breadon for permission to talk to Rickey. He agreed. On October 29, the news broke in St. Louis. “I wish Branch Rickey all the good luck in the world and I congratulate the Brooklyn Club upon obtaining Rickey’s services,” Breadon said, “Branch is possibly the best baseball executive in the business.”358

William Walsingham Jr., Breadon’s nephew and an assistant vice-president under Rickey, was next in line to assume running the Cardinals farm system. But he enlisted in the Navy in December 1942.359 Walsingham would assume the duties when he returned from the war. In the interim, Breadon said, he would act as the team’s general manager.360

In October 1943, Clarence Howard, the Cardinals’ second largest shareholder died in a freak accident.361 His stock was purchased by minority shareholders Mark C. Steinberg and Adolph M. Diez.

During 1943 and 1944, Breadon oversaw two pennants and a World Series win over the Browns in 1944 in the only all St. Louis World Series. Breadon interrupted his chorus of Irish songs to exclaim that this World Championship was the greatest of the previous five because it was for local bragging rights, and if the Cardinals had lost they would have had to leave town.362

In November 1944, Breadon announced plans to build a 40,000-seat ballpark at Spring and Chouteau. He said the rent level and length of the remaining lease on Sportsman’s Park had caused him to make this decision. Despite expected delays getting construction materials due to the war, he was confident that it would be ready for the 1951 season.363 However, once the war ended, the estimated cost of construction rose to more than the $1,250,000, or $31.25 per seat Breadon had earmarked.364

Despite the pennants of 1942, 1943 and 1944, attendance fell during the war years. But, because of the team’s success, Breadon had to deal with salary increases. At the start of the 1945 season, the government imposed a Wage Stabilization Act. It said a player could not make more than his 1942 salary. Breadon kept his total payroll in compliance by giving increases to certain players at the expense of others. This generated unhappiness, especially among the Cooper brothers.365 Breadon responded by trading Mort Cooper in 1945 and Walker Cooper before the 1946 season.

Breadon was counting on his farm system to turn out players just as talented. Fans and sportswriters did not share Breadon’s optimism. The 1945 salary issues also played a role when, in 1946, Breadon was faced with competition for players from Alphonso and Jorge Pasquel’s Mexican League.366 Despite the threat of a mandatory five-year ban by Commissioner A.B. (Happy) Chandler, the brothers used their considerable resources to lure major league stars south of the border. The Cardinals’ Max Lanier, Lou Klein and Fred Martin accepted the Pasquels’ money and were banned from the Major Leagues.367 They later sued and won reinstatement.368 Breadon’s best player Stan Musial was heavily courted by the Pasquels. Three times Musial turned down offers.369 The last was a five-year contract for $130,000.370 Breadon wanted to find out for himself why Major League players would jump to the Mexican League. He flew down and met with the Pasquels. He said he was representing only himself and did not come as a peace representative from Chandler.371 The Pasquels told him they were retaliating against the Major Leagues for signing their players and, knowing that the Major League players were better, their raids would hurt the teams north of Mexico.372 Breadon said he was able to persuade the Pasquels not to raid the Cardinals, but they would continue to raid the other teams.373 Breadon, who hadn’t cleared his visit with Chandler or National League president Ford Frick, was fined $5,000, but Chandler later rescinded the fine.374

In 1947, Jackie Robinson’s first year in the majors, Breadon and the Cardinals were caught up in accusations of racism. Cardinal players with Southern roots were not shy in saying they didn’t want to play against Robinson.375 Breadon went to New York to find out what his players’ intentions were and why the Cardinals had been playing poorly since the start of the season.376 News of Breadon’s visit and the Cardinals’ discontent led Stanley Woodward, the sports editor of the New York Herald-Tribune, to print a story that Breadon and National League President Ford Frick had averted a strike by Cardinal players.377 In a counterpoint story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Bob Broeg provided detailed information from players Terry Moore, manager Eddie Dyer and Breadon that disputed Woodward’s story. Moore, the Cardinals’ player representative, team captain and Alabama native, acknowledged some of the Southern players were uncomfortable playing on the same field as Robinson, but said the players’ focus was on winning games, not striking because of Robinson. Dyer, from Louisiana, said his players never gave any impression they were going to strike and complimented the Dodgers for obtaining Robinson to help them win.378 After talking to his players, Breadon was assured that they were not planning to strike against Robinson and stated that he didn’t talk the Cardinals out of striking.379 Frick said he hadn’t talked to the players but relied on information he received from Breadon.380 Breadon claimed the Cardinal players treated Robinson with more respect and good sportsmanship than any National League team.381

As Breadon approached his seventy-first birthday in 1947, he was feeling his age. The lasting effect of injuries suffered after being dragged by a horse while out for a ride in August 1939 were growing worse.382 Rumors of his desire to sell the Cardinals and get out of baseball intensified after he scrapped plans to build his ballpark at Spring and Chouteau in June.383 In an attempt to keep the team’s eyes on winning the 1947 pennant, Breadon canceled all tentative sale negotiations telling the players that there was no deal to sell the team.384

However, soon after the season ended, on November 25, 1947, Sam Breadon announced that he had sold the Cardinals and the team’s sixteen farm clubs to the just-retired Postmaster General of the United States, Robert Hannegan, and attorney and real estate broker Fred Saigh.385 The sale also included $2.1 million in cash and the property at Chouteau and Spring that he had not used for a new ballpark.386 Hannegan and Saigh bought the 10,152 shares of outstanding Cardinal stock for $400 per share for a total price of $4.061 million.387

Breadon said he sold the Cardinals at this time because he thought his wife and daughters would receive more money than if they had to sell the team after Breadon’s death. Breadon noted former Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert’s heirs took a discounted price of $3.1 million in 1945.388 At the time of his death in 1939, the Yankees had been valued at $4.7 million.389 But buyers assumed Ruppert’s heirs would want to sell and discounted the price accordingly. Breadon also announced that due to the sale there would be no dividend prior to the team going to Hannegan and Saigh.390

The breakdown of the sales proceeds between shareholders was as follows: Breadon, with 81% of the shares, received $3,289,248; Mark Steinberg, if his holding of “about” 10% was accurate, received $406,080; Adolph M. Diez, with 4.1%, received $166,492.80 and 225 small shareholders with a cumulative 4.9% of the stock, received $198,979.20.391

Fred Saigh Jr.

St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1948-1952
Co-owner with Robert Hannegan, 1948

Robert Emmet Hannegan was born on June 30, 1903 in St. Louis. His father was John P. Hannegan and mother was Anna T. (Holden) Hannegan.392 John Hannegan was a captain in the St. Louis Police Department and later Chief of Detectives.393 Robert attended St. Louis University, playing varsity football and baseball. He graduated from St. Louis University Law School in 1925, and then took a fling at professional baseball, attending spring training with the Tulsa Oilers (Western League) as an outfielder for the 1926 season.394 Failing to make the roster, he resumed his career as a lawyer.395 He joined the Democratic Party and became involved in Democratic Party politics during the New Deal. He helped Harry Truman to a primary win for the United States Senate in 1940 and to the nomination for vice president in 1944. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Hannegan Commissioner of Internal Revenue where he served from 1943-45. In 1945, after Roosevelt’s death, Truman appointed Hannegan the 52nd Postmaster General of the United States, and he served until November 25, 1947.396 Hannegan married Irma P. Protzmann in 1929 and they had four children. As a youth Hannegan was consumed in watching the Cardinals play at Robison Field. He sold peanuts in the left field bleachers during Cardinal games, ran marathons on the Annual Tuberculosis Day and joined the Knot-Hole Gang as ways to get into Robison Field.397

Frederick Michael Saigh Jr. was born June 27, 1905.398 His parents immigrated from Lebanon to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Saigh grew up in Kewanee, Illinois, where his parents operated a grocery store. Growing up he followed baseball and the Chicago Cubs as a casual fan. During the 1920s he moved with his parents to St. Louis where his uncle lived. He attended Bradley and Northwestern universities and received a law degree. Saigh returned to St. Louis in 1926 and began to practice law. Over time he brokered several large real estate deals, most famously purchasing the Railway Exchange Building in downtown St. Louis on June 29, 1946 with the assistance of Sidney Salomon Jr. Arranging that deal gave Saigh a national reputation as an astute businessman having the vision to make wise deals.399 Saigh was married to Elizabeth Lewis of St. Louis and they lived at the Sheraton-Coronado Hotel.400

The Hannegan and Saigh partnership came together because Hannegan had an ambition to be president of the Cardinals and Saigh had developed business connections with Breadon. Those connections began when Saigh represented Texas businessmen in an unsuccessful bid to buy the Cardinals. Saigh later had another client who wanted the land Breadon had bought for his ballpark at Chouteau and Spring.

Breadon declined both offers, but asked Saigh if he could find someone to buy the Cardinals from him. Saigh shared the information with Hannegan and they formed a partnership, counting on Saigh’s knowledge of finance and Hannegan’s experience in Washington.401 At the press conference announcing the purchase, Hannegan, who took the role of team president, gave his thoughts on what the Cardinals meant to St. Louis and the responsibility that came with buying the franchise:

“From my boyhood I have held fast to my belief that Sam Breadon and the Cardinals were champions not only of a clean sport but in the eyes of the nation. They have become like our churches, schools, hospitals, parks and press, one of St. Louis ‘s finest civic assets. In taking over … the Cardinal organization I am mindful of the great responsibility to uphold the tradition of the team’s integrity and winning spirit and to strive at all times to advance and strengthen the Cardinals …”402

Hannegan announced that Breadon would stay on as an advisor to Saigh and himself to provide expertise in overseeing the day-to-day operations of the club as the new owners had no experience in running a baseball franchise. When asked if the partnership would be moving the Cardinals to the West Coast, Hannegan made it clear that “the Cardinals will definitely remain in St. Louis.”403

The partnership, National Sports Inc., financed the deal with a $3 million loan from First National Bank of St. Louis, $410,800 in deferred notes issued to principal shareholders, and $650,000 in cash assets.404 Saigh was registered agent for the incorporated partnership and in anticipation of the sale going through it was created a month prior to the sale’s completion.405

Four days after the announcement, Hannegan and Saigh’s financing was coming under scrutiny. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported the partners had used over $2 million of the Cardinals’ funds to pay Breadon for the purchase, reducing the cash available for salaries and improvements in the team. Without disclosing details of the purchase Saigh vehemently denied the report. He said the money was still in the Cardinals’ treasury and if it had been withdrawn to finance the sale it would have incurred higher taxes for Breadon. The IRS would have classified the money as undistributed profits or dividends which, at that time, had a higher rate than capital gains which was the IRS classification when National Sports Inc. paid Breadon with outside funds.406 Hannegan and Saigh had to declare a dividend of $700,000 because of the profits earned by the Cardinals during the 1947 season, Breadon’s last year of ownership. The partners said the majority of the dividend went to the holding company for operation of the Cardinals.407

On January 8, 1948, Saigh submitted Articles of Merger, which were approved by the boards of directors of the holding company, National Sports Inc. and the Cardinals, to the State of Missouri by combining the two companies creating a new entity called the St. Louis National Baseball Club Inc. The articles laid out in detail the conversion of shares from the two entities into one. It resulted with 3,410 shares being authorized for ownership with a par value of 25 dollars per share.408

After the merger was completed, at least 1,698 shares were outstanding and owned by the Hannegan/ Saigh syndicate with Hannegan as principal owner and Saigh as minority owner, vice president and treasurer. Five other executives joined the two of them to form the new Cardinals board of directors. They were David R. Calhoun Jr., president of St. Louis Union Trust; William C. Connett, vice president of First National Bank; Gwynne Evans, former president of Evans Coffee Co.; Sidney Salomon Jr., insurance executive and former executive with Hannegan in the Post Office Department; and George W. Simpkins, attorney who represented Hannegan in purchasing the Cardinals.409

The merger became a point of contention when the lease of Sportsman’s Park came up a year later.

