Bill Veeck (31 page)

During his six-month period away from Mary Frances, Veeck was uncharacteristically out of the news, though he gave an interview at the end of November in which he predicted his return to the major leagues within six months—perhaps as the owner of the Washington Senators. Clark Griffith, the eighty-year-old owner of the Senators, shot back that his club was not for sale to Veeck or anyone else.
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In March 1950, Larry Doby came to Tucson for spring training with his wife, Helyn, and infant daughter, Christina. Not only did they continue to have to room with a black family, but also, according Doby biographer Joseph Thomas Moore, the situation at the Santa Rita had, if anything, become worse. When Doby's wife took her child into the hotel's lobby to get a drink of water, Moore reports, they were “intercepted there by a vigilant member of the hotel staff … [and] instructed to leave the hotel.”
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Six months to the day after his divorce was finalized, on April 29, 1950, Bill met Mary Frances in Santa Fe, New Mexico, an event he would later call “the most important moment of my life.” “The best thing that happened to Veeck was Mary Frances Ackerman,” Bob Feller would observe, echoing the sentiments of many of Veeck's friends.

Arriving at the ranch soon thereafter, Mary Frances discovered the Olympic-sized pool Bill had installed as his wedding gift to her. “I told Bill that I like swimming,” Mary Frances recalled, “but that didn't mean I wanted to train for the Olympics. That was the first time I learned if I liked something, I would have it the next day—maybe seventeen of it.”
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On one notable occasion during their year in Tucson the Veecks returned to Cleveland so that Bill could take on the lead role in the play
The Man Who Came to Dinner
, a three-act comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart that had debuted in 1939. “Putting me on the stage was like putting Sarah Bernhardt on second base,” he remarked at the time. “The theater people would think she was out of place and the baseball people would know it.”
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From the outset Mary Frances was in charge of her husband's personal
life, including his personal shopping—everything from toothbrushes to the fifty white sport shirts and the half dozen identical blue sports coats and slacks that Bill needed every year. So completely did she manage all of it that on their tenth anniversary Veeck could report, “I haven't bought anything in ten years. Not even a razor blade.”
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On March 5, 1951, Mary Frances gave birth to their first child, Michael.

At the end of May 1951 Satchel Paige, then forty-four and unaffiliated with a major-league team after the Indians new owners did not re-sign him, was in Milwaukee playing at Borchert Field with the Chicago American Giants. In a clubhouse interview he claimed that Veeck had seen him pitch in Chicago the Sunday before and told him that he wasn't “half-through,” and that he thought Veeck was just waiting for him to get back into shape before bringing him back to the majors. Paige had actually considered hanging up his spikes over the winter, and this was only his second game of the year.
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Not coincidentally, it was Bill Veeck Day in Milwaukee, which was also one of the compelling reasons that had gotten Paige to don his spikes.

The Negro American League presented Veeck with a trophy for aiding “Negro youngsters of sandlot baseball,” and Paige threw four solid, scoreless innings. “Every time they crowded the plate I brushed them back and then used my nuthin' ball”—an overpowering fastball with no spin on it.
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Veeck was poised to get back in the game. Early in May, Roy Drachman had flown to St. Louis with real estate developer Del Webb to a veterans' hospital Webb's company was constructing. While there, they attended a ball game with Fred Saigh, the owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, who mentioned that the American League St. Louis Browns were having financial problems and that he expected Bill DeWitt and Charley DeWitt, the brothers who owned a controlling interest in the Browns, would probably sell the team in the near future. Drachman reported this to Veeck when he returned
to Tucson a few days later. Soon after, Veeck asked if he could use one of his friend's vacant offices and a telephone for a couple of days. “He was there every day for a week, phoning, arguing, selling and doing all kinds of planning. I never bothered him, but I did ask him how it was going, and he said pretty well.” At the end of it, Veeck bade Drachman to pack a bag and come with him to San Diego for a breakfast meeting with Mark Seinberg, who held a note for $700,000 from the DeWitt brothers. A deal for the Browns was on the table.

