Bill Veeck (28 page)

Veeck also seemed to have been the beneficiary of plain old-fashioned meteorological good luck, for which he somehow got credit. “At Municipal Stadium. you never knew what would happen next,” Red Sox pitcher Mickey McDermott said later. “Mel Parnell, cruising along in the bottom of the fifth inning on a beautiful sunny day, had the Indians beat when, suddenly, a huge black cloud swept in from Lake Erie, blotted out the sun, and dumped tons of water on the field. Mel ran into the dugout cussing. ‘That damn Veeck,' he said, ‘now the sonovabitch is making it rain!' Game called on account of Veeck.”
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Veeck could also help deter the effects of Mother Nature when it was called for. “Once we were leading Philadelphia 5–4 and a downpour struck,” Boudreau later recounted. “The ground crew had a hard time getting the field covered, so Bill came out and ordered the players to help. Well, he was right with us, too, and later he bought each player a new pair of shoes.”
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Veeck had done a masterful job of manipulating his players and staff during the 1948 season, making admirers out of people who had reason to be frustrated with him. “I loved Bill Veeck though I probably should have hated him,” sometime catcher Ray Murray recounted. In September 1948, Murray was called up from Oklahoma City, the last of several trips up and back during the season. Murray and his wife, Jackie, got into Cleveland at about three in the morning and checked into the Hotel Cleveland, only to be awakened at eight o'clock by Veeck, who told the couple to be in his office in thirty minutes.

“When we got to Veeck's office he said, ‘I appreciate the way you people have cooperated with me and I want to do something for you.' He held up a key. ‘This is for a new Pontiac car,' he said. ‘If you can find it, it's yours,' though he wouldn't tell me where it was, or even where to look. He was laughing, but I knew he wasn't joking.”

Murray remembered from an earlier trip to Cleveland that Veeck did business with a Pontiac dealer on the West Side. The couple grabbed a cab and headed for the dealership. “We went in the showroom and there's a new Pontiac sitting over in the corner. I asked the salesman if I could try my key in the
ignition, and when I did, VAROOM! The car started. How about that! We drove it out the door. It had to be worth about $4,800 at least. When the season ended, after the World Series, we drove it home and kept that Pontiac for a long time, all because I ‘cooperated' with Bill. That means I didn't cuss and raise hell every time they sent me down.”

“So, sure, I loved Bill Veeck,” Murray said. “Why wouldn't I?”
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During the 1948 season, the out-of-town sportswriters had begun to see Veeck as an asset, a unique baseball celebrity always good for a quote or a quip. He attracted photographers wherever he went. There were reports of his leaving Cleveland after a game, flying into New York for a late night at the most visible watering holes such as the Copacabana, and then returning to Cleveland in time for the following day's game. It didn't matter whether this was true or not, because people wanted to believe it.
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In late November, after Thanksgiving, Veeck was in Washington, D.C., and invited to a dinner given by World Bank official Drew Dudley. The two men and their party arrived at the Carlton Hotel, where they were denied admission because of Veeck's open collar.

“Don't you ever let anyone eat here unless he's wearing a tie?” asked Veeck.

“Certainly not!” replied the maître d'.

“What about priests and ministers? Are they refused?”
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There was no answer, the reservation was cancelled, and the party moved to the Statler Hotel, where there was no such policy, perhaps because this was where the Indians stayed when in Washington and its management had, to Veeck's surprise, accommodated Doby in 1947, making him the hotel's first Negro guest.