The Cardinals opened their 1948 season at home against Cincinnati on April 20, with Breadon, Hannegan, and Saigh in attendance. Hannegan put his touch on the opening day festivities by having the Cardinals and Cincinnati players introduced individually and lining up on the foul line in front of their respective dugouts, standing at attention during the National Anthem with a Marine color guard from St. Louis and 528th Air Service Group Band on the field.410 Hannegan had the home crowd serenaded to “Auld Lang Syne” after the last home game on October 3, 1948, as the Cardinals finished second for the year.411 And the following day he witnessed Stan Musial sign a two-year contract /worth $50,000 a season.412

Those events were highlights of the only season Robert Hannegan saw as majority owner and president of the Cardinals. He had been under a doctor’s care for hypertension and the stress of running the franchise was keeping him from maintaining his health. He decided to obey his doctor’s orders and step down as Cardinal president. On January 27, 1949, Hannegan sold his portion of the team to Fred Saigh his partner. Although Saigh and Hannegan would not divulge the price Saigh paid, it was learned that Hannegan received a minimum of $1 million for his shares. The original deal in 1947 had been a 50-50 division between the two of them.413

With the purchase of Hannegan’s portion, Saigh now owned 90 percent (1,557.9) of the 1,731 shares outstanding in the Cardinals. Sidney Salomon Jr. held a minority shareholder position of 166.1 shares.414 Three other shareholders split the remaining seven shares because of sentimental ties to Breadon. With the exception of the Boston Red Sox, the Cardinals were the most tightly held ownership in the Major Leagues.415

A day after becoming controlling owner Saigh put together his brain trust. He would not make any baseball-related decisions without input from William Walsingham, the team’s vice president and Breadon’s nephew, field manager Eddie Dyer and Joe Mathes, the minor-league director.416

Almost a month into his ownership Saigh was faced with his first challenge. Just as Sam Breadon had to deal with an eviction threat in 1924 from the Dodier Realty Company, 25 years later Saigh’s ownership was served with an eviction notice from new Browns’ owners Bill DeWitt Sr. and Charley DeWitt. Their objective was to raise the Cardinals’ rent. Their position was that since the Cardinals drew the most fans to Sportsman’s Park (almost 77 percent of combined attendance), their tenants should pay that percentage of maintenance expenses. Under the existing lease maintenance costs were split 50-50.417

The Cardinals balked as their share in maintenance costs would increase by at least $58,520 418 If that increase was implemented the total lease and maintenance to be paid by the National League club would be a minimum of $93,520.419 Saigh wanted the DeWitts to abide by the current lease which had two years to run. With Saigh and DeWitt Sr. not liking each other, their disagreement went to a hearing with Commissioner Happy Chandler on March 9, 1949. Chandler took the stance that this matter had to be resolved by the two clubs.420 Feeling that he was in the right, DeWitt Sr. sued the Cardinals on April 18, 1949. His suit argued the Cardinals had violated the lease by failing to notify the Dodier Realty Co. of the Cardinals’ legal name change after the merger. The Browns were asking $222,500 in damages.421

On May 2, 1950 St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Robert L. Aronson ruled that the Browns had no basis. When Breadon and the Browns signed the lease in 1937, no statute existed in Missouri regarding the type of merger that Hannegan and Saigh had engineered. It was the Browns fault that they had not specified there could be no consolidations or mergers. In his written comment, the judge did not describe the suit as an extortion attempt by the Browns even though there had been testimony which established it. The DeWitts and the Browns, Aronson ruled, were not entitled to $222,500 in damages and they had to honor the current lease through 1951 as well as the Cardinals’ option for another 10 years.422

As with Breadon, Saigh expressed his desire for a new ballpark. His plans were for a 47,000-seat stadium costing $4 million but not at the Spring and Chouteau site that had been bought from Breadon.423 According to Saigh, it was not large enough for the stadium and parking he envisioned.424 He said he had purchased 18 acres of land with nine more still to be purchased. Saigh would not reveal the location for his new park.425

Saigh cut ties with the Spring and Chouteau acreage when he sold the 11.5-acre site in two parcels on Christmas Eve 1950. Yellow Transit Company of Oklahoma City and St. Louis paid $200,000. for the west parcel and planned to build a truck terminal on it. The east parcel was bought by an unnamed investor, for an undisclosed amount.426

When Hannegan and Saigh’s first season of ownership did not bring home a championship, they were called out in the newspapers for failure to put a winning product on the field. Reporters and columnists laid the blame on a faltering farm system. Stars such as Terry Moore, Enos Slaughter and Marty Marion were getting older. More and more, the team was riding the coat tails of Stan Musial, with help from Red Schoendienst and Harry Brecheen, but little support from the minors. The papers suggest Saigh should find better players through other means.427 This charge fell to Saigh when he became controlling owner and he and his brain trust missed opportunities to sign players from the Negro Leagues as the Dodgers, Indians, Giants and even the Browns did.428

Busch Stadium, St. Louis

Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, later known as Busch Stadium, served as home of the Cardinals from 1920 to 1966. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

Fred Saigh was not a fan of Commissioner A.B. (Happy) Chandler. He was irritated Chandler had refused to step in during Saigh’s lease dispute with the Browns and for investigating Saigh for being arrested 52 times for unpaid parking tickets. According to the Cardinals’ owner, Chandler’s accusations damaged his reputation and made him look like a criminal.429 All of this came into play when Chandler, at the 1949 winter meetings, asked major league owners for a new seven-year contract even though his current contract would not be up until April 30, 1952. The owners resented the tone of his demands and Chandler did not get the 12 votes needed.430

The next year brought no resolution of Chandler’s request for a new deal. A majority of the owners supported Chandler, but not the necessary 12 and Saigh remained a vocal opponent.431

Still full of bravado Chandler asked the owners to vote again on a new contract. That vote was taken on March 12, 1951, at a meeting in Miami Beach. The owners remained split and Chandler finally conceded defeat.432 He negotiated a severance package which gave him a year’s salary and legal immunity from being a defendant in suits against baseball. His final day as Commissioner of Baseball was July 15, 1951.433

In an interview a day after Chandler’s contract was not renewed, Saigh admitted that he played an active role to get Chandler removed and said “it was my last campaign …. as an active hunter or campaigner.”434

On January 28, 1953, Fred Saigh pleaded no contest to charges of tax evasion.435 He said he did not fight the charges because he did not want his wife and ill mother to endure a jury trial. Plus, he thought he could get leniency.436 Saigh admitted guilt to two counts of fraud and negligence for not reporting all his income on tax returns from 1944-1950, which totaled $413,179, and business revenue for the Cardinals for the 1948 and 1949 seasons, totaling $330.978.437

Saigh was fined $15,000 and sentenced to fifteen months in prison for income tax evasion.438As part of his restitution to the Federal government, Saigh was to pay taxes and penalties of $399,359, plus taxes and penalties on the Cardinals business returns of $159,542.439 Saigh was given until May 4, 1953 to get his affairs in order which included selling the Cardinals as required by the National League and the Commissioner’s Office.440 On January 30, 1953 he met with National League president Warren Giles and Commissioner of Baseball Ford Frick and got his transition plan approved.441

Frick and Giles chose Walsingham to head up a committee to oversee sale of the team. Saigh stipulated whoever bought the Cardinals would have to keep the team in St. Louis, but that did not stop offers from around the country.442 Bids came from former Washington Senators shareholder J.J. Jachym of Los Altos CA., attorney Harold J. Klein of New York representing a trucking company, Charles J. Margiotti, a Pittsburgh attorney representing a group that had lost out on buying the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Harry Wismer, a Detroit sportscaster who wanted to move the Cardinals to the Motor City. At least six other groups talked.443

Within a month, on Friday, February 20, 1953, Fred Saigh sold the Cardinals to St. Louis brewer Anheuser-Busch and its president August A. (Gussie) Busch, Jr., for $3.75 million. Part of the purchase price was the assumption of $1.25 million in Cardinal debt. The remaining $2.5 million, was the amount Saigh wanted to have free and clear from the sale.444 Part of that money he used to buy Anheuser-Busch shares. By 1960, Saigh held 27,545 shares, and was the largest non-family shareholder in the brewery.445

Said Saigh, “They told me that Anheuser-Busch might be interested in acquiring the club if necessary to keep it in St. Louis. When it became apparent that an out-of-town group was ready to purchase the Cardinals … at a fair value … I informed Mr. Busch. … They again expressed serious interest in having the club remain here. For the past several days, we have been working out the details.”446

Days later, Saigh revealed that Houston had offered $4.225 million then sweetened it to $4.25 million, the same as the final bid from Milwaukee. And, Saigh said, the Houston group were sore losers. “The Houston representative said I was making a ‘big mistake’ … and indicated the group could offer a considerably better bid than Anheuser-Busch price.”447

Saigh received kudos. A joint statement from the president of the St. Louis Union Trust Co., David R. Calhoun, and executive vice-president of First National Bank in St. Louis, James P. Hickok, said: “Mr. Saigh could have sold the Cardinals to outside interests, (and he) made several important concessions to keep them here and deserves sincere appreciation.”448

Over time that appreciation was forgotten primarily due to the publicity machine of Anheuser-Busch, which Saigh felt regularly proclaimed Gussie (August A. Busch Jr.) as “the savior” of the franchise. Saigh said he had always sought to keep the team in St. Louis and Busch had agreed as the sale went through. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch interview, Saigh commented that he never received an invitation from Anheuser-Busch or Gussie to see a game at Busch Stadium I or II. To see the team he formerly owned, he went to other cities where the Cardinals were playing. He said it hurt that his involvement in keeping the team in town had been swept under the rug. Saigh became bitter and vowed not to go to a Cardinal game at Busch Stadium II until Anheuser-Busch sold the franchise.449

Anheuser-Busch

St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1953-1995

Although the Cardinals had been purchased by Anheuser-Busch brewery, the face of the company was its president, August A. “Gussie” Busch Jr., and he would be at the forefront as he ran the Cardinals.450 He was born on March 28, 1899, to August A. Busch Sr. and Alice Edna (Zisemann) Busch. August Jr., dubbed Gussie from an early age, was one of five children, with a brother Adolphus III and sisters Marie, Clara, and Alice Edna.451 His father had continued in the footsteps of Gussie’s grandfather, Adolphus, building a growing brewery and becoming a fixture as a civic leader.452

Gussie didn’t finish high school. He registered for the draft to fight in World War I in 1918.but was not called to fight since the armistice was signed shortly after his registration. After working at a St. Louis County bank, he started learning the ropes of the family business in 1921, literally starting at the bottom by cleaning beer tanks on the 142-acre and 110-building brewery complex.453 When he entered the Army for World War II on June 12, 1942, Gussie had risen to first vice-president and general manager of Anheuser-Busch Inc. He entered the Army as a Major in the Ordnance Department. 454 When the war ended and left the Army, he had achieved the rank of Colonel.455

In 1946, after his brother Adolphus III died, Gussie took over as president of Anheuser-Busch Inc. and was in that position when the brewery bought the Cardinals. 456

In 1952, Gussie married Gertrude (Trudy) Buholzer, who he had met in Switzerland.457 It was his third marriage. His previous wife had been Elizabeth Overton Dozier. They had been married for nineteen years, producing two children, Elizabeth and August A. III. His first wife had been Marie Christy Church, whom he had married in 1918. The couple had two daughters, Lily and Carlota.458 Marie died after a bout with pneumonia in 1930.459

Gussie and the brewery had been pursued as a possible suitor for the Cardinals to keep them in St. Louis by James P. Hickock, executive vice-president of First National Bank in St. Louis, and the president of St. Louis Union Trust Co, David R. Calhoun. Both did business with Anheuser-Busch and Gussie.460 They generally dealt with the brewery’s financial officer who would give them Gussie’s answer. When asked if the brewery was interested in buying the Cardinals, a favorite expression of Gussie’s was used “you bet your sweet life.”461

After the purchase was completed, Gussie received telegraphs of congratulations and appreciation from St. Louis mayor Joseph M. Darst and the Governor of Missouri, Phil M. Donnelly, thanking him for keeping the Cardinals in St. Louis.462 During the press conference announcing the purchase, Gussie, who was an expert horseman and hunter who kept big-game animals at his suburban manse, Grant’s Farm, said he had been a baseball fan all his life but his business and other pursuits kept him from getting to the ballpark, which he said was unfortunate. The brewery had a box at Sportsman’s Park each season.463

But Gussie, had another objective in mind. Never willing to settle on being second in anything, he wanted to wrestle away the top spot in beer sales from Schlitz Brewing. In 1952 Anheuser-Busch shipped a record for the brewery of 6,000,000 barrels but still second to Schlitz’s 6,347,295 barrels.464 Gussie felt that with Cardinals games being broadcast on a network of radio and TV stations and Budweiser as the sponsor, beer shipments would increase and Anheuser-Busch would surpass Schlitz. It was too late to cancel the contract with Greisedieck Brothers Brewery for the sponsorship rights for 1953, but he implemented the Budweiser sponsorship the following year.465

When Gussie was chided for commercializing the Cardinal ball games with his company’s beer ads, his comeback was that Yankee games had been sponsored by their owner’s brewery (Ruppert Brewery ) for 30 years when Jacob Ruppert owned the Yankees and a number of other Major League teams were sponsored by breweries.466 So by keeping the team in St. Louis, Gussie wanted to create a connection of when you thought of the Cardinals you thought of Budweiser.

Anheuser-Busch was a publicly traded company with 4,475,000 shares outstanding. Their shareholders had to ratify the brewery’s purchase of the Cardinals. On March 10, 1953, in a large conference room at the brewery’s offices at 721 Pestalozzi Street, 77% of the shares were represented by proxy or in person and voted 3,488,048 to 4,250 to approve the purchase. Being owned by a publicly traded company was unchartered waters for major league baseball. Until then, baseball franchises were privately held entities.

Commissioner Ford Frick told Gussie to set up an “intermediate” corporation to keep the Cardinals operations separate from the brewery.467 That entity, modestly titled August A. Busch Inc., was created to own the “St. Louis National Baseball Club” the legal name for the Cardinals.468 Anheuser-Busch was to be the parent company of this new subsidiary.

Officers of the St. Louis National Baseball Club were: Gussie as president; John L. Wilson , executive vice-president; Walsingham, vice-president and operating director; Reid McCrum was treasurer; Edwin Kalbfleish, was comptroller; and Richard A. Meyer, secretary. Meyer was Busch’s representative on the ballclub. They would be responsible to the August A. Busch Inc.’s board of directors: Eberhard Anheuser, Gussie, Wilson, Walsingham, Morris Love, David R. Calhoun, Anthony A. Buford, Anheuser-Busch’s legal counsel, and former Washington University and Chicago Cardinals football coach Jimmy Conzelman, now an advertising executive.

