Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer (9 page)

Gussie wasted no time establishing himself as a hands-on owner. Three days after the stockholders meeting, he pulled into the Cardinals spring training camp in St. Petersburg, Florida, behind the wheel of his motorbus, trailed by a caravan of Cadillacs containing a retinue of cronies and company executives that, according to
Post-Dispatch
writer Jack Rice, “looked like it had been recruited from a P. G. Wodehouse March on the Rhine.” He strode into Cardinals headquarters at Al Lang Field with his hand out and voice booming: “My name is Gussie Busch and I'm the new owner.” He donned a Cardinals cap and a white flannel team jersey, which he tucked goofily into his baggy gray suit pants, and he posed for pictures in the batting cage with Stan Musial and manager Eddie Stanky. Awkwardly holding a bat as if it were for the first time, he stood at the plate with an uncomfortable smile frozen on his face. A sportswriter described the ignominy: “After fanning on half a dozen softball pitches from the mound, he dubbed a couple of dribblers and called it a day.”

Meeting the players, he was surprised to see only white faces. “Where are our black players?” he asked Stanky and the coaches. He was told there weren't any. “How can it be the great American game if blacks can't play?” he replied, angrily. “Hell, we sell beer to
everyone
.” In fact, Anheuser-Busch sold more beer to black people than any other brewery. Gussie feared that A-B's ownership of an all-white team at a time when Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays were in ascendance could spark a black boycott of Budweiser. He also thought it was morally wrong. He ordered Stanky and the Cardinals management to find some black players, fast. They quickly acquired a black first baseman named Tom Alston, but when Gussie learned that Alston was two years older than he'd been told, he demanded $20,000 of the purchase price be returned because he figured he'd been gypped out of two years of Alston's career. Manager Stanky seemed to understand the new situation perfectly. “Gussie likes me,” he told reporters. “We play gin rummy. I take his money. And when he decides I'm bad for beer, I go.”

If the Cardinals thought Gussie's interest in their daily affairs would wane as the novelty of ownership wore off, they were disabused of that notion when it was announced that he would be “following the Red Birds on the road” in a new $300,000 private railroad car that could be hitched to the train that carried the team. The custom-built, eighty-six-foot car had four bedrooms, three conference rooms, a dining room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, an observation lounge, quarters for two attendants, and a communications system that included two-way radios, telephones, and a television set. Stainless steel on the outside and oak-paneled within, it sported an Anheuser-Busch “A & Eagle” trademark insignia on one end and a Cardinals team logo on the other. It was as Buschy as all get-out, and a harbinger of Gussie extravagances to come. A company spokesman hastened to clarify that “the car will be used in the nationwide operation of the brewery, which
could
coincide with the Cardinals road schedule.”

A-B's purchase of the Cardinals drew the ire of Colorado senator Edwin C. Johnson, who embarked on a one-man crusade to undo the deal, claiming that Gussie had “degraded” baseball by reducing it to “a cold-blooded, beer-peddling business.” Johnson introduced legislation to “bring under anti-trust laws any professional baseball club owned by a beer or liquor company” (the U.S. Supreme Court had recently held that baseball teams were not subject to the Clayton-Sherman antitrust laws as they were written).

With encouragement from Al Fleishman, St. Louis civic leaders jumped to Gussie's defense. Mayor Raymond Tucker sent a telegram to Senator Johnson praising Gussie as “an outstanding leader in St. Louis affairs” and stating that “the people of St. Louis do not believe the Cardinals are being run for business purposes.” The president of the Chamber of Commerce sent a similar telegram “to inform you that this 100-year-old company and its president have brought great credit to this community through their business practices, civic spirit and community services.”

Undeterred, Johnson prevailed upon North Dakota Republican senator William Langer, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, to hold a subcommittee hearing on his proposed bill. Testifying as the leadoff witness, Johnson described Gussie's purchase of the Cardinals as “a lavish and vulgar display of beer wealth and beer opulence,” and warned that it threatened the very existence of baseball because it would force other brewery owners to buy major league teams in order to remain competitive. “When that happens, sport goes out the window,” he said. “It just becomes a contest between big businesses. Not only will there be a monopoly in beer, but there will also be a monopoly in baseball.”