Unremarkable in itself, the incident gained headline status because Veeck was the subject of the story.
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It underscored Veeck's ability to get ink for the simplest act of defiance, which pleased him no end.
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Writers who had dismissed Veeck as a mere publicity hound were now
warming to him. No such turnaround topped that of Bill Corum of the
New York Journal-American
, who had regarded Veeck's father as the best and most efficient baseball executive of his time but was less than impressed with the son, whom he saw as a “showboat guy without a boat.” But then Corum, a veteran of World War I, heard of Veeck's war record and began to see him in action during the 1948 season. The signing of Paige caused him to confess in his column that when he had declared himself to be against Veeck, “I was wronger than I had ever been, which is as wrong as it is possible to be.”
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While the writers warmed to Veeck, the owners and top executives in the American League were cooling to him. “I've never seen American League President William Harridge happier over a victory in the World Series than he was when the Indians won that last game with the Braves,” wrote Ed McAuley in the
News
. “But it saddens me to report that several of his club owners were able to keep from jumping up and down with joy. They were glad the Indians won … but they thought it COULD have happened to a nicer guy. Frankly they don't like Bill Veeck.” McAuley stated that the opposition to Veeck stemmed from the belief that his methods were “too flamboyant—and too expensive” for the good of the game, adding that some might be “simply jealous.”
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Veeck had also attracted the attention of the business press, which was given to comparing him to other, less successful owners.
Nation's Business
reported that Veeck had made “a lot of money” in 1948 in spite of such whimsical gestures as spending $90,000 in cash for Sam Zoldak, a pitcher who never had won more games than he lost in most seasons. (Veeck would later admit that Zoldak was probably worth $15,000, but he pointed out that the pitcher had given him nine crucial wins.) The magazine compared Veeck to Tom Yawkey, who in the fifteen years he had owned the Red Sox had paid more than $4 million for ballplayers and gained no profit and only one pennant.
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In the aftermath of the 1948 season there were shake-ups in the Red Sox, Yankees, and White Sox organizations, but none so visible as the sacking of manager Bucky Harris by the Yankees. Harris had led New York to its 1947 championship, and he was immediately hired by Veeck as manager of his Pacific Coast League San Diego Padres.
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In his last public pronouncement of 1948, from San Diego, Veeck made a series of predictions for the coming year—that Feller would have his greatest season, that Paige was good for another two or three years in the big leagues, and that the Indians would win the 1949 pennant by at least ten games.
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In late January 1949 Veeck gave an interview at the
Sport
magazine awards dinner in New York, brashly discussing what he now termed his “knock-their-brains-out” technique of management—a blend of needling, rule bending, and the determined cultivation of enemies. “I make enemies every time I open my mouth and I've been making three after dinner talks a week since the World Series.”

He bragged about a moveable fence that he had installed in Cleveland, the mix of sand and dirt he employed on the baselines to make other teams as slow as his own, and the creative use of the stadium's tarpaulin. “We bought an expensive tarpaulin. Really we didn't need it. We got it only so we might save a few ballgames. It takes us 22 minutes to cover the field. And if we happen to be ahead after 4½ innings we drag the tarpaulin around to waste time. When we're behind and want a chance to catch up it takes us two minutes to get the thing down.” He added: “So we won a pennant and a world championship. That's why we're here.”
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Bill Veeck spent a lot of time going in and out of Manhattan in the late winter of 1949, operating out of a suite at the swank Savoy-Plaza Hotel. When he wasn't at the hotel, he was likely at Toots Shor's on West 51st Street. “Great place, New York, great place, the land of magic,” he told Dan Daniel of the
World-Telegram
in the context of parties, dinners, and headline-generating actions, including a casual offer to buy the New York Yankees in late January that was refused with vigor and more headlines.
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Veeck, a self-described publicity hound, was in his glory in this town of seven daily newspapers, all of which—including the Communist
Daily Worker
—considered him great copy.

The zenith of this pre-spring-training social whirl came on Saturday, February 5, 1949, when professional hostess and society columnist Elsa Maxwell, renowned for her parties for visiting royalty, tossed a celebrity-rich reception and dinner in honor of Veeck at Le Pavillon. If having an Elsa Maxwell–hosted party was the epitome of having arrived socially, having the event at Le Pavillon greatly enhanced the honor. It was simply the finest French restaurant in the United States, and Henri Soule, its proprietor, worked long and hard to ensure that the food was classic, the service impeccable, and the patrons pampered. Soule was the prototype maître d' who relegated those he did not like—or did not know—to a table near the kitchen.