Upon creation, the new entity was capitalized by Anheuser-Busch when it issued $1 million of its stock, $900,000 in common stock and $100,000 in preferred stock to be purchased and held by individuals. Gussie said the public would not be able to purchase stock in the Cardinals. To avoid heavy tax penalties, $60,000 worth of shares had to be held by individuals with no connections to the brewery, and that could be William Walsingham Jr., and/or Conzelman.469 Meyer would be the franchise’s first general manager.470

According to the Secretary of the State of Missouri’s website, Anheuser-Busch voluntarily dissolved August A. Busch Inc. in 1956, after William Walsingham left and Frank Lane became general manager. The Cardinals remained a subsidiary of the brewery using a new/old name, the “’St. Louis National Baseball Club Inc.”

Gussie hit the ground running with a personal tour and audit of Sportsman’s Park. He found that the ballpark, which had been in use since 1881, with major renovations in 1909 and the last in 1925, was in dire need of repair as recommended by the engineering firm Sverdrup & Parcel.471 The landlord, the American League Browns and owner Bill Veeck, were on a financial shoestring and could not incur the expenses. Since Gussie wanted the park to be a top-flight venue, he was willing to spend $400,000 on the first step of many renovations, but not as a tenant.

With the Browns’ poor attendance and financial struggles, Veeck was willing to sell and the brewery bought Sportsman’s Park for $800,000 on April 9, 1953. Veeck and the Browns signed a five-year lease for $175,000 per year.472 After the 1953 season, after giving up his attempts to win American League owners’ permission to move the Browns, Veeck sold to Baltimore interests, leaving the Cardinals as the only major league baseball team in town.

Gussie was ahead of his time when he wanted to rename the ballpark Budweiser Stadium.473 The National League refused his request, saying naming the ballpark after his flagship beer would be an enticement for minors to use alcohol.474 Gussie instead named the ballpark in honor of his grandfather (Adolphus Busch), father August A. Busch Sr. and his brother Adolphus Busch III calling it Busch Stadium.475 In 1955, Anheuser-Busch rolled out a new beer called Busch Bavarian in honor of his family heritage.476

He also did not give up the beer-baseball connection at the ballpark that other teams and their brewery sponsors enjoyed. Gussie installed an electronic scoreboard with the name Budweiser, and an electronic Redbird batter topped by the brewery’s A & Eagle.477 When a Cardinal player hit a home run the eagle would flap its wings.478 He would also choose the Budweiser jingle music and a parade of the brewery’s Clydesdale horses over other seventh-inning-stretch entertainment, such as “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

To show Gussie’s commitment towards the Cardinals winning a pennant by 1955, Anheuser-Busch loaned the team $4.5 million.479 Almost $400,000 was spent to procure players recommended by the Cardinals’ scouting staff; $100,000 went to obtain Tom Alston, who would be the Cardinals’ first Black player, appearing April 13, 1954. The remaining money was spent to purchase minor leaguers Memo Luna and Alex Grammas, veteran Vic Raschi and bonus baby Dick Schofield. Right-handed pitcher Brooks Lawrence was obtained through the 1953 minor league draft and he would be the third Black player and second pitcher (after Bill Greason) to appear for the Cardinals.480

The money spent on these players was an expensive lesson for Gussie because the Cardinals were in the red for the first two years of the brewery’s ownership with losses totalling $1.2 million and no pennants.481 The acquisitions flamed out, developed injuries, underperformed or had reached the end of their careers.

By the end of the 1955 season, Meyer convinced Gussie that the Cardinals needed a full-time baseball executive to run the ballclub and the farm teams.482 Meyer had been splitting his time between his duties at the brewery and the Cardinals for the 1954-55 seasons, calling himself “a week-end baseball executive.”483 In October, Gussie named Meyer as executive vice-president of the club, hired Frank “Trader” Lane to be the second general manager in Cardinals’ history and its full-time baseball executive. It was rumored Lane had agreed to a three-year contract for $45,000 a year plus an attendance bonus clause. In his remarks to the press, Lane alluded to Musial, Ken Boyer, Schoendienst, Harvey Haddix, Wilmer Mizell, Bill Virdon and a couple of others “being a splendid nucleus, and it was my intention to add to it, not weaken it.”484

Frank Lane did not waste any time putting his touch on the Cardinals. Five days after his acceptance of the general manager’s job, he hired 36-year-old Fred Hutchinson, former Detroit pitcher, who had led Seattle to the Pacific Coast League pennant in 1955, as the team’s manager.485

On February 25, 1956, he unveiled a new uniform design. Asked why, he said, “We have striven for a lighter, roomier uniform, that will allow for more comfort, greater speed, and greater ability for the players. We hope it will be reflected favorably in the percentages.”486

The new 1956 uniform model had “the Birds on the Bat” replaced with the script “Cardinals” which was red with an underline coming from the S going to the left. Other changes were a single “Slugger Bird” on the left sleeve , a solid blue cap, with a red button on top and an interlocking STL in red on the front. Lane said the “Birds on the Bat” had been taken off because the amount of embroidery made the uniform heavier.487

The new look only lasted one year. Lane was flooded with complaints demanding the logo’s return. Fans were up in arms that the ”Birds on the Bat” were removed after being “an association by the fans with the “long history of colorful Cardinal players and teams.”488 He announced that the “Birds on the Bat” would again adorn the Cardinal uniform for 1957.

Through 1956 and 1957, Lane lived up to his reputation of many trades, but no pennants, which put Gussie Busch in a sour mood. He let everyone know how impatient he was for a winner at the Knights of the Cauliflower Ear dinner at the Park Plaza Hotel on February 12, 1957. “I expect the Cardinals to come damn close to winning a pennant in 1957, and 1958 is going to be a sure thing or Frank Lane will be out on his rump.”489 At the time, Lane claimed the boss was joking, but despite a second-place finish that season, and an $815,000 profit for the brewery, Lane left for the Cleveland Indians after 1957.

Busch promoted Lane’s assistant, Vaughn P. (Bing) Devine, as his third general manager since 1954 with the charge of winning a pennant and World Series.490 During his first season as general manager Devine was rebuilding the young talent in the organization, giving out high bonuses to sign Mike Shannon, Ray Sadecki, Charlie James and Bob Burda. The impact was that red ink flowed from the Cardinals to the brewery’s bottom line in the amount of $21,891. Devine was not disappointed though, because the Cardinals sold their Texas League affiliate Houston Buffaloes, a property which had lost money.491 The buyers were former Cardinal shortstop Marty Marion and St. Louis businessman Milton Fischmann paying $100,000 for the team and an estimated $1 million for the ballpark and other property.492

Gussie was turning his attention to another baseball issue. The Cardinals, he left, needed a new stadium. In an op-ed piece that appeared in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat on October 6, 1959, he wrote, “Plans for a new downtown stadium have been unfolded. … It seems to me this project is a must for a greater St. Louis area. We need to attract more people. We need to supplement the Jefferson Expansion Memorial (Arch project.) … Anything we do to beautify the city, improve downtown, and develop our neighborhoods results in St. Louis being a better place to live … a better place to raise our families, a better place to do business.”493

The Stadium Project was to encompass 31 blocks, the stadium, four parking garages, and a hotel. The project had an estimated price tag $51 million.494 Financing obtained by the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation (CCRC), a private entity which would oversee and own the project, was $20 million in equity raised through corporate pledges and a 6 percent, 30-year loan of $31 million from Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States.495

The project would be built through a cooperative effort involving the St. Louis City Redevelopment and Land Clearance Committee (STLCRLCC) and CCRC. The Clearance Committee would be responsible for designating properties for purchase using eminent domain and designing the configuration of streets, sewers and water supply around the stadium area. CCRC would purchase the land, communicate with the City committees, and oversee construction.496 The construction of the streets, sewer and water systems was funded by a $6 million bond issue voted on and passed by city residents on March 6, 1962.497 The 50,000- to 55,000-thousand seat multi use stadium, with movable seats, would be bordered by Broadway, Walnut, Seventh, and Spruce.498

Gussie wielded his influence and power over the brewery’s board of directors to get a pledge of $5 million towards $20 million in equity needed to build the stadium.499 That pledge was 25 percent of the total amount needed to fund the new stadium and was contingent on approval from the brewery’s shareholders and on the remaining $15 million being raised.500 The brewery’s shareholders approved Gussie’s pledge on April 13, 1960.501 Including Anheuser-Busch , there were 298 entities that made pledges.502 None of the others were larger than $2.5 million.503 All pledges were received by February 1964.504 With $36 million available from the loan and the first round of pledges, CCRC got the project underway in June 1962.

Gussie said he could find no buyers for the park at Grand and Dodier as the city authorities and St. Louis Board of Education did not want it.505 Not finding a buyer to use the property would cost the brewery real estate taxes, utilities, maintenance and security expenses for vacant property. Its other tenant, the National Football League Cardinals, would also be using the downtown stadium. The loss that the brewery would absorb due to abandoning the stadium was estimated to be $2.5 million.506 After the first game in the new stadium, Gussie turned over the deed to the ballpark at Grand and Dodier to the Metropolitan St. Louis Boys’ Club. It was a donation made by Anheuser-Busch to facilitate the club’s goal of a new building.507

Gussie was so determined to make the stadium project work that the brewery signed the football team to a 30-year lease at the new stadium and turned over their share of the concessions estimated at a minimum of $400,000 per season to CCRC to be used for the loan payment to Equitable Life Assurance.508

The Cardinals’ new home was named Busch Memorial Stadium because of Gussie’s efforts to get the $5 million pledge made by the brewery.509 The Cardinals were scheduled to open the new stadium for the first home game April 13, 1966 against the Phillies. However a strike at Stupp Brothers Iron and Steel Works delayed the production of steel needed for the tracks to move the seats when football was played. As a result, the opening game was delayed. Busch Stadium I (Sportsman’s Park) was used for the season’s first 11 home games.510

The final game at Busch Stadium I was on May 8, 1966. A crowd of 17,803 paid a final farewell to the old Sportsman’s Park.511 After the game, home plate was removed by retired groundskeeper Bill Stocksick, who had laid it at Sportsman’s Park in 1909. It was taken by helicopter to the new downtown stadium.512

The Cardinals’ first game at Busch Memorial Stadium was on Thursday, May 12, when the Cardinals beat the Atlanta Braves 4-3 in 12 innings in walk-off fashion.513 It was televised by KSD TV (Channel 5) in St. Louis.514 The First Night crowd at the new downtown ballpark, which cost $26 million, was 46,048.515

The Cardinals opened play at Busch Memorial Stadium in 1966 and called the ballpark home through the 2005 season. (MISSOURI STATE ARCHIVES)

Two months later, the All-Star Game was held on July 12, 1966, and the downtown stadium was like an oven, as the temperature in St. Louis reached 102 degrees and was close to 110 degrees on the field during the afternoon game.516 Former Yankee manager Casey Stengel had this to say about it: “This place sure holds the heat well. It took the press out of my pants.”517 The game itself lasted 10 innings but took only 2 hours and 19 minutes. The National League won 2-1.518

Since Bing Devine took over as general manager, a concerted effort had been made to acquire the best players based on ability rather than race. He made trades to obtain Bill White and Curt Flood. The Cardinals also signed Bob Gibson as an amateur free agent. As Johnny Keane took over as manager for Solly Hemus during the 1961 season, these three players were blossoming into stars. However, they could not stay at the segregated Vinoy Park Hotel in St. Petersburg, Fl during spring training.519 Black sportswriter Wendell Smith, said that Black players were tired of having to stay in flophouses and eat at second-rate restaurants while training in Florida. Teams that trained in Arizona were able to have their minority players stay in the same hotel.520

Dr. Ralph Wimbish, a Black physician and activist in St. Petersburg, Florida talked to both the Yankees and Cardinals about finding hotels that would allow Black players to stay with their teammates.521 With that objective in mind, Gussie Busch made arrangements to move the entire team to a motel colony outside of the city.522 The Skyway and Outrigger motels were located on the southern tip of the St. Petersburg peninsula. Bob Broeg wrote that not only did the new facilities solve the vexing problem of segregation but it gave the players a chance to bring their families down to Florida, enjoy scheduled activities and relax and bond with their teammates. The Cardinals roster had a mix of White, Black, and Hispanic players.523

After 12 years of brewery ownership, Gussie finally got the pennant he had demanded from Frank Lane in 1957. But it was not without drama on and off the field. Despite Las Vegas odds being 5-1 on winning the 1964 pennant, Cardinal players were confident they could win based on their second-place finish the prior season.524 But the team got off to a slow start, and at the trade deadline June 15, the Cardinals were in a seventh-place tie with a 28-30 record, six and one-half games behind. That day, Devine engineered a trade with the Chicago Cubs that was to prove a catalyst for Cardinal success over the next few years. He sent veteran pitcher Ernie Broglio to the Cubs for outfielder Lou Brock. Keane gave Brock the green light to steal and Brock blossomed.

But all was still not well. Rumors were rampant that Gussie was going to replace Keane with Leo Durocher.525 Branch Rickey, who had been named an advisor to Devine, had gained Gussie’s favor. As a result, Devine was on thin ice and Busch fired him on August 17.526 But the Cardinals caught fire in September and the teams ahead of them started losing. On October 4, the Cardinals beat the Mets and the Reds lost to the Phillies, giving Gussie his pennant.

