Bill Veeck (39 page)

Veeck needed a place to entertain the press and his friends in baseball, so he appropriated the Bards Room, a room with a grill, a working fireplace, and rustic pre–World War I decor. It took its name from the Woodland Bards, a group of wealthy Chicago power brokers and reporters organized in 1912 whose members had included Bill's father.

Few predicted Veeck's new team would finish above third or fourth place. As usual, the Yankees were the preseason favorites, which caused a young Red Sox fan named Frederick W. Byron Jr. to lament in the
Harvard Crimson
: “It is always somewhat distressing, as the opening of the baseball season rolls around, to see writers all over the country scurry to their typewriters and proudly name the New York Yankees as their carefully considered choice to win the American League pennant. Such action on the
part of loyal New York sportswriters is, of course, understandable, but to have this prediction spread to every corner of the United States is quite another matter.”
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Veeck had inherited a team that lacked power but was strong up the middle, with Sherman Lollar catching, Luis Aparicio as shortstop, and Nellie Fox at second, and a solid pitching staff led by Early Wynn, who had become a star in Cleveland after Veeck had departed and would soon celebrate his 250th win. Veeck now had the perfect setup for his dream of taking on the Yankees. Like a pool hustler denying his ability with the cue stick, he acknowledged the wisdom of the scribes and admitted he had little chance of beating the Yankees. This little game was to play on well into the season, including in a profile in the June 6, 1959, issue of
The Saturday Evening Post
entitled “A Visit with Bill Veeck”: “ ‘I hate to admit this,' says the new boss of the White Sox, ‘but we cannot beat the Yankees.'” Veeck went on to say in the article that he would need two distance hitters to take the pennant.
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On Opening Day in Detroit, April 10, 1959, second baseman Nellie Fox, who had had nary a home run the previous season, hit one of his only two that year with a runner on base in the fourteenth inning to beat the Tigers 9–7. Fox also had three singles and a double, driving home three runs. The White Sox took the next two from Detroit and returned for the home opener on April 14 against Kansas City.

Veeck loved Opening Day, as it was the perfect promotion opportunity. He gave his leadoff hitters, Fox and Aparicio, the “world's longest loaf of bread” to give them carbohydrates to “sustain their pep and energy as home run hitters.” A silver tray loaded with 250 silver dollars was given to Early Wynn for his 250th major-league victory, achieved in the season's first week.

Just before game time, a battery of aerial bombs woke up the crowd, followed by a public address announcement: “We wish to announce another Chicago battery—Bill Veeck and Chuck Comiskey.” Veeck took to the mound and threw three southpaw pitches to Comiskey, who never got the bat off his shoulder because Veeck's pitches were wild. But their appearance together was symbolic, as Veeck put it, of their partnership in the goal of winning the 1959 American League pennant.

