Bill Veeck (69 page)

18
.
Milwaukee Journal
, September 24, 1949;
Eugene Register-Guard
, September 25, 1949.

19
. When Lupica died at age ninety, he was honored with a full sixteen-paragraph obituary in the
New York Times
, November 22, 2002.

20
. Hank Greenberg,
The Story of My Life
(New York: Times Books, 1989), 205.

21
.
Pittsburgh Courier
, September 10, 1949.

22
.
Call and Post
, September 24, 1949, 6B. The exchange was—and is—puzzling shedding more heat than light on the situation. Stephanie M. Lisico, author of
Integrating Cleveland Baseball: Media Activism, the Integration of the Indians and the Demise of the Negro League Buckeyes
, who studied the African American newspapers of the era and read every issue of the
Call and Post
for several years, concluded that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle. Lisico concluded that the
Call and Post
was extremely reserved in its coverage of racial matters and tended to shy away from anything that worked against racial harmony. She added that the
Courier
was much more of a warts-and-all paper. That said, Lisico suggested that there were probably no organized gangs of hoodlums organized by nameless politicians but there were fans who were particularly rough on black players, especially Luke Easter. Telephone interview with Lisico, November 18, 2010.

23
.
Daytona Beach Morning Journal
, August 25, 1949;
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, July 11, 1949, 14.

24
. Pat Williams interviews, 1997–98.

25
.
Sports Illustrated
, July 4, 1960.

26
.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, November 21, 1949.

27
. After the sale on November 22 the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
ran an editorial entitled “Baseball and Taxes” that agreed Veeck was virtually compelled to sell the Indians because of the tax laws. The paper assumed that he would take away $375,000 after capital gains, but that at an income of $50,000 per year, he would need eleven years to accumulate the same amount.

28
.
Call and Post
, November 19, 1949.

29
. UPI,
Milwaukee Journal
, November 21, 1949, 38.

30
.
Time
, December 5, 1949.

31
.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, November 22, 1949.

32
. Ibid., November 17, 1949, 24.

33
.
Time
, December 5, 1949.

34
.
Baseball Digest
, January 1949.

35
.
Washington Post
, October 5, 1949;
Modesto Bee
, September 7, 1953. The thought of Senator Bill Veeck is a delicious notion to consider.

36
. Interview with Mary Frances Veeck, April 27, 2010.

37
.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, September 25, 1949.

38
. Pat Williams interviews, 1997–98, no. 77.

39
. Roy Drachman,
Just Memories
(Tucson, 1979). This was extracted from the online version of the book, which can be found at
http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/drachman/index.html
.

40
.
Time
, July 16, 1951.

41
.
Arizona Daily Star
, July 14, 1991.

42
.
Washington Post
, October 1, 1949. In January Russ Newland of the Associated Press's San Francisco office reported that a reliable but undisclosed source indicated that Veeck was trying to buy the Cubs or the Senators.
Evening Independent
, January 27, 1950.

43
. Interview with Joseph Thomas Moore.

44
.
Sports Illustrated
, July 4, 1960.

45
. Ibid.

1
.
Milwaukee Journal
, May 29, 1951, 8.

2
.
New York Amsterdam News
, July 21, 1951.

3
. Roy P. Drachman,
Just Memories
(Tucson, 1979), quoted from the online version found at
http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/drachman/1003.html
.

4
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, May 11, 1951.

5
.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, June 10, 1951;
Chicago Tribune
, June 10, 1951.

6
.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, June 29, 1951.

7
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, July 5, 1951.

8
. Ibid., June 21 and July 6, 1951.

9
. “A Very Brave Man,”
New York Times
, July 4, 1951

10
.
New York Times
, May 1, 1988.

11
.
Washington Post
, June 27, 1961.

12
.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, July 7, 1951.

13
. Interview with Hank Peters, August 13, 2009.

14
. Interview with Cliff Kachline, August 1, 2009.

15
. Bill Veeck with Edward Linn,
Veeck—as in Wreck
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1962), TK;
Washington Post
, July 26, 1951, 10.

16
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, July 25 and 26 1951;
Washington Post
, July 26, 1951;
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, July 26, 1951.

17
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, July 26, 1951;
Washington Post
, July 28, 1951, 9.

18
.
Miami News
, April 19, 1958, 15.

19
.
Milwaukee Journal
, February 21, 1952, 22.

20
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, August 6, 1951.

21
.
Washington Post
, August 16, 1951;
Baltimore Sun
, August 18, 1951.

22
.
Sporting News
, July 10, 1951.

23
.
Milwaukee Journal
, April 18, 1947.

24
. Bill Veeck interview with William J. Marshall for the University of Kentucky Libraries, A. B. “Happy” Chandler Oral History Project, February 23, 1977, tape 1, side 1.

25
.
Pittsburgh Press
, July 15, 1951;
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, July 19, 1951.

26
. Jim Reisler, “Eddie Gaedel: The Sad Life of Baseball's Midget,”
National Pastime
, 9. At this time the late Bob Fishel was executive vice president of the American League.

27
. Jerome Holtzman quoted Broeg in an article, “Gaedel Stunt Still Tickles Baseball's Funny Bone,” published on
MLB.com
on July 15, 2001. At that time Holtzman was the official historian of MLB.

28
. Described in Tristram Potter Coffin,
The Old Ball Game: Baseball in Folklore and Fiction
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1971).

29
. Interview with Duane Pillette, August 13, 2009.

30
.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, August 20, 1951.

31
. Jack Brickhouse,
Thanks for Listening
(South Bend, IN: Diamond Communications, 1996), 114.

