Bill Veeck (29 page)

Veeck knew it was coming, but the timing could not have been more melodramatic. This night—when Della Boudreau and other players' wives were very much part of the festivities, hobnobbing with Manhattan's social and artistic elite—underscored the degree to which his family had been edited out of his life. Eleanor's lawyer immediately issued a terse statement: “They're both fine people, but she likes life on the range.” A wire service report quoted neighbors who corroborated her fondness for ranch life and called her a “quiet home body.”
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“Bill,” said a friend at the party watching him react to the notice from his lawyers, “I see you have trouble with other contracts too.”
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After the phone call, Veeck and Feller reconvened and came to tentative terms for the 1949
season for a base pay of $72,500, which represented a cut of $10,000—something Feller referred to as a slice in salary and not an amputation, an interesting choice of metaphors given Veeck's troubles. But Feller would still be the third-highest-paid player in the game after Ted Williams ($85,000) and Joe DiMaggio ($100,000).
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Earl Wilson reported in his Monday gossip column that Veeck's new nickname was “Elsa,” bestowed upon him facetiously by Hank Greenberg after the party because the two got along so famously. Later in her own syndicated column, Maxwell reported that she had received four dozen roses from “my new friend” Bill Veeck. This tidbit was picked up by other gossip columnists, including Walter Winchell, the reigning king of the gossips, whose column was syndicated in more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide, giving him a readership of 50 million a day.
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By quadrupling the traditional top-drawer thank-you gift of a dozen long-stemmed roses, Veeck had gotten even more favorable publicity. Earl Wilson, Leonard Lyons, Winchell, and Maxwell populated the Mount Olympus of nationally syndicated gossips, and Veeck was finding a way into all of their columns with regularity. Even when he didn't actually do anything, he was there with a ready quip, even at the expense of his own turbulent personal life. When Earl Wilson asked him if he was going to remarry after his divorce came through, he wouldn't say yes, but he did say, “A man has a way of getting out of the frying pan into matrimony.”
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During the first half of February, Veeck also dominated the sports pages. A few days after the party, Veeck flew unannounced to San Juan to sign shortstop Artie Wilson, who was playing off-season ball for the Mayaguez Indians of the Puerto Rican Winter League but during the regular season played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro leagues. He had employed his old friend, promoter Abe Saperstein, to scout for the best African American ballplayers available. At a league meeting of owners of Negro American League ball clubs in Chicago the previous day, Saperstein wrote a check for $15,000 to the Black Barons to acquire Wilson's contract on behalf of Veeck and the Indians.

Now Veeck had to sign Wilson, but he was unable to find him in Mayaguez, so he returned to San Juan, where he appealed to local radio stations to put out an all-points bulletin for Wilson, telling him to come to Veeck's hotel. The two men eventually connected, and Wilson signed a minor-league contract with the Indians. Upon hearing of the signing, New York Yankees
general manager George Weiss claimed that he had been close to signing Wilson and that Veeck had engaged in “unethical behavior.” A verbal duel ensued, culminating in a threat by Veeck to sue over the use of the word
unethical
. “I'm not sure that's not a court word. He'd better be able to prove it.” For his part, Weiss twice asked baseball commissioner Happy Chandler to void the contract.
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Using the shortest month of the year as his canvas, Veeck again made news on the seventeenth, when he was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Urban League of Chicago at the Sherman Hotel. The talk, which was entitled “American Teamwork Works,” was about race. It was serious but entertaining, and it was given without script or notes. He said he had first thought about bringing a Negro to a ball club when he was lying wounded in a naval hospital at the end of World War II. He said the first Negro he had ever gotten to know well was a man named Green who was in the bed next to his for eight months. His talks with Green about minority rights brought him to the conclusion that in baseball, just as in other sports, you have to judge players on their ability and nothing else.
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Veeck's arrival as a celebrity was helped by a photograph taken by Richard Avedon, the highly talented portrait photographer, who had met Veeck at the party thrown by Maxwell. The photograph appeared in the July 1949 issue of
Harper's Bazaar
in a spread that also included shots of filmmaker Jean Renoir; George Orwell, who had just published
Animal Farm
; and symphony conductor Guido Cantelli, the heir apparent to the great Arturo Toscanini. The caption to Avedon's black-and-white image of Veeck described him as “a young man with a skull cap of kinky pink hair, a wooden leg from the war, and an aversion to neckties even with a dinner coat.” Veeck's iconoclastic rejection of neckties had now become somehow fashionable.
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The
Harper's
spread was entitled “Men to Remember” and was certainly prophetic.