“We got to the Del Coronado Hotel about 2 a.m. and grabbed a few hours sleep,” Drachman later recalled. Seinberg asked them to meet him in his box at the Del Mar racetrack that afternoon. “As everyone knows, Bill Veeck was famous for never wearing a tie; in fact, he doesn't even own one. However, the Del Mar absolutely would not allow us to enter the club area without a necktie. They were adamant, and Bill Veeck … had to put on a necktie to … make it possible to close the deal to buy the St. Louis Browns.”
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Well before anything could be announced, Jimmy Cannon of the
New York Post
reported that the Browns had been sold to a syndicate headed by Veeck, a story immediately denied by Bill DeWitt.
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On June 9 DeWitt called an afternoon news conference at which he alluded to the rumors and then introduced a distinguished gentleman from Ohio who had made a great name for himself in baseball, about whom much had been written and from whom he wanted the press to get information firsthand rather than through the rumor mill. Out stepped the Browns best pitcher, Ned Garver, to announce that he was to pitch the next game for the Browns. DeWitt thought more should be written about this so more people would come to the game. Under the headline “Funny Browns at DeWitt's End” the
Globe-Democrat
declared it a joke that had fallen flat.
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Finally, on June 21, the announcement was made that Veeck and his investors had obtained an option on the DeWitts' share of the hapless, last-place Browns, pending his ability to gain enough shares in the operation to give him 75 percent ownership. The DeWitts owned 58 percent of the stock, and Veeck was given twelve days to buy at least 17 percent more to give him clear control. Veeck immediately offered $7 a share for the outstanding 114,000 shares in the hands of 1,400 individual investors.

A week later Veeck was 30,000 shares short of his goal and it seemed like the deal might come unraveled, as some were advising Browns stockholders to hold out for $10–$11 a share, and two New York stockbrokers were
acquiring stock at $8.25 a share in an attempt to get the price up.
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On the eve of the deadline Veeck was still short 8,500 shares and the deal seemed all but dead, but at noon on July 3 a Browns board member sold him 8,572 shares and Veeck was over the top. On the Fourth of July, wearing his Browns cap, Veeck watched his new team lose both games of a seven-hour ordeal of a doubleheader to the Cleveland Indians, during which he smoked his way through two packs of cigarettes.
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Veeck's financial backers were a familiar group: Lester Armour and Phil Swift, the Chicago meatpackers; Phil Clarke of City National Bank of Chicago; investment bankers Art Allyn and Newt Frye of Chicago; and attorney Syd Schiff, all of whom had aided him before with the Indians and some of whom had backed his purchase of the Milwaukee Brewers. Among the minority stockholders were entertainer George Jessel and Abe Saperstein, who would become an “unofficial scout” for the team. Rudie Schaffer would be Veeck's general manager.
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Since the highlight of a 1944 wartime pennant and subsequent loss in the World Series to the crosstown Cardinals, accomplished with eighteen players who were labeled as 4-F by their draft boards, the Browns had become an exercise in futility. They performed miserably, finishing in or close to the cellar the previous five years, and the fans stayed away in droves. The first twenty-four home games of the 1951 season they drew a total of only 88,170, an average of 3,674 a game. (Playing in the same ballpark, the Cardinals brought in 248,083 fans for their first twenty-one games, or 11,813 a game.) Before the sale to Veeck, rumors indicated that the American League would move the team to Baltimore, which had been crying for a major-league team since the original Orioles left the city after the 1902 season to become the New York Highlanders (and then the Yankees). Some suggested the Browns should head for the West Coast, and another proposed shifting the team to Milwaukee.