As the fans stood for the seventh-inning stretch, all 19,303 were offered a drink on the house from Veeck. As one press report noted, “Beer vendors were swamped in the rush.” The White Sox won the opener 2–0 behind Billy Pierce.
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As he had as a young man with the Cubs, and then in Milwaukee and
Cleveland, Veeck understood that attendance could be improved if tickets were more readily available. He hired Dick Hackett to set up an operation that anticipated the computerized ticket systems to come. “We set up a boiler-room-type operation at the downtown Mazer Sporting Goods store,” Hackett remembered. “Mazer had thirteen stores scattered around the Chicago area, and he felt this would provide a service to fans by making it easier for them to purchase tickets. We had direct lines into each of the stores. They were provided with blank tickets and would call the central office to get seat locations. We would provide them the locations over the phone and the clerk would write them in. Each ticket had two carbon copies. The store kept one and we received one for auditing purposes. We sold thousands of tickets that way and never dreamed that some day with the use of computers this would become the only way to buy tickets for many events.”
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Veeck forever courted female fans, and two of his biggest promotions were geared to getting women to come to the ballpark. Free admission and an orchid for each child were offered to any woman who brought a picture of her children on Mother's Day; 3,947 women took home some 10,000 miniature orchids. Some had never been to a ballgame in their life. One of the first-timers was quoted in the
Chicago Daily News
on her fellow rookie fans: “This is one way to get them out in the fresh air and maybe make them want to come back again.” At the height of the stamp fad, in which stamps could be traded for goods at special redemption centers, Veeck gave away 3.75 million S&H Green Stamps to women attending a July doubleheader and then repeated the promotion several times later in the season.
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The range of Veeck's promotional ideas had only grown in his years out of the game. Between the games of a doubleheader with the Yankees on June 28, he staged a full-blown circus, complete with prancing stallions, midgets, giants, clowns, snake charmers, sword swallowers, acrobats, and nine elephants. The White Sox won both games. Two weeks later, he staged a cricket match between the games of a doubleheader with Kansas City. The cricket players were imported, but Sox catcher Sherman Lollar and shortstop Luis Aparicio got to take at-bats. As they took baseball-style chops at the ball, the crowd chanted: “That's not cricket.”
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Veeck outdid himself when, during a single July game, he gave away
items in large quantities, including 1,000 pickles to one fan, 1,000 bottles of beer to another, and 1,000 cans of chow mein noodles to still another. Veeck then gave a fan 1,000 silver dollars embedded in a large block of ice. The trick, of course, was getting the ice to melt so that the lucky winner could get the money home. As the game progressed, the prizes became more outrageous—500 tins of smoked grasshoppers, 10,000 tickets to a minor-league baseball game—until the final gift, when one fan got the free rental of 500 tuxedos.
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Quick to align himself with any group that could help bring him publicity and goodwill, Veeck immediately announced a Steel Worker Night at the ball park when the steelworkers union went on strike, and more than 7,000 steelworkers were given free tickets. “Bill was a real hero, not only to the strikers but to the working class and union members,” said Hackett. Veeck also scheduled special nights for teachers, cab drivers, and transit workers, and following complaints from neighbors about noise, he held a Good Neighbor Night, sending tickets to everyone who lived in the area around the ballpark.
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Amidst all this promotion, the White Sox were holding their own. By the end of June, as the team took a day off to prepare for a seven-day road trip, Veeck acknowledged that he was “almost sold” on his club. They had just swept a Sunday doubleheader from the Yankees, giving them a 39–32 record overall. “If we keep dazzlin' 'em with footwork to get those runners on base, like we've been doing all season and then get the occasional run … who knows, maybe I can change my mind about this ballclub.”
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Fans were coming back in large numbers, and those in the park on July 24 witnessed a moment that was as entertaining for Veeck as it was for fans. Knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm was pitching for the Orioles when, in the first inning, he was suddenly attacked by a large swarm of small insects. Wilhelm began swiping at the gnats with his arms and hands, but fans in the stands couldn't see what was bothering him and they began to snicker. Then out of the dugout came White Sox trainer Eddie “Doc” Froelich, who waved a towel at the gnats, to no avail. He soon returned with a handheld insecticide pump, and umpire Hank Soar sprayed the mound and Wilhelm with aerosol bug repellant, but the gnats persisted. Finally Veeck ordered a fireworks crew to erect a crude brace and set off smoke bombs. When the smoke cleared, the gnats were gone.

John Kuenster of
Baseball Digest
was sitting next to Veeck in the press
box. “If I didn't know better,” he chuckled, “I'd suspect you had spread something around the mound to attract the gnats.”

“I wish I had thought of it,” Veeck impishly replied.

After the game, Veeck explained the gnats to the press, puckishly framing it as a planned event: “It takes all winter to train them and now … pouf. One lousy bomb and they're all blown up.”
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Playing brilliantly in July and August, the “Go-Go” White Sox won 41 of 57 games, largely on defense, speed, singles, and the pitching of Wynn and Bob Shaw. Many writers and fans acknowledged that their league-leading team had what seemed to be an inferior roster, however much Veeck praised them as a crew that would “connive, scrounge, and hustle just to get one measly run.”