The dress code at the restaurant was all but immutable, and all the men invited to the Veeck dinner wore black tie, with the exception of Veeck himself,
who had turned his disdain for neckwear into a sacrament. “I once owned a tie 15 years ago,” said Veeck, addressing the issue of why he was not going to wear a tie to the big event, “but I didn't like it. When I joined the Marines, they knew I didn't wear ties, but they suggested that a tie would go nicely with my uniform. I saw their point—quickly.” Soule would have to look the other way.

As the guest of honor, Veeck was allowed to invite some of his star players and front-office personnel, among them player-manager Lou Boudreau, who more than any other individual was responsible for the Indians being World Champions; pitching ace Bob Feller; and Hank Greenberg, Veeck's good friend and front-office manager of the Indians. The ruggedly handsome Bronx-born Greenberg, who lived in New York City in the off-season and was married to the department store heiress Carol Gimbel, was probably the only member of the Veeck entourage who could get a prime table at the restaurant on a normal evening, and he and Carol had been instrumental in setting up this affair.

Word had been leaked—and nobody could have possibly guessed the source—that Veeck and Feller were going to come to terms on the pitcher's 1949 contract at the elegant venue. This caused a stampede of photographers, who were denied admission to the restaurant, with the only exceptions being those from
Life
magazine and the fashion magazine
Harper's Bazaar
. It was, in the words of columnist Windsor French, reporting on the event for the
Cleveland Press
, “a gilt-edged diamond-studded coming-out party for Veeck.” In terms of diamonds alone, the head of Cartier's was there, as was socialite Rosita Winston. Also attending were circus impresario John Ringling North and British comedienne Beatrice Lillie, who persisted in calling the handsome Indians player-manager Lou Boudreau “Brown Eyes.” As an opening for the evening, Jarmila Novotna of the Metropolitan Opera stood by Veeck's table and sang several Czech lullabies in his honor. Veeck danced with his hostess on his latest-model wooden leg. At one point, photographer George Silk of
Life
magazine called for a little action on the dance floor, and Veeck, in the best adagio tradition, hoisted the short, stout Maxwell and swung her around his head.

One of the guests was Salvador Dalí, the surrealist artist with his trademark waxed mustache. When he was introduced to Veeck, he declared: “I know nothing about baseball. Absolutely nothing.”

Veeck replied: “Well, that makes us even.”

Dalí may have been sincere in his ignorance, but Veeck knew much about many things, including art, and had been a voracious reader about many subjects since childhood.

Leonard Lyons, who had introduced Veeck to Dalí and listened to the original exchange between the two, said: “Dalí must have learned quickly, or else changed his tune. When I introduced him to Lou Boudreau, the artist said: ‘I understand we have much in common: There is surrealism in baseball, too—men wearing strange clothes, crouching in moonlight and reaching for objects frequently unattainable.'”
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During the course of the evening, the Cleveland owner tried to sign Bob Feller to his 1949 contract. “If I had your talent,” Veeck confided, “I'd get $125,000.”
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However, the contract discussion was interrupted by a sobering phone call reporting that Eleanor Veeck, his wife and the mother of his three children, had filed for divorce in Superior Court in Tucson earlier in the day and that the complaint had been served to and accepted by his lawyers.

The divorce itself was based on the claim of desertion, which was asserted to have begun in 1946 and continued to the present, and the petition requested custody of the three children—William L. Veeck III, twelve; Peter Raymond Veeck, seven, and Ellen DeForest Veeck, five—as well as alimony and child support. There are many indications that there was more to the story than was ever made public. According to Fred Krehbiel, his mother had been a friend of Eleanor's when they we growing up yet testified against her in the divorce hearing. Decades later, Eleanor and Bill's daughter, Ellen, chose not to discuss the divorce, saying simply, “I think they were mismatched.”
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