In the victorious clubhouse, Gussie said “I am the happiest guy in the world and we’re going to win the World Series for our loyal fans, in four games. I was really worried about that one inning. My heart is still pattering.”527

Gussie did get his wish but it took seven games for the Cardinals to win the World Series against the Yankees.528 After the last out was recorded, Gussie, who was too nervous to even light a cigarette, was escorted by ushers down to the clubhouse from his box next to the Cardinals dugout.529

However, Gussie’s celebration of the World Series win was short-lived. The dysfunction introduced by Rickey’s influence had already cost the Cardinals Bing Devine. Now, it cost manager Johnny Keane as well. A day after winning the World Series, instead of Gussie announcing a contract extension for Keane, he had to announce that Keane had submitted his resignation. Keane cited interference by Rickey regarding roster decisions, the rumors that Busch had been talking to Leo Durocher to replace him, and Gussie’s firing of Keane’s friend Devine.530

Gussie fired Rickey four days later. Despite the championship, Gussie had to do damage control to get the fans back on his side. When he hired the fan’s choice, former Cardinal second baseman Red Schoendienst as the new Cardinal manager, he did just that.531

All was not settled in the front office, however. Bob Howsam, who had replaced Bing Devine, was creating friction between the players and the front office through 1965 and 1966. Gussie never gave him a contract extension and Howsam got the message.532 In January 1967, Howsam accepted a three-year offer from Cincinnati. Gussie turned to Cardinals vice-president Stan Musial as general manager, who worked well with Schoendienst, his former teammate.533 The club captured the 1967 pennant by ten and one-half games.

Despite being busy with plans for new breweries, Gussie was in Philadelphia to celebrate with Cardinal players after they clinched the second pennant under the Anheuser-Busch ownership.534 Almost two months after celebrating a World Series win over the Boston Red Sox, Musial stepped down as general manager.535 A winner in his only season, Musial said, “I was looking out for my own interests, as well as the club’s and to look out for my health.”536 Musial stated he was putting in a lot of hours in running his personal business as well as the Cardinals. To replace Musial, the Cardinals’ “first and only choice,” said Gussie, was Bing Devine.

The Cardinal players reaped the benefits of their successful season as Gussie Busch made the club’s payroll the highest in the Major Leagues for the 1968 season. Sports Illustrated recognized this putting the starting eight, Gibson and Schoendienst on its October 7, 1968 cover. Roger Maris received an Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship covering the Gainesville FL area plus his salary in exchange for Maris playing right field in 1968.537

The Cardinals’ payroll approached $950,000 at the start of the 1969 season according to Devine.538

The next season would prove to be a new era for the Cardinals, who would not see the World Series for 14 years, and for baseball. The 1969 season was the one hundredth anniversary of the Major League Baseball’s first professional team (the Cincinnati Red Stockings).539 For the second time in a decade, the Major Leagues expanded, growing from 20 teams to 24.540 With 12 teams in each league, the owners decided to split the teams into two divisions East and West.541 The Cardinals, although west of the Mississippi, were put in the East Division to maintain their rivalry with the Chicago Cubs.542

Baseball had a new commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, who took over for William Eckert who had been forced out by the owners.543 When Kuhn became commissioner, the owners and players were at loggerheads over funding of the players pension plan.544 The players had hired Marvin Miller, a former economist for the Steel Workers Union, three years earlier.545 In January 1969, Miller announced that the players had rejected the owners’ offer of an additional $1 million to the players pension fund.546

That touched off Gussie Busch. He was getting negative fan mail regarding his players’ push for greater pay and better treatment. This was not part of Gussie’s world view, as he expected his players to be grateful and dutiful after he had made them the highest paid team in the game. On March 22, 1969, he boiled over during a spring training talk to his players. The gist of the address was that with all the strike talk over pension benefits and salary negotiations, the players’ focus had been taken off the game on the field. If their attitudes resulted in poor performance, the fans would know it and would not pay to see them play, he said. Gussie implied there would be repercussions from the club as well as the fans. He cited examples such as players not stopping to sign autographs, pushing fans out of the way when taking pictures and not honoring scheduled appearances. When fans stopped asking for autographs and pictures the players should worry, he said.547

At the same meeting, Cardinals executive vice-president, Dick Meyer echoed owners’ conviction that Miller was a puppeteer manipulating naïve athletes. “You undertook a new obligation when you took on …..Marvin Miller. You have to make yourself heard. He works for you. You do not work for him.”548 Meyer continued by saying that if you entrust your and your family’s future to someone else (Miller), you are in trouble. He complimented Cardinals player representative Tim McCarver, urging direct discussion between the players and the owner, emphasizing they should not leave their responsibilities to someone else.549

Following Busch’s address, Cardinal players did not add fuel to the fire, but the sarcasm was obvious. Smiling, Curt Flood said, “Comment? I have no comment. Not when the big boss has spoken.”550 Bob Gibson said, “I have nothing to say about it. This management has no problems. Some club managements get criticized unfairly, but some players do, too.”551 McCarver was politic, “It was well said – and I do think an annual get-together like this would be good for the club and players.”552

Getting lambasted by Gussie took the wind out of his players’ sails. The team favored to win their third straight pennant, finished fourth in the East Division.553 The 1969 season saw home attendance fall under 2 million fans after two season over that mark. As a result, the Cardinals announced that box seats and reserved seats prices would increase by 50 cents for the 1970 season. The new prices would be $4.00 and $3.00 respectively. General admission tickets would still be $1.50 and bleachers $1.00. The club said the increase was needed due to lower concession profits. It was the franchise’s first ticket price increase at the new downtown stadium.554 Also the Cardinals would be playing on artificial turf starting in 1970 to save wear and tear on the field. Busch Memorial Stadium, along with Candlestick Park, were the two multi-sport stadiums where Monsanto, the manufacturer of AstroTurf, was installing the artificial grass.555

In 1972 Gussie Busch made the announcement that all Anheuser-Busch subsidiaries would adhere to the Federal government’s Economic Stabilization Program, which limited wage and price increases to a maximum of 5.5 percent. Anheuser-Busch “has pledged to the President (Nixon) its whole-hearted support of the anti-inflation program and in good faith has been keeping that pledge because we believe the success of the program is essential to a healthy economy.”556

Miller disagreed with the beer baron, giving this vindictive response: “He (Busch) is wrapping himself up in the American flag, posing as a super patriot, by using the wage freeze to keep salaries down, so that he, a multimillionaire, can pile up more money.”557 Miller then put the knife into Gussie and twisted it when he said: “It is not only an act of bad faith by Busch but highly presumptuous. Nobody knows how the wage freeze applies to baseball because it is a complicated thing. But the great Busch decides what all this means. In his case, it’s strictly spoiled child syndrome.”558

Covering the exchange, Bob Broeg cited examples where other clubs did not hold fast to the five and a half percent cap because ball players have a distinct skill set and a limited period of time to be successful using it. Cubs general manager John Holland said: ”Baseball does not fit the normal business structure. Players are based on performance. Holding them to a salary increase of five and one-half percent is ridiculous.”559 Holland did just that as he gave Ferguson Jenkins a two-year contract worth $125,000 per year. after earning $90,000 in 1971.560 Charles Finley, the tight-fisted Oakland A’s owner, gave Vida Blue, who had won the Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player award in 1971, a raise from $14,750 to $50,000 plus a $5,000 bonus and $8,000 towards college.561

But Gussie did not budge as he held the line on the Cardinals’ 1972 payroll giving no increase to Bob Gibson, and little or no increases to Lou Brock and Dal Maxvill in order to give Joe Torre an increase to $130,000 from $110,000 for his National League batting title and National League MVP season in 1971.562 Sticking tight to his pennywise approach turned out to be pound foolish. Lefthanded pitchers Steve Carlton and Jerry Reuss did not agree to his terms before the 1972 season. This infuriated Gussie and both were traded and proved successful for their new teams.563

Trying to control the Cardinals’ payroll was not the only challenge Gussie was facing. Despite its success in increasing shipments to wholesalers under his leadership, Anheuser-Busch had reported lower profits in 1972, due to rising costs for raw material and labor. Despite shutting down an obsolete malt-producing plant and eliminating executive perks such as the health club, Gussie wanted to further reduce costs by eliminating close to 300 of the 1,700 non-union salaried employee positions.564 Brewery president Dick Meyer disagreed, saying it was wrong to do. On February 27, 1974, Gussie fired Meyer, who was also president of the Cardinals. He installed his son August III as president of the brewery to proceed with the non-union salaried terminations.565

Over the next year August III brought on board six vice-presidents who would help him stem the tide of falling profits. and stay ahead of Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. and Miller Brewing Co. in the competition to be the U.S. market share leader, which was heating up.566

On May 9, 1975, Gussie himself was forced out after 50 years as the brewery’s head. The board of directors voted to have August Busch III take over as chief executive officer from his father.567 Taking the high road at the press conference and not airing his disgust of his forced exit in public, Gussie had these comments: “After more than 50 years of active association in the only job I ever had and the only company I have associated with, I am stepping down as chief executive officer of Anheuser-Busch. This is more than a company or business to me. It was not an easy decision.”568 Among the many achievements that he was proud of Gussie highlighted the purchase of the Cardinals to keep it in St. Louis for the area’s fans.569

Gussie remained head of the Cardinals, but now he had to go through his son for budget approval and major expenditures by the ballclub. It was well known at the brewery and in St. Louis that August III did not have the passionate interest in baseball that his father did.570

In October 1975, Gussie put together a group of investors and approached the brewery about buying the Cardinals. Anheuser-Busch was looking to build more breweries around the country and money from the sale of the team would make financing the expansion easier. In the 22 years it had owned the Cardinals, the team had made about $3.9 million for the brewery and the profit for 1974 was $490,000. According to Fred Kuhlmann, senior vice-president of the Anheuser-Busch, the deal envisioned television and broadcast rights would still be owned by the brewery, and they would choose the broadcasters. Gussie’s interest in being the owner was to stay in the public eye. Fred Saigh, the largest non-family shareholder of Anheuser-Busch stock, said that the sale price should be based on an arms-length transaction. He said a fair market price would be between $11 million and $13 million based on recent sales of the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees.571

Chase Bank of Manhattan, securities broker Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner and Smith, and Willam O. DeWitt Sr., former owner of the Browns, submitted their appraisals, which agreed with the range suggested by Saigh. On January 27, 1976, Gussie pulled his offer to buy the team citing the high purchase price, operating costs which were too expensive for one individual to assume and uncertainty of the sport.572 That uncertainty was caused by conflict between the owners and the Players Association, which had culminated in the December 1975 arbitration decision allowing free agency for players. Gussie had been among the most militant of the owners fighting the players.

Pulling his offer to buy the Cardinals did not have repercussions for Gussie. August III said Anheuser-Busch would still own the Cardinals and that his father was still chairman of the board of the brewery, president of the Cardinals, and active in the management of the ballclub. Bing Devine remained as executive vice president and general manager.573

After finishing fifth in 1976, with no pennants on the horizon, Gussie fired Red Schoendienst, who at the time had the longest stretch as a Cardinal manager. Publicly, his reason was a change needed to be made.574 Behind the scenes it was that Schoendienst was not strict enough with the players. In what became a “be careful what you wish for hiring,” Gussie brought in Vern Rapp from the Cincinnati organization who had the reputation as a disciplinarian.575

It did not take long for Rapp to cause turmoil in the clubhouse when he instituted a no facial hair or long hair edict.576 But Gussie stuck by him during a confrontation with Al Hrabosky over the pitcher’s mustache and haircut.577 But, in early 1977, when Gussie found out Rapp had conflicts with Buddy Schultz and Ted Simmons and lost the clubhouse, he fired Rapp.578 By 1980, still frustrated with not having another pennant winner since 1968, Gussie made a decision that was uncharacteristic for him turning complete operation of the Cardinals over to Dorrell (Whitey) Herzog as both manager and general manager. 579

Using that authority Herzog did a makeover of the Cardinals roster beginning in December 1980.580 At the winter meetings in Dallas, Herzog acquired ten players in exchange for thirteen, achieving his goals of getting a defensive catcher, Darrell Porter, and a closer, Bruce Sutter.581 The Cardinals and Herzog finished first with the best record in the National League East in 1981.582 However because of an in-season players strike, the owners had voted 21-3 (Gussie representing the Cardinals voted against it) to institute a split season with winners of each half meeting in the playoffs. Although the Cardinals had the best overall record in their division, they had been edged out in each half.583

The brewery paid a heavy price for the lack of pennants from 1969-1980. The team was not drawing two million fans during those years while player salaries were increasing. The ballclub lost $2.9 million in 1980, almost wiping away the profits accumulated in the brewery’s first 22 years.584 August III and the brewery’s board of directors were weighing a possible sale of the team if it continued to lose money.

The brewery’s commitment to the team was increased in August 1981 when it concluded a difficult campaign to acquire the remainder of the shares of the Civic Center Redevelopment Corporation. The brewery, dating back to its pledges two decades earlier, already owned a quarter of CCRC’s shares. CCRC owned Busch Stadium, four parking garages, the Stouffers Riverfront Towers Hotel, two parcels of land that the Marriott Pavilion Hotel was built on, a drive-in bank and interest agreements in the construction of two downtown buildings.585 Anheuser-Busch’s primary target was the concession and parking revenues of the stadium.586 The properties were appraised at between $75-90 million with tax abatement privileges reducing the assessed value to $48.5 million.587 The brewery’s first two offers, for $35.3 million and $40.3 million respectively, were turned down.