National League president Warren Giles countered that the Cardinals sale had, in fact, “stabilized the national league and helped stabilize baseball.”

Johnson's motives were called into question in that day's newspapers, which reported that he was also the president of the Class A Western Baseball League and, as such, was worried that Anheuser-Busch's plan to broadcast Cardinal games in cities with minor league teams would cut into attendance. The press also revealed that Johnson's son-in-law was the majority owner of the Denver Bears Class A Team, on whose board sat none other than Adolph Coors III, the chairman of the Colorado brewing empire.

Johnson admitted that his bill was aimed solely at the “St. Louis combination,” which he described as “an unholy alliance” that was having “an unhealthy influence on the youngsters of America.” To press criticism that he was “picking on” Anheuser-Busch while conveniently forgetting that the New York Yankees had been owned for years by brewer Jacob Ruppert with no apparent harm to the team or the sport, he retorted, “The business of brewing and baseball always were kept separate by Colonel Ruppert. Not one cent of Ruppert's beer money went into baseball.”

Not surprisingly, Gussie was the only brewer called to testify at the Senate hearings. For the most part he held his temper in check and hewed to the line that the Cardinals purchase was purely an act of community service, not of commerce. “Anheuser-Busch was a leader in its field before any baseball broadcast, and even before organized baseball itself made an appearance on the American scene,” he said. “If anyone wants to buy the Cardinals, they're open. All I ask is that they be kept in St. Louis.” When Johnson asked what his price would be, Gussie responded sharply, “Exactly what we paid for them and put into them.” Addressing the other subcommittee members, he said, “Gentleman, this was and is the only means known to me that would have kept the Cardinals in St. Louis.” After a pause, he added, “St. Louis without the Cardinals wouldn't be the same.”

From a public relations standpoint, he hit it out of the park. Illinois senator Everett Dirksen and Missouri senator Stuart Symington, both subcommittee members, came out strongly against Johnson's proposed legislation and praised Gussie and his “illustrious family.”

At day's end, Senator Johnson called it quits, telling reporters, “I'm through; I closed up shop.” Then, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, he claimed victory: “The hearing accomplished its purpose of awakening baseball to the dangers it faces from corporate ownership of individual clubs.”

Al Fleishman could not have hoped for a better outcome: the city had retained a beloved and badly needed sports franchise; the brewery had acquired a potent marketing tool; and St. Louis's most famous family had been cast in a favorable new light. As
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
writer Jack Rice put it, “For 100 years, the Busches had been baronial and remote, now they were right down here with the people, playing baseball.”

For Gussie, the episode resulted in an extreme makeover: his image as a bad-tempered, foxhunting, skirt-chasing millionaire was wiped from the public consciousness and replaced with that of benevolent city father and man of the people. And the city was busting its buttons with civic pride. America may have had Mom and apple pie, but St. Louis had Budweiser and baseball, Gussie Busch and the Redbirds. Happy days were here yet again.

Not everyone was applauding, however. P. K. Wrigley, the owner of the chewing gum giant and the Chicago Cubs, cited his own company's experience when he harrumphed, “August Busch and his beer company right now believe the Cardinals are going to be a great advertising agent for them. But they are in for a rude awakening if things start going wrong for the ball club.”

Wrigley couldn't have been more wrong. The Cardinals had a so-so season in 1953, coming in third in the National League, while Anheuser-Busch blasted back into first place by turning out 6.7 million barrels, 1.5 million more than second-place Schlitz. The Cardinals dropped to a dismal sixth-place finish in 1954, but A-B still bested Schlitz by 400,000 barrels that year. And so it went for the next forty years as the Anheuser-Busch–Cardinals combo proved to be one of the best marketing team-ups in the annals of American business.

One unforeseen effect of the Cardinals purchase was that it turned Gussie Busch into a national celebrity almost overnight. “Not many people wrote to me when I was just a brewery president,” he said. “But as owner of the Cardinals I began to receive thousands of letters.”