32
.
Eugene Register-Guard
, August 22, 1951;
Ludington Daily News
, August 22, 1951.

33
. “AL Puts Ban on Midgets,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
, August 22, 1951.

34
.
Toledo Blade
, August 23, 1951. John Thorn discussed the Thurber story on the SABR listserv on September 26, 2010, putting it into a deeper literary and baseball context: “Little known is that the diminutive hero of the story, Pearl du Monville, was named in a sly dig at a writer for whom Thurber had no respect: Zane Grey. The western writer (and author of The Red Headed Outfield, The Young Pitcher and The Short-Stop) was named at birth … Pearl Zane Grey, who was named for the city of his birth, Zanesville, Ohio. The son of a dentist, the self-renamed Zane went to Penn to study dentistry, where he also played a great outfield alongside his roommate, Roy Thomas, a 13-year major leaguer and Hall of Fame worthy…. But I sense a major digression coming on. Thurber's story opens in the city of his birth, Columbus, Ohio. Pearl du Monville translates as ‘the pearl of my city.'” The original Thurber story is available online at
http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2010/09/you-could-look-it-up.html
.

35
. Veeck with Linn,
Veeck—as in Wreck
, 12.

36
. James Tootle, “Bill Veeck and James Thurber: The Literary Origins of the Midget Pinch Hitter,”
Nine
10, no. 2 (2002): 110. Tootle also argued the point that it would have been hard for Veeck to miss the Thurber story: “It was reprinted in
Reader's Digest
in 1943,
My World and Welcome to It
(a collection of his stories) in 1942,
New Stories for Men
in 1941,
Best American Short Stories
in 1942, and
Post Stories of 1941
in 1942. Several of these collections had special armed services editions, just the kind of reading material that would have been readily available in military bases and hospitals. After the war, the story appeared in
American Imagination at Work
in 1947,
Saturday Evening Post Sports Stories
(edited by Red Smith) in 1949, and
The Baseball Reader
in 1951. It was also the subject of a radio broadcast on the
Hallmark Playhouse
in 1947. Veeck's voracious reading habits plus the wide availability of Thurber's short story make it highly likely that he would have encountered it.”

37
. Ted Williams,
My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life
(New York: Fireside, 1988), 226; Larry Doby interview with William J. Marshall for the University of Kentucky Libraries, A. B. “Happy” Chandler Oral History Project, November 15, 1979.

38
. “I don't think people had any idea at the time how much would be made of it,” said Hank Peters in an interview on August 13, 2009. Peters, who was one of the few people in on the secret, added that over the years far more people said they were at the game than were actually there. Mary Frances Veeck, who was also there, said that it is amazing how many people have told her over the years that they watched Gaedel come to the plate “at Comiskey Park.”

39
. Interview with Clark Mitze, February 22, 2010.

40
. Robert Gregory,
Diz: The Story of Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression
(New York: Random House Value Publishing, 1994).

41
.
Eugene Register-Guard
, September 16, 1951.

42
.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, October 30, 1951.

43
.
New York Times
, October 8, 1951;
New York Telegram
, October 8, 1951.

44
.
Pittsburgh Courier
, December 29, 1951.

45
.
Time
, November 26, 1951.

46
.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, November 30, 1951.

47
. Anthony J. Connor,
Voices from Cooperstown: Baseball's Hall of Famers Tell It like It Was
(New York: Collier Books, 1984), 247. This offer is also discussed in Robert Smith,
Baseball in the Afternoon: Tales from a Bygone Era
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 145; and Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella,
The Biographical History of Baseball
(Chicago: Triumph Books, 2003), 245.

48
.
Baltimore Afro-American
, December 8, 1951; June 21, 1952.

49
. Interview with Hank Peters, August 13, 2009.

50
. Rogers Hornsby with Bill Surface,
My War with Baseball
(New York: Coward McCann, 1962), 23;
Schenectady Gazette
, February 8, 1952.

51
.
Baseball Digest
, September 2003.

52
. Interview with Hank Peters, August 13, 2009.

53
. Interview with Bill Purdy, June 24, 2009.

54
. NNPA,
New Journal and Guide
(Norfolk, VA), May 10, 1952.

55
. Veeck with Linn,
Veeck—as in Wreck
, 232.

56
. Interview with Mike Veeck, June 28, 2008;
Chicago Tribune
, June 11, 1952, in an article by Gerry Hern republished from the
Boston Post
.

57
.
Chicago Tribune
, June 11, 1952.

58
. Delivered to Gerry Hern of the
Boston Post.

59
. Interview with Joe DeMaestri, October 10, 2009;
Atlanta Daily World
, June 12, 1952;
Baseball Digest
, September 2003.

60
.
Daytona Beach Morning Journal
, June 12, 1952.

61
. Ibid.

62
.
Baltimore Afro-American
, June 21, 1952.

63
. Interview with Joe DeMaestri, October 10, 2009.

64
. Interview with Duane Pillette, August 13, 2009; interview with Marty Marion, August 13, 2009.

65
. Interview with Jay Porter, September 30, 2009.

66
. Fred Down of UPI obtained the quote from Patterson and it appears in the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
, April 29, 1952, 10.

1
. Curt Gowdy with John Powers,
Seasons to Remember:
The Way It Was in American Sports
,
1945–1960
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 166.

2
.
Washington Post
, January 9, 1953.

3
. AP,
Milwaukee Journal
, February 1, 1953.

4
. Bill Veeck with Edward Linn,
Veeck—as in Wreck
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1962), 27.