Meanwhile, CCRC hired the investment bank Goldman-Sachs to set up a bidding war. They found Apex Oil Co., a privately held oil firm with headquarters in Clayton, Missouri, to buy two-thirds of the Cardinals and Busch Stadium for $52.3 million. As a result of this competitive offer, Busch Jr. had a private meeting with Morton D. May, retired chairman of Famous-Barr, whose May Department Stores Foundation, held 37.5 percent of CCRC securities and persuaded him to sell to the brewery. The offer matched Apex’s and gave the brewery 62.5 percent of CCRC’s shares. After buying additional blocs of shares to own CCRC outright, the total price tag for August III and ABC was $62 million, which included $8 million in interest payments.588

Herzog put on his general manager’s cap again during the 1981-82 offseason and acquired three players: Lonnie Smith, Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee. These three additions helped create an exciting brand of baseball that became known as “Whitey Ball.”589 Built for speed and defense, playing in spacious Busch Stadium on AstroTurf, Herzog’s team brought Cardinal fans back to Busch Stadium, winning the 1982 pennant and World Series.

Gussie, however, was now in his eighties and showing the infirmities of old age. His desire to keep Herzog in charge was usurped. Decisions were now being made by a committee made up of himself, his attorney Lou Susman, and Fred Kuhlmann, the club’s chief executive officer and executive vice-president. On January 3, 1985, the committee decided to fire general manager Joe McDonald. McDonald was Herzog’s handpicked general manager and Herzog would give him suggestions on player personnel decisions. A statement regarding McDonald’s dismissal was attributed to Gussie.590 For the remainder of his managerial tenure Herzog dealt wirh new general manager Dal Maxvill who reported to the three-man committee, resulting in more opinions in the decision making process.

The impact of Herzog’s loss of total control steadily became apparent. The Cardinals won two more pennants in 1985 and 1987 as Herzog turned over the roster to get his kind of players. After the 1987 season, Jack Clark was one player that Whitey had at the top of the priority list to re-sign. Management waited too long to offer Clark what he wanted and they lost him to the New York Yankees.591 Herzog’s prediction of his team not playing .500 ball in 1988 without Clark came true as the Cardinals finished 10 games under.592

An era ended in the Cardinal franchise on September 29, 1989, when their chairman and president August A. (Gussie) Busch Jr. passed at 12:25 PM. He had been ill for months with pneumonia.593

On October 31, 1989, August A. Busch III was named to succeed his father as the Cardinals’ chairman of the board. Fred Kuhlmann was named as president and chief executive officer. Mark Sauer took over Kuhlmann’s responsibilities as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the ballclub. These duties for Kuhlmann and Sauer were in addition to their executive positions at the brewery’s stadium subsidiary CCRC.594

Two days before, Anheuser-Busch had announced it had signed a three-year deal with St. Louis television station KPLR. The deal, which would net the ball club $20 million over the life of the contract, was to start in 1991. In prior years, Anheuser-Busch had been reluctant to broadcast games over free television because of the perceived negative impact it would have on fans going to games. But free broadcasts proved to have minimal effect on attendance, with the Cardinals still drawing fans vacationing in St. Louis and the young urban professionals attending games.595 Earlier in the 1980s, the brewery had tried to increase the Cardinals television broadcast revenues through paid-cable providers. They created their own cable network called Sports Time and then the Cardinal Cable Network but subscription fees and minimal programming turned off viewers.596

Cardinal fans began to realize that the Cardinals were just another subsidiary in August A. Busch III’s eyes. He put the team’s payroll on a tight budget. Trades were made to save money.597 Letters to the editor featured fans’ venting their frustration about the Cardinals’ and brewery’s inaction to improve the team.598 In addition, there were no indications that free agents to be Vince Coleman, Terry Pendleton, and Willie McGee would remain Cardinals after their contracts for the 1990 season expired. Herzog, sensing the direction that August III was taking the team was one he did not like, and with his advocate Gussie Busch gone, resigned.599 It was the end of an era that had reenergized the Cardinal franchise and its fan base.

Money that August III did spend went to upgrade the brewery’s stadium. He installed new seats, a state of the art sound system and a closed-circuit television system so fans could watch the game while standing line at concession stands. There were new concession stands and upgrades of existing stands, a new lighting system and additional deluxe suites.600 The number of deluxe suites in the stadium totaled 67 and brought in $50,000 a year each.601 The crown jewel of the renovations, was the bigger better replay screen called Diamond Vision costing $5 million.602

In addition to these renovations, the playing area saw changes also. The AstroTurf field was replaced, the outfield walls brought in and padded. Shrubbery and flowers were added in front of the bleachers to make it more aesthetically pleasing. CCRC, which ran the stadium, did not disclose the cost of the renovations other than the replay screen. The Cardinals announced that ticket prices and concession prices would increase.603 The Cardinals Fan Cost Index, which measured on average the cost of a family of four going to see a ballgame had the Cardinals at the sixth best-value in the majors at $78.54 for 1992 versus $69.26 the previous year, which had been the best.604

Money also went to a year-long celebration of the Cardinals’ 100th anniversary as a member of the National League, with its pinnacle event, the Centennial Celebration, on June 11, 1992. On that day, past and present Cardinal players gathered at Busch Stadium to reminisce about playing for the team when they wore the Birds on the Bat.605 The brewery also supplied money for a new Cardinals Hall of Fame whose opening coincided with the beginning of the 1992 season. Fans could see a replica of the Cardinals locker room with uniforms from different eras and memorabilia from Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst.606 However fan amenities, comfy accommodations, a bigger brighter scoreboard and trips down memory lane did not produce what Cardinal fans really wanted, a pennant.

The diversification plan undertaken by Anheuser-Busch for the purpose of shielding shareholder value if there would be a downturn in the beer market had not yielded the expected results by summer 1995. The baseball team was one subsidiary still losing money, incurring losses in 1994 with the strike-shortened season and $12 million in 1995 as the season started using replacement players. With Anheuser-Busch’s International beer company (ABII) making $50 million in 1994, August III saw this as a perfect time to shed the low and non-profit makers and return the company’s business focus to being the World’s Largest Producer of Beer, while holding on to their theme parks, (Busch Gardens and Sea World) which were profitable and a vehicle to market their beers at family-friendly venues.607

On October 26, 1995, after 43 seasons of ownership, Anheuser-Busch announced that the St. Louis National Baseball Club Inc. was for sale. August III said the desire of the company was to concentrate its resources on the beer business, saying it was the best interests of the brewery, the ballclub and Cardinal fans to find a new owner. Brewery spokesman John Jacob said the brewery would do all it can to find an owner that would keep the team in St. Louis but would offer no guarantee. The brewery was confident that a new owner would be found by June 1996. Fans were shocked but not surprised at the news and they hoped that the team would not leave.608

The sale would include the ballclub, the stadium, garages next to the stadium, two garages in downtown St. Louis, and land owned by CCRC. The Cardinals franchise was valued at $110 million, Busch Stadium at $15.2 million, and the garages at $21.85 million. The values of the two garages in downtown St. Louis at Seventh and Pine were not available according to the City’s Assessor.609

On December 22, 1995, Anheuser-Busch Cos. Communications Director John Jacob addressed the media regarding the brewery’s status with the Cardinals. He had given the bad news two months earlier that the brewery was selling the team, but on this day with a broad smile, he had this announcement: “On this holiday weekend, we think we have a great Christmas present for St. Louis.”610 That present was a deal to sell the Cardinals to a group led by William O. DeWitt Jr. as principal owner. The purchase price for the team, downtown stadium and parking garages was $150 million. DeWitt’s group made the commitment to keep the team in St. Louis.

Bill DeWitt Jr.

St. Louis Cardinals (National League), 1995-present

William DeWitt Jr. was born in St. Louis on August 31, 1941. His mother was Margaret H. DeWitt and his father William O. DeWitt Sr.611 He attended Country Day School (now Mary Institute Country Day School) in Creve Coeur, Missouri. After graduating from high school, he earned a B.A. in Economics from Yale University in 1963. Two years later, he received his MBA from Harvard Business School.612

Baseball was the family business. His father, William Sr., started out as a vendor at Robison Field. In 1916, William Sr. joined Branch Rickey and the Browns working as Rickey’s assistant. In the years that followed, William Sr. held various positions in baseball, working for the Cardinals, Browns, Yankees and Tigers. William Sr. owned the Browns with his brother Charley from 1949-51 and later the Cincinnati Reds from 1961-66 and was a minority owner of the White Sox with Bill Veeck from 1975-81.613

It was as the Browns’ batboy that William Jr., whom everyone called Bill, got his feet wet. His uniform was used by Eddie Gaedel when the midget appeared in a game in 1951.614 In 1966 Bill was one of the investors that bought the Cincinnati Reds from his father. Establishing roots in Ohio, Bill became involved in an investment company, Reynolds, DeWitt and Company in Cincinnati. When he bought the Cardinals, he was the firm’s president. In addition to having financial interests in the Reds, he had stakes at various times with the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles. He served as a board member of the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals and the World Hockey Association ‘s (WHA) Cincinnati Stingers.615

Bill is married and his wife Katherine (Cramer) DeWitt also of St. Louis have four grown children, Katie, Bill III, Andrew and Margot.616

On the day that the purchase of the Cardinals by his group was announced, DeWitt Jr. was joined by other investors Frederick O. Hanser and Andrew N. Baur. All three were alumni of St. Louis Country Day School and involved in business together. Hanser was an attorney for Baur’s Mississippi Valley Bancshares company, the holding company for Southwest Bank of St. Louis and DeWitt Jr. was an investor in Baur’s company. The 1996 Cardinal Media Guide listed Hanser as overseeing the daily baseball operations of the Cardinals.617 His great-grandfather was Adolph M. Diez, who had been a Cardinal shareholder during the franchise’s ownership under Sam Breadon.618

Hanser and Baur were the principal organizers of the DeWitt Jr.’s group in its negotiations with Anheuser-Busch. DeWitt said he first approached August Busch III about selling the Cardinals as early as 1991 but was turned down. Negotiations began again in September 1995, a month before the for-sale sign on the Cardinals was officially put up.619

On January 23, 1996 DeWitt’s ownership group filed a Certificate of Limited Partnership with the State of Missouri, with the legal name of St. Louis Cardinals L.P. William O. DeWitt Jr. was listed as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Fred Hanser as Registered Agent.620 Cardinals president Mark Lamping would report to Hanser.621 DeWitt would continue to live in Cincinnati and commute to St. Louis as necessary.622

On August 28, 2003, Fred Hanser converted the Cardinal ownership partners to a limited liability company, St. Louis Cardinals LLC, as a separate legal entity from the ownership group, which is how it operates as of the 2021 season.623

DeWitt’s ownership group that purchased the Cardinals — in addition to DeWitt Jr., Baur, and Hanser — was made up of Stephen F. Brauer, president of Hunter Engineering Co.; Robert Castellini, owner of Castellini Produce Co. and director of Future Now Inc. a computer company in Cincinnati; John K. Wallace Jr., head of investment company Regency Group; DeWitt’s sister, Donna ”De De” DeWitt Lambert, on the board of directors of Mississippi Valley Bancshares; Mercer Reynolds, partner with DeWitt Jr. in the investment firm of Reynolds, DeWitt and Co.; Pulitzer Sports II, a subsidiary of the Pulitzer Publishing Co., which published the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was owned by Michael Pulitzer; Richard H. Sutphin, an executive at Reynolds, DeWitt and Co.; G. Watts Humphrey Jr., Pittsburgh, owner of investment firm G.W.H. Holdings Inc and board member and investor in Churchill Downs Inc; Nick D. Kladis, Chicago, a board member of the Chicago White Sox under Bill Veeck; Michael McDonnell, Memphis, head of Rock Island Corp. a privately held company for hardware and building products distributors; David C. Pratt, founder of United Industries Inc. of St. Louis; Dudley S. Taft, Cincinnati, who had sold his Taft Broadcasting Company for $1.5 billion in 1987; brothers W. Joseph and Thomas Williams of Cincinnati, whose father had served as Vice-President and part owner of the Cincinnati Reds with DeWitt Jr. 624

This group of investors has stayed relatively stable through the 2021 season. But there have been departures and additions. Lee Enterprises sold its 2.7 percent of Cardinal shares to majority owner Bill DeWitt in 2006 after buying the stake from Pulitzer Sports II the previous year. Robert Castellini, Joseph and Thomas Williams sold their shares to other investors when they bought the Cincinnati Reds.625 The widow of Richard Sutphin (Caroline) and families of Nick Kladis and Andrew Baur inherited shares in the Cardinals after the deaths of original investors in 2005, 2009 and 2011 respectively.626

In 2009, Craig R. Stapleton , who co-owned the Texas Rangers with DeWitt Jr. bought an investment stake in the Cardinals.627 James C. Davis of Allegis Group bought a minority stake and is mentioned in the 2019 Cardinals Media Guide.628 Other than the members who sold their shares to DeWitt Jr. and Robert Castellini’s (10 percent) to the other investors, no information is available regarding the percentages of ownership in the Cardinals held by investors. They signed confidentially agreements with city officials.629

A year after the sale the DeWitt ownership group got some of their investment back, selling the four garages for $91 million and land for $9.7 million.630

After two seasons of strife between owners and players, St. Louis Cardinal baseball fans wanted to return their attention to balls and strikes not work stoppages. The DeWitt ownership group did its part by making Busch Stadium more conducive to the game of baseball, replacing the AstroTurf with real grass, and making other upgrades to the stadium. Its ticket sales campaign was “Baseball Like It Oughta Be.”

Combining the marketing campaign with intriguing player acquisitions and bringing back fan favorite Willie McGee, the new ownership received wide support from Cardinal fans. By mid-March, Cardinal fans had already purchased 1.8 million tickets which surpassed 1995’s total attendance. Season ticket sales increased from 16,036 to 16,750.631 Shortstop Ozzie Smith announcing that 1996 would be his last season, plus a dogfight with the Houston Astros for the Central Division crown, led the Cardinals to draw 2,654,718 fans, and make the playoffs for the first time since 1987.