Sportswriters flocked to him and fed greedily on his salty observations about baseball and horses and women. It didn't matter if half the things he said couldn't be printed; he rarely disappointed and frequently astonished. As the
Post-Dispatch
's Jack Rice observed, “He so obviously says what he means, wants what he says he wants and expects to get it, that the simplicity of his drive and candor can be upsetting to people more accustomed to the subtleties of business. Or society.” A perfect example occurred the day he was talking to a reporter about a longtime brewery employee who was retiring. After praising the man profusely, he blurted, “Of course, this has nothing to do with his wife, who is the biggest bitch that ever happened.”

In the summer of 1955, he hit a national magazine trifecta.
Ladies' Home Journal
profiled him as one of “The 10 Richest Men in America.”
Life
magazine published a nine-page pictorial by famed photographer Margaret Bourke-White, “The Baronial Busches,” depicting him as the patriarch of a large and colorful clan whose “way of life adds a memorably exuberant and expansive segment to the American scene.” And finally,
Time
magazine put him on its cover, dubbing him “The Baron of Beer” and lionizing him as an American business icon—“Trim (5 ft. 10 in., 164 lbs.), graying, hard as an oaken keg at 56, Gussie Busch operates on a simple formula: ‘Work hard—love your work.'”

Both
Life
and
Time
mentioned Trudy in a single sentence, describing her in the exact same words—“his handsome third wife.” No doubt it was the chauvinism of the age that led them to dismiss her so blithely, but she was much more than met the eye. When world leaders and Hollywood celebrities began coming to Gussie's castle door in the 1950s, it was Trudy who welcomed them in and saw to it that they were made comfortable, catered to, entertained, and cared for. It was a role she seemed born to play: Guinevere to Gussie's King Arthur. Without her in the years that followed, there would have been no Camelot.

During the first two years of their marriage, Gussie and Trudy lived in the Bauernhof at Grant's Farm, a quarter of a mile from the main mansion. The Bauernhof (which means “farmstead”) was modeled on the traditional “fortress” farms of medieval Germany, which combined living space for the family with shelter for animals and storage for farm equipment, all behind a protective wall.

This, of course, was an American millionaire's farmstead, with five apartments for servants and farm staff and a private two-story, six-bedroom “clubhouse” residence for the family. Gussie's father, August A., had his architects design a system for the stables and dairy barn that watered the animals automatically on the half hour, with the water temperature controlled by the stable master. Styled to resemble the buildings in Bavaria's medieval walled city of Rothenberg, the dramatic U-shaped structure was built around a huge wood-block courtyard enclosed by a white stone and timber wall, with an arched entry on the southeast side and sculptures of nesting storks along the roofline, an ancient symbol of good luck.

As luck would have it, Trudy gave birth to two children while they lived in the Bauernhof—Adolphus IV in July 1953 and, less than a year later, Beatrice in July 1954. Shortly after Beatrice was born, at the urging of Gussie's mother, Alice, they moved into the mansion, which the Busch family always referred to as “the big house.” Alice, nearing ninety, remained in the sixteen-room “cottage” nearby. The move was not an easy decision for Gussie, who worried about the expense of operating such an immense household. He was reportedly the highest paid executive in St. Louis, with an annual income of more than $200,000. But he'd borrowed $600,000 from his mother to pay his ex-wife's divorce settlement, and he constantly complained that he was cash poor; all his wealth was tied up in company stock. He even sought the advice of his daughter Lotsie, who shared the Bauernhof quarters with him and managed the household accounts until she got married in 1948. “How much do you think I should give Trudy to run the big house?” he asked. “Would $1,000 a month cover it?” Her response was, “You must be kidding.”

The big house had gone to seed somewhat since Gussie's mother and father had lived there. The ground floor was in need of new curtains, carpets, and furniture. When the huge Aubusson rugs in the living room and dining room were replaced twenty years before, it had cost several hundred thousand dollars. The children's bedrooms upstairs were now empty. The kitchen was obsolete.