On March 5, 1949, the World Series champion Cleveland Indians opened their spring training camp in Tucson. Minority owner and comedian-actor Bob Hope was there in uniform reporting to Lou Boudreau as a rookie and engaging with the mainstream press and newsreel cameras. Hope quipped: “Really, I came down here to get Boudreau's trophies. I'm going to melt them down and go into the copper business.”

The black press, however, was interested in another story. For the second year in a row the Santa Rita Hotel in Tucson had refused to honor reservations for the Indians Negro players, despite having promised Veeck that it would change its policy in 1949. Nor had the other hotels, and the three who arrived for the first day of spring training, Larry Doby, shortstop Artie Wilson, and outfielder Orestes Miñoso, were forced to stay in a private home, as would Satchel Paige, Luke Easter, and the half dozen other African Americans who would attend spring training in the days to come. Veeck had moved his camp from Florida in part to avoid such situations, and he was still optimistic that the problem would work itself out over time, citing the case of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, which in 1948 had refused Negro players but this season had given the green light for Doby, Paige, and any others to stay there.
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The Bill Veeck portrayed in the leading black newspapers of the time was different from the one-dimensional showman who appeared in the mainstream press. “To my estimation Bill Veeck of the Cleveland Indians did more for the Negro than any other man last year,” wrote Jesse Butler in February 1949 in the
Cleveland Call and Post
. “His liberalism and giving Negroes a chance to show their real ability as major leaguers helped spear-head the attack on racial discrimination and segregation in this country.”

Veeck had, in fact, joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People shortly after arriving in Cleveland and was an eager supporter. He appeared in a recruiting poster with Paige and Doby that was affixed to windows across the country with the catchphrase “The NAACP gets the ball for you.”

He had also integrated every level of his ballpark operation—special police, ushers, food vendors, scorecard sellers, grounds crew, and front-office personnel. In May 1949 he hired Olympic sprint champion and world record holder Harrison Dillard to work in the Indians public relations department. New York's
Amsterdam News
dubbed him “the Abe Lincoln of Baseball,” which was underscored by the fact that by then he had fourteen Negro ballplayers under contract scattered throughout the Indians organization.
The Sporting News
went one better by running pictures of Veeck and Lincoln side by side with the caption “Lincoln … freed the Negroes. Bill Veeck … gives 'em baseball jobs.”
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Veeck had strengthened the Indians on December 14, 1948, with the acquisition of pitcher Early Wynn and first baseman Mickey Vernon from the
Washington Senators, for whom he traded first baseman Eddie Robinson and two pitchers. At the beginning of the season optimism was rampant. Harry Jones of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
was among those who picked the team to repeat. The oddsmakers made them 8–5 co-favorites with the Boston Red Sox to win the American League pennant.
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But the team did not play well at the start. On May 25, after dropping their eighth of ten games on a trip through the East, Veeck announced that he would stage a second Opening Day when the team returned on the twenty-seventh for a long homestand. “We're simply wiping the slate clean. We'll make a fresh start. Everything that happened before will be forgotten.” The second Opening Day's ceremonies included a flag raising, bands playing, and a ceremonial first pitch by Mayor Thomas A. Burke. As Red Smith wrote in his column the next day: “The Indians responded by whipping the White Sox 4 to 0, and all was strictly egg-in-the-beer on Lake Erie's shore.”
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At the end of May, with the team still mired in seventh place, a confectionery owner named Charley Lupica created his own Veeckian stunt, which got him worldwide publicity. On May 30 Lupica and a few friends had stopped for a drink on their way home from work. After overhearing nasty remarks about his beloved Indians from a nearby table, he exchanged words with the offenders, who were fans of the New York Yankees, urging them to move to New York. To this, the other group responded, “If you like the Indians so much, why don't you sit on a flagpole until they get to first place?”