The following season, the DeWitt ownership put a manual scoreboard into operation to bring back the feel of old ballparks. The team said it sacrificed some 5,000 potential revenue-producing seats.632 Scores were updated every half-inning by seven Manual Scoreboard Guys (MSGs). Fourteen MSGs rotated working games over the nine years it was operating. As a perk, all of them got to be there for playoff baseball.633

In February 1997, the Cardinal ownership put their footprint in the community, holding an event at the downtown America’s Center which became a staple of their offseason marketing campaign. Fans could obtain player autographs by paying different prices depending on the player, and attend clinics held by manager Tony La Russa and Cardinals’ coaches. The event was to benefit the St. Louis area through the St. Louis Cardinals Community Fund, or Cardinals Care, which was conceived by the owners, players and La Russa. Beneficiaries were designated youth programs. Seed money came from Cardinal owners ($100,000) and other sponsors ($70,000).

In addition to Cardinals Care, the owners designated part of the proceeds to La Russa’s charity, the Animal Rescue Foundation. The Winter Warm Up — as the Cardinals named the event — has continued to benefit the programs sponsored by Cardinal Care and for many fans is the opening of the baseball season.634 Since that first event, the charitable arm of the Cardinals has given back $23 million to the St. Louis community through its Redbird Rookies program, the building of ballfields in areas with little or no resources and the distribution of cash grants to nonprofits whose mission is working with children.635

If ever the stars aligned for the DeWitt Jr. ownership group, it was with the Cardinals’ acquisition of Mark McGwire by Walt Jocketty on July 31, 1997. With McGwire approaching free agency, the Athletics wanted to gain some return and agreed to a trade for three lesser players. McGwire hit 24 homers for the Cardinals for the rest of the season to give him 58. Before the season ended, he signed a three-year contract with a mutual option for 2001.636 By the time spring training got under way in 1998, the buzz was going around baseball and its fans that this was going to be the year Roger Maris’s single-season home run total of 61 would be broken.637

The DeWitt ownership opened the gates for Cardinals’ batting practice for fans who came early to watch Big Mac hit some pre-game bombs.638 The fans were rewarded with an epic home-run record duel between McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa. By the end of 1998, both had broken Roger Maris’s season home record of 61, with McGwire hitting 70 and Sosa 66. The real winners were the Cardinals’ owners as attendance rebounded over the three million level for the first time since 1989. It was a Cardinals’ season attendance record that would be surpassed in each of the next two seasons.

With Busch Stadium II finished with its 34th baseball season and showing its age structurally amid all the new fans, the DeWitt ownership felt the time was right to plant the idea of a new ballpark, a ballpark with new revenue stream possibilities. In a radio interview, Cardinals’ president Mark Lamping said that even with the attendance records the Cardinals incurred a 1998 loss of around $3 million for the season as taxes, interest on debt, revenue sharing payments and officers’ salaries turned an operating profit into a loss.

Lamping said that the Cardinals would look at all available options including outside of St. Louis city to build a new ballpark. Ownership would pick the location that would yield the necessary revenues to keep the franchise operating and be profitable, although downtown was the easiest place to put the stadium because of highway access for out-of-town fans and for its central location. Lampling explained the DeWitt ownership group was bullish on getting a new ballpark because of a study on the feasibility of putting the new stadium in the parking lot just south of the existing ballpark. Lamping did not present a specific financing plan but said they would consider private money, public money or a combination of both.

Then, the new proposal ran into the aftermath of the deal the city, county and state had signed in 1995 to attract the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League. At the TWA Dome, the state was responsible for paying $12 million per year on the retirement of construction bonds, while the Rams received all concessions profits, 90 percent of advertising profits and most of the profits from parking garages. The lease also required the public agencies keep updating stadium amenities to keep it within the top quarter of NFL stadiums. The city additionally had agreed to a tax on sports ticket sales to fund a practice facility for the Rams.

This time, the embarrassed state legislators wanted to drive a harder bargain.639 The legislators wanted assurances taxpayers would get their money back. Some legislators wanted a requirement that the Cardinals give part of the profits back to the state if they sold the team. Others supported the idea that the state, rather than the team, would control naming rights and pocket some of that income.640 In March 2001, Lamping, Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck and Hall of Famer Lou Brock went to Jefferson City, Missouri, to woo support for two bills providing state monies to finance their new open-air, retro-style ballpark in downtown St. Louis.

At that hearing, Lamping and his group were met with resistance by the legislators. They noted that despite the Cardinals’ promise to put up $100 million, the land for the new ballpark, and cover construction overruns and upkeep, the team wanted the estimated $370 million ballpark to be publicly owned and subsidized. The Cardinals also wanted a $250 million bond issue from the state through the Stadium Sports Authority. Dangling the prospect that the new ballpark would spark a downtown construction boom and protect the schools did not persuade the state legislators to sign off on a financing package. They feared the state would be on the hook if the owners, the City of St. Louis and St. Louis County were unable to pay their support. In the end the funding bills were quashed.641 Lamping and the Cardinal owners were back to Square One.

On December 23, 2003, the DeWitt ownership group unveiled plans for their new open-air, retro-style ballpark to be built on the south bus parking lot adjacent to Busch Stadium II. Lamping said the owners wanted to open the ballpark in April 2006. Preliminary clearing of the construction site started in November 2003.642

The project was financed mostly privately and the DeWitt ownership group owned the stadium, instead of leasing it. The cost of the new ballpark was announced as $387.5 million. The money was divided among $90.1 million from Cardinal ownership; a $45.0 million loan from St. Louis County; $30.4 million from State of Missouri to be used as tax credits for site improvement; $9.2 million through planned delays of interest payments on loans; $12.3 million from the Missouri Department of Transportation for Highway 40 ramp construction near the stadium; and $200.5 million from a private bond issue. Bond interest payments would cost another $15.9 million annually for 22 years. 643

The Cardinals ownership decided they could afford a private financing strategy because of available revenue streams. They had lease commitments on a majority of the 63 suites located in designated private areas of the new ballpark, and long-term contract extensions with cable TV network Fox Sports Midwest and the ballpark’s concessionaire, Sportsservice Corp. They also had naming rights. They planned on additional revenue from selling personal seat licenses to 10,300 seats before potential ticket holders could buy tickets.644 In commenting about the financing switch from public to private money, Lamping said, “For the Cardinals to be able to privately finance the new ballpark is a real tribute to Cardinal fans and testament to the strength of St. Louis as a Major League Baseball market.”645

Fans clicking on the Cardinals website could look at an artist’s rendering of the new park, a red brick, glass and steel structure with an estimated capacity of 46,681 (in 2006). The architect was HOK Sport (now Populous) and it was built by Hunt Construction Company.646 Groundbreaking ceremonies were held on Saturday January 17, 2004.647

The naming rights negotiations were held during the financing process to maximize the value. On August 4, 2004, at a sun-drenched Busch Stadium II, Bill DeWitt Jr. announced that an agreement had been reached with Anheuser-Busch Companies to name the new ballpark Busch Stadium. The agreement which was an extension of the current marketing agreement and included the naming rights was for 20 years. DeWitt Jr. said, “From the day we began planning for the new ballpark, we wanted to keep the name Busch Stadium.” 648

The last game ever played at Busch Stadium II was on October 19, 2005, for Game Six of the National League Championship Series. It lasted 2 hours, 53 minutes, and was attended by 52,438 fans. The next morning, construction workers started getting the stadium ready for demolition by tearing down the bullpens, outfield walls and removing stadium seats.649 Fans could buy a piece of the stadium or memorabilia that the Cardinals put up for auction on Lelands.com. 650

Busch Stadium III opened play in the 2006 season, when the St. Louis Cardinals won their 10th World Series championship. (COURTESY OF STEVE AMES)

The new Busch Stadium — aka Busch Stadium III — had its curtain raiser on April 4, 2006. Two Cardinals minor league teams, the Memphis Redbirds and Springfield Cardinals, played the first baseball game in the new park. 32,255 attended.

Just like its predecessor, Busch Stadium III has hosted many non-baseball events. Its first concert was in 2008 with the Dave Matthews Band.651 International soccer matches are also held at Busch III, with the inaugural match being English powerhouses Chelsea versus Manchester City. The match drew 48,263 as Man City won 4-3.652

Bill DeWitt Jr. was not afraid to risk alienation by Cardinal fans if it meant he could maximize radio broadcast revenues. During the 2005 season the “buzz” was that the DeWitt ownership group was going to move the radio broadcast rights from KMOX to KTRS, ending a relationship that had started in 1954.653 Lamping had been negotiating with both stations looking to raise revenues without raising ticket prices. KMOX wanted to lower fees to the Cardinals from $6.7 million to $4.7 million with the difference made up by revenue sharing. Lamping and the Cardinals wanted the broadcast rights guaranteed.654

Fans angered by the rumors voiced their displeasure in letters to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. KTRS’ weaker signal, especially at night, would make it hard for fans in Illinois, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania and Indiana who were used to KMOX’s 50,000-watt, clear-channel signal. One fan made that argument from San Diego, over 1,500 miles away.655 But, negotiations between DeWitt Jr. and KTRS led to the Cardinals buying a controlling interest in the station for $2 million. The Cardinal broadcasts were moved there with an eight-year contract starting in 2006. The Cardinals calculated ownership would allow the team to tailor the station’s programing around the Cardinals. DeWitt and Lamping felt by selling their own advertising they would maximize revenues. Lamping said an agreement with Litchfield (IL) radio station WSMI would provide the broadcast reach for those Cardinal fans in outlying Illinois. All Cardinal fans everywhere could get the games on XM Satellite Radio, which would offer subscripition discounts exclusively to Cardinal fans.656

The KTRS venture did not work. The revenues DeWitt Jr. and the Cardinals hoped to realize from selling their own advertising did not happen due to the 2008 recession and changes in the business of sports broadcasting.657 In 2010, still dealing with unhappy fans, De Witt Jr., used the opt-out clause in the KTRS agreement to renegotiate with KMOX. The station agreed to a small rights fee, opportunities for the Cardinals to do cross-promotion with CBS’s other radio stations and allowing the Cardinals to continue selling their own advertising. The agreement was for five seasons starting in 2011. KMOX is still the flagship station of the St. Louis Cardinal Radio Network located in eight states with a total of 110 affiliate stations plus broadcasts in Spanish.658 DeWitt and the Cardinals still hold a stake in KTRS with CH Radio Holdings and actor St. Louisan John Goodman but percentages of ownership were unavailable.659

Fox Sports Midwest (FSM) which started televising Cardinal baseball in 1994, became the exclusive television network for the franchise in 2011. That relationship was extended in July 2015 for the seasons from 2018 through 2032 with a value to the franchise of $1 billion. The first payment in 2018 was $55 million up from $30 million in 2017. The annual value increases each year, with a final payment of $86 million. According to Forbes magazine, this deal was made because 76% of Cardinal fans either attended, listened to or watched a Cardinal game during the 2014 season. DeWitt Jr., optimistic with these numbers, bought a 30 percent stake in FSM.660 He commented “This (deal) does give us a great deal of stability (after it starts) for the next 15 years and does so in a market that has been shifting.”661

Having a stable front office was a staple of the success the Cardinals had under DeWitt Jr.’s ownership from 1996 through 2019. But there were changes which impacted that culture. After the 2007 season, Walt Jocketty, the Cardinal general manager hired by Anheuser-Busch after the 1994 strike-shortened season, was fired because he did not embrace the analytics bent that Jeff Luhnow brought to the organization.662

After Luhnow left the Cardinals in 2012 to be the general manager of the Houston Astros, one of his former employees, Chris Correa, illegally gained access to Houston’s database under the pretense that Luhnow and the Astros had accessed the Cardinals’ information. MLB and FBI security agents found that Correa acted alone, but the price the Cardinals and DeWitt Jr. paid was severe. They lost their first two picks in the 2017 draft. The $1.8 million associated with those draft picks and a $2 million fine were sent to Houston. At the time, it was the highest penalty imposed by Major League Baseball. Correa was fired, then banned from baseball for life, along with serving a prison sentence of 46 months. The Cardinals’ reputation took a hit even though the investigation said that general manager John Mozeliak, who replaced Jocketty, was not involved nor were other Cardinal employees or officials.663

The on-field image of the team was affected when Tony La Russa retired and Albert Pujols left via free agency after winning the 2011 World Series. Pujols known as “The Machine” put together arguably the best 10-year stretch of a player in the major leagues. During his Cardinals tenure, he won three MVP awards, hit 445 home runs, and produced a 1.037 OPS, a .328 batting average and 86.6 WAR. Most importantly, he was a fixture in the community with the Pujols Family Foundation and the face of the franchise during his time in St. Louis. After becoming a free agent, he signed a 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels for $254 million.664

Ballpark Village was developed to put the DeWitt ownership corporate footprint into downtown St. Louis and tie in with the Cardinal baseball franchise. The project was announced in 2001 in conjunction with the construction of what became Busch Stadium III, but due to obstacles to financing, caused by the 2008 economic meltdown and loss of anchor tenant (Centene Corporation), the project did not start until 2013. It was completed in 2020.665 It is made up of three entertainment venues and office space named the PwC Pennant building and residential space called One Cardinal Way. During the pause in play due to the Covid19 pandemic and while negotiations were occurring on the financial aspects of restarting the season, DeWitt did not paint a rosy picture for the short-term profitability of Ballpark Village even though the entertainment venues have been open for six years and One Cardinal Way was 60 percent leased as of May 11, 2020.666 DeWitt Jr. said the ownership group was looking at the entire project as a long term investment that would benefit the Cardinals’ franchise and St. Louis area.667

MARK STANGL is a past president of the Bob Broeg St. Louis SABR Chapter and a current St. Louis Cardinal employee. He hosts a sports talk show, The Sports Angl, for MindsEye Radio.