Veeck's purchase of the doddering Browns was something of a stunner. “Many critics,” sportswriter John Lardner wrote, “were surprised to know that the Browns could be bought, because they didn't know the Browns were owned.” Veeck himself had said the team was so terrible that “they were hard to look at,” and columnist Arthur Daley of the
New York Times
predicted failure: “The Brownies have no tradition and no hope.” Jim Murray of the
Los Angeles Times
called the Browns the most feckless club in the history of the game. “Every season was one long steady retreat … out of the race by Mother's Day.
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Their attendance matched their ineptitude. During the entire decade of the 1930s the Browns drew some 1 million fans, in contrast to some other teams such as the 1935 Detroit Tigers, who were able to draw that many in a single season. The 1940s had not been much better. Ned Garver, the Browns best pitcher, who had come to the team in 1948, remembered, “The crowd didn't boo you, because we had them outnumbered.” He also recalled a game in which a foul ball was hit high in the stands; no one bothered to chase it.
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Veeck told anyone who would listen that the 1951 Browns might not win, but they would be a lot of fun to watch, and he boasted that he would rather own the Browns than the New York Yankees because “I'd like to show what can be done here, supposedly an American League graveyard.”
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At Sportsman's Park Veeck was an immediate fan favorite. During a twinight doubleheader soon after he took charge, Veeck surprised the fans with an announcement that drinks were on the house that day. The vendors went into action, and Veeck himself passed out two buckets of cold beer in the bleachers, where he personally promised the fans a winning team and something unexpected every minute. Some 6,041 soft drinks and 7,596 bottles of beer were given away; between games a local band played, and after the game the fans watched fireworks. The fans had never seen anything like this before, and Harry Mitauer of the
Globe-Democrat
wrote the next day: “Happy with it all was Veeck. He was as enthusiastic as a kid with a new toy.”
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The next night he reprised an Indians promotion and gave away free orchids to female fans, then announced that he had upped the ante and signed holdout Frank Saucier, who had batted .343 in the Texas League the previous season.

Veeck's Browns were, however, dropping deeper into the cellar. After a doubleheader loss to the lowly Philadelphia Athletics on July 12 put them seven and a half games into last place, the box score in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
was slugged “Double Wreck of Veecks.” Veeck persuaded Satchel Paige to leave the Chicago American Giants of the Negro American League and return to the majors. But even he couldn't rekindle the magic from 1948, losing his first game 7–1 to the Washington Senators.

Despite the team's poor standing, Veeck's involvement suggested good things to come. “Bill was like a magnet. As soon as he showed up, players came streaming in to get a tryout. We didn't get any gems, but it did make it more exciting,” recalled future executive Hank Peters, who was assistant farm director when Veeck arrived.
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Veeck now had a new group of reporters and columnists to deal with and charm. Not only did he have the local papers, but St. Louis was the home of
The Sporting News
. That he would never let anyone else pick up a bar tab was probably the first thing writers learned about Veeck; soon they would also discover how generous he was. “When I was working for
The Sporting News
and Veeck owned the St. Louis Browns, he sent all of the reporters a beautiful portable radio in a green leather case. I still have that radio,” recalled baseball historian Cliff Kachline. “It really meant a lot to me when I got it.”
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Finally, reporters would have experienced how incredibly well-informed Veeck was, not only on baseball but also so much else. He consumed four or five books a week; his prime reading time was the several hours he spent soaking his stump each morning to reduce the constant pain, which was exacerbated by the chafing from his prosthesis.

Veeck's goal, suspected by others when he bought the Browns and later confirmed in his autobiography, was to drive the Cardinals out of town. Veeck reasoned that the city could fully support only one team. On July 21, 1951, Veeck touched off the first round in this campaign, challenging the Cardinals to a postseason charity game in support of the Community Chest: “Since it now appears that neither St. Louis team is going to be engaged in the World Series this fall,” he wrote Cardinals owner Fred Saigh, “it would seem that there is an opportunity for us to take part in this most important drive.” At this point the Cardinals were in third place in the National League while the Browns were mired in sixth.
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