Lupica, a man with a history of publicity stunts and special promotions, accepted the challenge, and a forty-foot pole was erected in the neighborhood the next day, with a platform on top containing a four-by-six-foot enclosed dwelling. He vowed not to come down until the team was back on top of the standings or was eliminated from the pennant race. Word spread instantaneously, newspapers across the country and all around the world covered the story, and sales at his store boomed. Atop his pole he had lights, a telephone, a portable radio, a television, and a public address system—most donated by admirers.

With the team still struggling and Veeck “upset, vexed and jittery,” on June 6 he overrode his manager, benching third baseman—and 1948 hero—Ken Keltner and moving Boudreau from shortstop to third. The team gradually came around, and on June 22, 1949, Veeck celebrated his third anniversary with the Indians, deeming these the best three years of his life
and predicting that the team would win its second pennant in a row. The ceremony marking the anniversary included a certificate of appreciation from the 10,000 members of the Kiwanis who had come to honor him, along with a huge baseball cake out of which five scantily clad young women popped to sing “Happy Anniversary to You.”
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Lupica remained on his perch. A question of his violating sanitation regulations arose, almost causing the operation to be shut down, but city lawyers ruled in his favor. When Lupica announced that he was about to become a father for the fourth time, Veeck pledged to have an ambulance ready for the big day. “If Charley can live on a platform,” said Mrs. Lupica, “I suppose I shouldn't complain about the ordinary business of having babies.”

A strong July put the Indians in second place for a time, and on August 2 they were only two and a half games behind the Yankees. But that would be as close as they would get. With his team on the verge of being mathematically eliminated from the 1949 pennant race, Veeck decided to put on a grand finale. On September 23, before a game with the Detroit Tigers, the 1948 American League championship pennant was hauled down from the center-field flagpole, where it had waved since Opening Day. The flag was tenderly loaded onto a horse-drawn hearse, which had unexpectedly appeared on the field. Veeck, dressed in black with a top hat on his head, climbed into the driver's seat and began a funeral procession, dabbing his eyes frequently with an oversized white handkerchief. Veeck and the two-horse hearse were followed by Boudreau, his coaches, and the beat writers who had witnessed the 1948 season. As 29,646 fans looked on, the cortege moved to a spot just beyond the center-field fence, where a cardboard tombstone read “1948 Champs.” As taps played, Boudreau and his coaches shoveled dirt into the shallow grave and final resting place for the flag. Rudie Schaffer read passages from
The Sporting News
, the “Bible of Baseball.” Fittingly, the Indians were shut out in the post-funeral game, 5–0.
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The second half of Veeck's season-ending lament came two days later. Before the final home game of the season, Charley Lupica's flagpole home was placed on a hydraulic lift and driven five miles across the city and into Municipal Stadium, where it was positioned at home plate. After 113 days of squatting on a platform above his confectionery store, Charley clambered down from his perch with tears in his eyes and kissed his wife and four children. Although wobbly, he was able to navigate without the aid of the three nurses and the ambulance Veeck had provided. After the reunion he
was presented with a souvenir 50-foot flagpole, a bed into which he climbed for the benefit of photographers, a bathtub, bicycles for his children, a gas range, puppies, and a new automobile. The Indians won the game and then went on the road to win their last six games, sweeping the Tigers and the White Sox.
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Despite this late spurt and the seven future Hall of Famers on its roster, the club had never been in first place and ended the season in third; perhaps just as galling to Veeck, they were second in the league in attendance to the Yankees. With 89 wins, this was the only Indians team in the period 1948–55 not to win at least 90 games. Looking back on a frustrating season, Hank Greenberg felt that while the team generally performed well, it suffered from a letdown that he saw as “primarily due to Bill Veeck himself.” “It seems his imminent divorce had gotten him down. Though he had just come off winning the World Series, he lost enthusiasm for the game, and he wasn't able to instill the same spirit and determination into the entire organization as he had previously. He didn't show up at the ballpark as often or put in as many hours, and while he did a good job, he didn't have the same attitude that he had had in 1948.”
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