Last revised: October 14, 2021

Notes

1 J. Thomas Hetrick, Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns (Lanham, The Scarecrow Press Inc. 1999), 4.

2 “The Primaries: An Address to the Anti-Overstoltz Voters,” St.Louis Post-Dispatch, March 26, 1881.

3 Joan M. Thomas, “Red Stockings Park (St. Louis),” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/park/red-stockings-park-st-louis/.

4 “J.B.C. Lucas of Pioneer Family Taken by Death,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 17, 1908.

5 “Sporting News: Chicago Nine Punish the St. Louis Reds to the Tune of 15-0,” Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1875.

6 “Nutmeg Graters: An Appropriate Cognomen for the St. Louis Browns. Their Unparalleled Record Against the Hartfords. For Whom Our Goose Laid Twenty-Seven Eggs,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 16, 1876.

7 Frederick J. Lieb, “A Charter Member Der Poss Bresident,” The St. Louis Baseball Reader, edited by Richard Peterson (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 56.”

8 “Von der Ahe’s Good Fortune. A Mere Chance Investment Put Him in Base Ball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 1, 1896.

9 “Sporting News: Base Ball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 9, 1880.

10 Hetrick, Chris Von der Ahe. 4

11 “The Reds Revenged: Another Brilliant Base Ball Game Between the Local Champions,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 23,1881.

12 “Amusements: Base Ball: St. Louis Browns vs. Eclipse of Louisville, at Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 23,1881.

13 “The Base Ball Muddle: Why There Are Two Brown Stocking Clubs in the Field,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8, 1881; Robert L. Tiemann, Cardinal Classics: Outstanding Games From Each of The St. Louis Baseball Club’s 100 Seasons 1882-1981 (St. Louis: Baseball History Inc. 1982),7.

14 “A Baseball Divorce,” Missouri Republican, October 3, 1881.

15 The $1,800 Von der Ahe paid was 49 percent of $ 3,673.

16 Hetrick, Chris Von der Ahe, 8.

17 “Base Ball Convention,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 3, 1881.

18 Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Inc 1992), 226-227 .

19 “City News,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 7, 1882.

20 “Sporting Notes: LaCrosse Game To-Morrow,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 7, 1883.

21 “Base Ball: The Race for American Association Championship Commenced Yesterday,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 3, 1882.

22 “Sporting Sundries: Consumption in Its Early Stages Is Readily Cured,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 21, 1882.

23 “Sporting Sundries: Notes,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 26, 1882.

24 “Mauled the Manager.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 15, 1883.

25 “A Brilliant Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 31, 1883.

26 “The St. Louis Nine In 1884,” New York Times, October 16, 1883.

27 “Ballplayers On a Bum,”.St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 2, 1884.

28 “Diamond Chips,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 1884.

29 “Bracing Up,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 5, 1884.

30 “Von der Ahe’s Historic Bar In Hands Of Wreckers,” St. Louis Star-Times, August 1, 1933.

31 “No Game, No Money,” St. Louis-Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1883.

32 “Sporting News: The Athletics Still in Hard Luck,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1883.

33 “No Game, No Money, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1883.

34 Robert Burnes,.”A Century With the Globe-Democrat. Heyday of Chris Von der Ahe and Comiskey,” St.Louis Globe-Democrat, October 12, 1952.

35 “St. Louis’ Great Victory,” The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago, Illinois), October 24, 1886.

36 “Von der Ahe’s Historic Bar In Hands Of Wreckers,” St. Louis Star-Times, August 1, 1933.

37 “Dividing the Receipts,” St. Louis-Post-Dispatch, October 25, 1886; “The Chicago Defeat,” Decatur Weekly Republican, October 28, 1886.

38 “The Browns Victory,” St. Louis-Post-Dispatch, October 28, 1886.

39 “Von der Ahe’s Historic Bar in Hands of Wreckers,” St. Louis Star-Times, August 1, 1933.

40 “Sporting Sundries,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 30, 1883

41 “Ball Players Strike,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 1889

42 Burnes,”A Century With the Globe-Democrat,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 12, 1952.

43 “Ball Players Strike,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 1889.

44 “The ‘Quitters’ Return,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 7, 1889.

45 “Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players,” SABR/Baseball-Reference Encyclopedia, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Brotherhood_of_Professional_Baseball_Players, accessed October 11, 2021.

46 “Comiskey Is No Good,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 29, 1890.

47 “Sporting Notes,” The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago,Illinois), November 29, 1890.

48 “President Von der Ahe Very Much Pleased with His Club and the Association,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 22, 1891.

49 “The League Trap,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 1891.

50 “New Plan of the League,” Milwaukee Journal, November 5, 1891.

51 “Twelve Clubs It Is,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 1891.

52 “The League Trap,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 1891.

53 “Twelve Clubs It Is,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 20, 1891.

54 “Comiskey Is Lost,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 4, 1891.

55 “The Men Compared.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1892.

56 “No Tail-Enders,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 7, 1892.

57 “Der Poss President,” St. Louis Star-Times, August 1, 1933.

58 “Says He Will Cut,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 1892.

59 “Comiskey On Chris,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 18,1892.

60 “Base Ball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 28, 1893.

61 “New Park Leased,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 1892.

62 “Fans’ Paradise,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1893.

63 “New Park Leased,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 6, 1892.

64 Lowry, Green Cathedrals, 227.

65 “Fans’ Paradise,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1893

66 “Want Their Salary,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 18, 1893.

67 “Chris’ Scalp,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 1894; “Red Men Win,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 24, 1895.

68 “Chris to Eddie,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 8, 1894.

69 “Are at Outs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 12, 1894.

70 “News in the World of Sports,” The North American (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), August 14, 1894.

71 “Chris Von der Ahe: The Important Part He Played in Base Ball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 13, 1894.

72 “Will Sell at His Own Price, ” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 27, 1895.

73 “Fred Foster’s New Race Track,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 1, 1895; Richard Egenriether, “Chris Von der Ahe: Baseball’s Pioneering Huckster,” NINE, Vol. 7, No. 2, Spring, 1999.

74 “Are Lucky Fellows,” St.Louis Post-Dispatch, March 15, 1899.

75 “Will Von der Ahe Be Called Down?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 23, 1896.

76 “Chris Driven to Extremities,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 21, 1896.

77 “Will Sell at His Own Price,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 27, 1895.

78 “Chris Driven to Extremities,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 21, 1896.

79 “Race Track Stables Burned,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 21, 1897.

80 “St. Louis Industries,” St.Louis Globe-Democrat, May 1, 1897.

81 “Muckenfuss Is Boss,” St.Louis Post-Dispatch, January 1, 1898.

82 “Assigned to Von der Ahe,” St.Louis Globe-Democrat, January 13, 1898.

83 “Muckenfuss Is Boss,” St.Louis Post-Dispatch, January 1, 1898.

84 “Assigned to Von Der Ahe,” St.Louis Globe-Democrat, January 13, 1898.

85 “Muckenfuss Is Boss,” St.Louis Post-Dispatch, January 1, 1898.

86 “Fire and Panic at Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1898.

87 “Rebuilding the Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 18, 1898.

88 “Fire and Panic at Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1898.

89 “A New Grandstand,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 24, 1898.

90 “Browns are Finally Sold,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 13, 1898.

91 “Becker Owns the Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 14, 1898.

92 “Becker Backed Out,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 24, 1898.

93 “Caught on the Fly,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 1, 1899.

94 “The National Game: Statement Showing How It was Conducted Here,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 22, 1899.

95 “The Baseball Case,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 23, 1899.

96 “Motion Overruled,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 6, 1899.

97 “Browns Suspended,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , March 1, 1899.

98 “Gruner Buys the Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 14, 1899.

99 “Becker Buys the Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 17, 1899.

100 “It Is All Settled,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 23, 1899.

101 “Chattel Deed of Trust on Baseball Property,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 19, 1900; “Chattel Deed Expires,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 16, 1901.

102 “Caught on the Fly,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 19, 1899.

103 “Robison, Frank de Hass,” Enclyclopedia of Cleveland History, https://case.edu. Date Accessed: March 4, 2019.

104 “Robisons Win $175,000 Suit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1903.

105 ” Robison, Frank de Hass,” Enclyclopedia of Cleveland History, https://case.edu. Date Accessed: March 4, 2019.

106 Joan M. Thomas, “Stanley Robison,” Baseball’s First Stars (Cleveland: SABR, 1996), 142.

107 “The Baseball Season Begins,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15, 1899.

108 Lowry, Green Cathedrals, 227.

109 “An Immense Crowd,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1899.

110 “An Immense Crowd,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1899.

111 “A Very Close Shave,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 13, 1899.

112 “Good Practice for Mr. Tebeau’s Team,” The St. Louis Republic, April 3, 1900.

113 “One for the Red Caps,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1900.

114 John E. Wray, “Wray’s Column: Why ‘Cardinals?’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 5, 1931.

115 “Mr. Robison Talks,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1899.

116 “Mr. Robison Talks,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1899.

117 “Mr. Robison Talks,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 17, 1899.

118 “M’Graw and Robby,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 13, 1900.

119 Dina M. Young, “The Streetcar Strike of 1900,” Gateway Heritage Summer 1991. (Missouri History Library and Research Center), 4-17.

120 “M’Graw Not the Manager,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 20, 1900.

121 “St. Louis May Lose … Good Ball Players,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1900.

122 “Current Sporting Comments,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 16, 1900.

123 “Chattel Deed of Trust on Baseball Property,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 19, 1900.

124 “Chattel Deed Expires,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 16, 1901.

125 “Robisons May Quit St. Louis,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 28, 1900.

126 “Chattel Deed Expires,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 16, 1901.

127 “Fire During a Ball Game,” New York Times, May 5, 1901.

128 “Robisons Win $175,000 Suit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1903.

129 “Fire Stopped a Lovely Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 5, 1901.

130 “Grand Stand Can’t Be Replaced,” St. Louis Republic, May 8, 1901.

131 “Current Baseball Comment,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1901

132 “’St. Louis American Team a Certainty:’- Ban Johnson.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 15, 1901.

133 “Sudhoff Is Disgruntled,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 12, 1901

134 “American May Not Have Team Here Next Season,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 5, 1901.

135 “Browns Open Season with a Legal Victory,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23,1902.

136 “Talty and Fisher Deny Injunction,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 1902.

137 J.E. Wray, “Cardinals Reject Browns’ Plans for a Post Season Game Series,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 10, 1902.

138 “Clubs’ Rivalry Is at an End,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 8, 1903.

139 “Robisons Win $175,000 Suit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1903.

140 “Cardinals Increase Stock,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1903.

141 “Stanley Robison Chief of the Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 27, 1906.

142 “Stanley Robison, “Here Is One Difference, “St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 7, 1901.

143 “Dead Arms All That J. McGraw Has To Trade,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 8, 1908.

144 “Bresnahan Will Get $25,000 for 3-Year Contract,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 17, 1908.

145 “Robison Takes Out $50,000 Policy on Bresnahan,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 9, 1909.

146 “Bresnahan Will Get $25,000 for 3-Year Contract,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 17, 1908.

147 “Thinks Roger Wise In Ending Spring Series,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 28, 1908.

148 “Overall Will Face Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 21, 1909.

149 W.J. O’Connor, “Bresnahan Fired, Earned $227,000 for Team Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1912.

150 “Stanley Robison, Cardinals Owner, Dies in Cleveland,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 24, 1911.

151 “Stanley Robison, Cardinals Owner, Dies in Cleveland,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 24, 1911.

152 Paula Homan, “Helene Hathaway Robison Britton,” Cardinal Insider, April 23, 2018.

153 “Telegram from Helene Britton to August Hermann 1911 March,” Baseball Hall of Fame Archives, https://baseballhall.org/discover/short-stops/a-telegram-that-changed-baseball-history. Date Accessed March 30, 2019.

154 “No Title,” New York Times, March 30, 1911.

155 “Mrs. Britton Wins Full Control of Cardinal Team, ” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 20, 1912.

156 “Chicago Caterer Says He’s Seeking to Buy Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 30, 1911.

157 “Denver Man Wants St. Louis Club,” New York Times, April 2, 1911.

158 “St. Louis Cardinals Not for Sale,” New York Times, April 7, 1911.

159 “Mrs. Britton to Direct Cardinals with Own Hand,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 29, 1911.

160 “Robison’s Niece, Mrs. Britton, Is Cardinal Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 28, 1911.

161 “Seekamp to Serve as Temporary Head of St. Louis Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 30, 1911.

162 “Cardinals New President Who Will Represent Woman Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 7, 1911.

163 Marguerite Martyn, “Mrs. Schuyler Britton, Owner of the Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1911.

164 “Mrs. Britton Catering to Women Fans,” New York Times, December 14, 1911.

165 “Robison Field Free to Women Monday,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1912.

166 W.J. O’Connor, “Bresnahan Fired; Earned $227,000 for Team Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1912.

167 “12 Die in Wreck, ” New York Times, July 12, 1911; “Bresnahan Tells About the Horrors of the Wreck.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 11, 1911.

168 “Bresnahan Signs 5-Year Contract to Manage Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 13, 1911; W.J. O’Connor” Roger’s Contract Gives Him Share in Club Profits,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 4, 1912.