Veteran catcher Sherm Lollar led the team in home runs and RBIs, but they needed more power for the pennant push, so Veeck acquired massive first baseman Ted Kluszewski for $20,000 off waivers from the Pittsburgh Pirates. An affable muscleman, “Big Klu,” as he was known, tore the sleeves off his jerseys to further intimidate pitchers and ably complemented incumbent Earl Torgeson at first base. He hit nearly .300 for the Sox in the final month of the season.

Not all Veeck's attempts to improve the lot of the team were successful, but they kept his players loose and smiling and the baseball writers engaged. In early September, with the hard-hitting Cleveland Indians coming to town, Veeck announced Project Indian Wall, which would have entailed erecting a wire fence along the left-field wall to the bullpen. Veeck claimed its purpose was “to keep our over exuberant fans from falling out on the playing field.” The fence was to be erected by Friday and torn down on Sunday. Not surprisingly, the American League rejected Veeck's request, insisting that the real reason for the wall was to keep Cleveland fly balls in the park.
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The White Sox sewed up the 1959 American League pennant on September 22 with a 4–2 defeat of the second-place Indians in Cleveland, paced by home runs from Al Smith and Jim Rivera and the twenty-first victory by Early Wynn, the old man that Cleveland had not wanted. It would be the first postseason appearance for the franchise since the notorious 1919 Black Sox series.

Back in Chicago, fire commissioner and civil defense coordinator Robert Quinn ordered a celebratory five-minute sounding of the city's air-raid sirens that set many Chicago residents rushing down into their cellars or out into
the streets anticipating a possible Soviet missile attack. “Them were just Cubs fans,” a Sox fan told a reporter. “Everyone else knew why those sirens were blasting.”
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Quinn apologized, but also maintained that he had usefully tested the city's civil defense readiness, which he found lacking. Major Richard Daley claimed that Quinn had acted in accordance with a little-known City Council proclamation that “there shall be whistles and sirens blowing and there shall be great happiness when the White Sox win the pennant.”
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A crowd estimated at 100,000 greeted the team at Midway airport when it returned to Chicago at one-thirty in the morning. A day later a ticker-tape parade attracted 700,000. Mayor Daley rejoiced, “A Chicago pennant! Now for the World Series. We will win it in four straight.”
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Before the series, manager Al Lopez was signed for another year. Veeck staged a signing in front of a contract blown up to a height of seven feet and a width of ten feet, his way of saying that it was the largest contract in the history of the team (reportedly ranging from $50,000 to $60,000). Veeck had hoped to sign Lopez for more than one season, but the manager wanted to work on a year-to-year basis. “I think maybe the reason he didn't want a longer contract is that he enjoys this flurry each fall,” said Veeck at the ceremony. “I've never seen as fine a job of managing as Lopez has given us.”
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Veeck held a press conference during which he said winning the pennant was the greatest thrill of his life and marked his triumphant return to the game. He said that this pennant meant more to him than the one in Cleveland, which had come to him when he was cocky and assumed that winning was in the natural order of things. “But then I became an outcast after I sold my share in the Cleveland club and later relieved of my stock in the St. Louis Browns I took quite a kicking around from a lot of people in baseball. I feel I've made a comeback now and I think it's always more exciting to make a comeback than to win the first time.”

“You remember last year when we had dinner at Toots Shor's in New York during the World Series?” he asked Bob Addie of the
Washington Post
. “I couldn't even get an extra ticket. The parade had passed me by.”
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The White Sox had finished a satisfying fifteen games ahead of the Yankees, who also ended up ten games behind Cleveland. Veeck's friend Casey Stengel would miss only his second World Series as Yankees manager since taking the reins in 1949, so dominant had the Yankees been—and Al Lopez had a hand in that both times, having led Cleveland to the 1954 World Series, making him the only manager to interrupt the Yankees pennant run between 1949 and 1964. In the postseason Stengel was hired as a
reporter for
Life
magazine, reportedly paid $5,000 to cover the contest between the White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.