169 “National League Makes No Answer,” New York Times, December 14, 1911

170 W.J. O’Connor, “Cardinal Vote Saves Job for President Lynch,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 4, 1911.

171 “National League Makes No Answer,” New York Times, December 14, 1911.

172 “Trouble in St. Louis Club,” New York Times, April 21, 1912.

173 “Mrs. Britton and Husband Testify in Suit for Stock,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 29, 1912.

174 “Mrs. Britton Wins Full Control of Cardinal Team,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 20, 1912.

175 “Trouble Starts When Roger Moves Team Without Consulting Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1912.

176 Ray Webster, “First Interview With New Cards’ President Published in St. Louis,” St. Louis Star and Times, June 19, 1912,

177 W. J. O’Connor, “Mrs. Britton Puts Stop to Roger’s Trade with Reds,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 15, 1912.

178 W. J. O’Connor, “Hiring Huggins May Save Cards $8,000 a Season,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 24, 1912.

179 W. J. O’Connor, “Bresnahan Fired; Earned $227,000 for Team Owner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 22, 1912.

180 O’Connor, “Hiring Huggins,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 24, 1912.

181 W. J. O’Connor, “Bresnahan Sees $40,000 Pay for 3-Year Contract,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 24, 1912.

182 “Cardinals Owner, Mrs. Britton Ends Her Divorce Suit,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 9, 1911.

183 W.J. O’Connor, “Free Score Cards, New Score Board and a Rest for the Bleacherite’s Back Promised by Cards’ New Head,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1913,

184 Ed Bang, “Schuyler P. Britton Groomed to Head Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 1, 1913.

185 W.J. O’Connor, “Cards to Have New Stands Despite Bad Local Season,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1913.

186 O’Connor, “Cards to Have New Stands.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1913.

187 W.J. O’Connor, “Handlan’s Park is Probable Home of St. Louis Federals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 29,1913.

188 “Federal League Park Nearing Completion,Visited by Many Fans,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 30, 1914.

189 “Only 3000 on Hand for First Baseball Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 14, 1914.

190 W.J. O’Connor, “Is There Room in this Big City for Three Clubs?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1914.

191 “Brittons Will Sell Cards if They Get Price,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 1914.

192 “Spring Series Games Will Be at Browns Park.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 12, 1915.

193 “Baseball Today: Browns vs. Cardinals, Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 27, 1915.

194 “Cards to Remain at Robison Field This Year, Pres. Britton Announces,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1915.

195 “Is American League Flirting with Wealthy Owner of Terriers?” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1915.

196 “Brittons Will Sell Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 1914.

197 “Is American League Flirting,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 23, 1915.

198 “Brittons Will Sell Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 6, 1914.

199 “Long Baseball War is Settled,” New York Times, December 23 1915.

200 W.J. O’Connor, “Hug Opposes Britton,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 10, 1916.

201 “Sinclair Refuses to Buy Cards at Britton’s Figure,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 18, 1916.

202 “Henry Weisels Makes Bid for Cardinals Club,” The St. Louis Star and Times, February 14, 1916.

203 “Britton Denies Deal Is Pending,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 14, 1916.

204 “Britton Not Seeking Purchaser,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 21, 1916.

205 “Henry Weisels Makes Bid,” The St. Louis Star and Times, February 14, 1916.

206 W.J. O’Connor, “Britton’s Price Too High for Mysterious Buyer,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 26, 1916.

207 “Sport Reels by J.V. Linck,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 15, 1916.

208 “Mrs. Britton Deposes Husband She Sues,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 18, 1916.

209 “Mrs. Britton Wins Decree of Divorce by Default,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 13, 1917.

210 “Mrs. Britton to Take Charge of New Job at Once,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 19, 1916.

211 “Mrs. Britton Deposes Husband,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 18, 1916.

212 “Mrs. Britton to Take Charge of New Job at Once,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 19, 1916.

213 “Mrs. Britton Eager to Make Trades,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 27, 1916.

214 New York Bureau of the Post-Dispatch, “Cardinals Stand a ‘Woodpile,’” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 1916.

215 “R.L. Hedges Makes Bid for Cardinals Ball Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 14, 1916.

216 W.J. O’Connor, “New Offer to Buy Cardinals Stock Today,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 19, 1916.

217 “R.L. Hedges Makes Bid for Cardinals Ball Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 14, 1916.

218 W.J. O’Connor, “Threat of Strike Spoils Chance to Dispose of Cards,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 29, 1917.

219 “Wray’s Column: Player’s Power Now Nil,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 17, 1917.

220 W.J. O’Connor, “Rickey’s Bomb Throwers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch , February 4 , 1917.

221 W.J. O’Connor, “10,000 Local Fans to Buy Cardinals: J.C. Jones’ Scheme,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 28, 1917.

222 O’Connor, “10,000 Local Fans to Buy Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 28, 1917.

223 “Help Buy the Cardinals,” The St. Louis Star and Times, March 6, 1917.

224 O’Connor, “10,000 Local Fans to Buy Cardinals: J.C. Jones’ Scheme,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 28, 1917.

225 “Mrs. Britton Is Paid $25,000 for 60 Day Option on Club;” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 5, 1917.

226 “First Payment on Cardinals Ready; Free Score Cards for Fans Today,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1917.

227 “Pinch President Rickey to Help Elevate Browns,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 3, 1913.

228 “Dr. Branch Rickey, Professor of Baseball,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 5, 1914.

229 Clarence F. Lloyd, “Rickey’s System Is Vindicated by Success of Team,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 1, 1914.

230 “Drink a Branch Rickey,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 11, 1914.

231 “Rickey Batting .300 in All-Star Oratorical Meet,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 21, 1914.

232 “Special Powers May be Granted to Scout Rickey,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 3, 1916.

233 “Pre-Contract Agreement Cited,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 20, 1917.

234 W.J. O’Connor, “Rickey Introduced as New President; Delivers Address to Cardinal Stockholders,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 21, 1917.

235 “Rickey Considers Cardinal Offer of 3-Year Contract; Salary Said to Be $15,000.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 20, 1917.

236 “Armistice Exists Between Ball and New Boss of Cards,” The St. Louis Star and Times, March 22, 1917; ” Pre-Contract Agreement Cited.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 20, 1917.

237 W.J. O’Connor, “Ball Agrees to Give Up Rickey; May Get DeFate,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 6, 1917.

238 “Rickey Takes Command Today,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 7, 1917.

239 “First Payment on Cardinals Ready,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1917.

240 “Articles of Association: The St. Louis National Baseball Club,” (charter No. 33690), Missouri Business Filings. https://bsd.sos.mo.gov. Accessed February 23, 2019, 1-12.

241 “Articles of Association.”

242 “Articles of Association.”

243 “Articles of Association.”

244 “First Payment on Cardinals Ready,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1917.

245 “Cards Arrange to Pay $75,000 Note,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1920.

246 John E. Wray, “Huggins Signs to Manage Jinx Champions; Refused $10,000 Offer Made by Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 26, 1917.

247 “Cardinal Bleacher Capacity to Be Reduced; Rickey says 1,000 Seats Are Sufficient,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 17, 1918.

248 “Cardinals Make $10,000 Payment on Price of Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1918.

249 “$50,000 to Apply on Sale of Cards, Not Players,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 25, 1918.

250 “Cardinals Make $10,000 Payment on Price of Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1918.

251 “Cards’ Stockholders Asked to Subscribe $60,000 to Prevent Loss of Control,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 23, 1918.

252 “Plea for $60,000 to Pay Off Cards’ Debts Nets $2000,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1918.

253 “Cardinals Given Time Extension on $40,000 Note,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1918.

254 “Plea for $60,000,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 30, 1918.

255 “Cardinals’ Drive for $60,000 Fails; $16,000 Raised,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July14, 1918.

256 “$75,000 Pledged by Stockholders to Aid Cardinals,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 16, 1918.

257 John E. Wray, “Cards Have Lost Players Worth $110,000 in Year,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 17, 1918.

258 Clarence F. Lloyd, “Cardinals Owners To Ask Rickey to Manage Team,” The St. Louis Star and Times., September 2, 1918.

259 “Cardinals Will Not be Removed to Kansas City — James C. Jones, Club Official,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 14, 1918.

260 John E. Wray, “Cards Arranging Second Mortgage to Total $90,000,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 13, 1918.

261 “634 Stockholers in Cardinals May Lose All Rights,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 19, 1919.

262 “Directors to Decide Fate of Cardinals Under $89,000 Debt,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 23, 1919.

263 “Eleven Big League Clubs Have Chosen 1919 Training Camps,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 31, 1919.

264 “Financial Backing Pledged to Aid Rickey This Season,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 28, 1919.

265 “Rickey Gives Up Job as Cardinals’ Manager in Field,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 10, 1919.

266 “Cardinals May Be Sold at Auction,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 14, 1919.

267 “Facts on Knot-Holers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 21, 1919.

268 Bob Broeg, “His Cardinal Teams Won Nine N.L. Flags And Six World Series Titles,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1949.

269 “Rickey to Retain Management, Both of Team and Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 13, 1920.

270 “Cards Arrange to Pay $75,000 Note,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1920.

271 An Excel Spreadsheet was used to calculate shares and share percentages by Sam Breadon and James C. Jones. Information to calculate purchases and total shares outstanding was based on the information found in “Articles of Association”; and “Cards Arrange to Pay $75,000 Note; Club Out of Debt; Issue of $100,000 Stock to Noteholders Removes Last of Ball Club’s Obligations,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1920.

272 “Articles of Association. Change in Number of Directors 21 to 7.”(charter No. 33690),”Missouri Business Filings. https://bsd.sos.mo.gov. Accessed February 23, 2019.

273 An Excel Spreadsheet was used to calculate Breadon’s ownership as of May 1922, using the two documents below and the newspaper article cited. “Articles of Association: The St. Louis National Baseball Club,” (charter No. 33690),” Missouri Business Filings. https://bsd.sos.mo.gov. Accessed February 23, 2019, 1-12. And “Articles of Association. The St. Louis National Baseball Club” (charter No. 33690), Missouri Business Filings. https://bsd.sos.mo.gov. Accessed February 23, 2019, 1-4. “Sam Breadon Now Has Controlling Interest in Cards. President of the Knot-Hole Organization Buys Out J.C. Jones and Others,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 8, 1922.

274 Mark Armour, “Sam Breadon,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/sam-breadon.

275 “Sam Breadon Dies at 72,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1949.

276 Bob Broeg, “His Cardinal Teams Won Nine N.L. Flags And Six World Series Titles,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1949.

277 Armour, “Sam Breadon.”

278 Broeg, “His Cardinal Teams Won Nine N.L. Flags,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1949.

279 “Death Takes Sam Breadon Card Empire Builder at 72,” St. Joseph Gazette, May 11, 1949.

280 “Sam Breadon Associated Press Sketch,” St, Louis Globe-Democrat, April 1, 1949.

281 “Pierce-Arrow Plant Draws Many Visitors,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 28, 1919.

282 “Approve New Traffic Regulation,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 26, 1909.

283 Broeg, “His Cardinal Teams Won Nine N.L. Flags,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 11, 1949.

284 “Mrs. Breadon Divorce Decree To-Day,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 30, 1912.

285 “Samuel Breadon Was Married Last June,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 8, 1912.

286 Marion F. Parker, “Transfer of Cardinals to Sportsman’s Park Is Announced by Breadon,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1920.

287 Parker, “Transfer of Cardinals to Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1920.

288 Martin J. Haley, “Birds Still Have One Season to Play Under Terms Drawn in 1920, President Breadon Says,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 1, 1929.

289 “Cards Close Deal for Browns’ Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 24, 1920.

290 “Capt. ‘Tate’ Brady, Star Fullback, Is Ill and Unable to Play Against Innisfails at Cardinal Field This Afternoon,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 9, 1921; Charles J. Bartley, “Bobby Byrne Will Lead Miami Club in Southwestern,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 9, 1921.

291 W.J.S. Bryan, “The High School Seventy Years Ago and Now,” The Caduceus 1922. Missouri History Library and Research Center, 19.

292 Dent McSkimming, “Little Hope That Sportsman’s Park Will Be Improved,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 26, 1923.

293 J. Roy Stockton, “Sportsman’s Park Improvements Held Up by Cardinals’ Failure to Consent to Rent Raise.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 13,1922.

294 John E. Wray, “Stand-Pat Terms in a Stand Pat Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 24, 1922.

295 Stockton, ” Sportsman’s Park Improvements,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 13, 1922.

296 “Browns Trying to Turn Cardinals Out Into Street,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 13, 1924.

297 “Cardinals Ask Court to Stop Ouster from Park Used by Browns; Owners Canceled Lease for Delay in Paying Rent,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 13, 1924.

298 “Browns Go to Bat In Injunction Game; Ask Court Order to Keep Cardinals From Trespassing on Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 17, 1924.

299 “Cardinals Win Over Browns in Injunction Case,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 31, 1924.

300 “Cardinals Win Suit Against Ouster from Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 13, 1924.

301 “Phil Ball Laying Plans to Remodel Sportsman’s Park,” St. Louis Star and Times, July 13, 1925.

302 Haley, “Birds Still Have One Season to Play,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 1, 1929.

303 “Cards to Have A New Home,” Kansas City Times, July 16, 1924.

304 “New Sportsman’s Park a Big League Layout in All Respects,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 11, 1926.

305 Haley, “Birds Still Have One Season to Play,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 1, 1929; United Press, “Cardinals to Have New Park in Course of Years,” Freeport Journal-Standard, July 16, 1924.