The Selling of the Babe (16 page)

They were, and when Johnson found out that Frazee was trying to build a consensus among owners and was even sounding out ex-president William Howard Taft about becoming the first commissioner of baseball—and when that news ended up on the front page of the
New York Times
—the only war baseball was worried about now was between Frazee and Johnson. Only Archduke Ferdinand had been so bold, and although a number of owners agreed with Frazee's approach, few were willing to make their position public.
The Sporting News
, which acted as a mouthpiece for the National Commission, breathlessly headlined a story on Frazee's attempted coup: “Looks Like He's Playing Lone Hand.” Just before the owners met for their annual meeting in early December, Frazee made it clear that he wasn't backing down, saying he'd rather “lose the World Champion Red Sox” than continue kowtowing to Johnson. Frazee may not have meant it, but that was precisely the result Johnson hoped to see happen.

At Johnson's behest, and in a play to increase profits in the upcoming season, major league baseball reduced rosters from 25 players per club in 1918 to only 21 in 1919, and then the teams conspired among each other to suppress salaries, effectively placing a limit on team payrolls, higher for those teams with already big payrolls in larger markets. As Jacob Ruppert of the Yankees noted, “The players can sign at the salaries noted or not at all.” That was all fine and well, and even Frazee had no problem with that, although when Frazee proposed to pay players a small sum during spring training, the other owners shot down the notion as tantamount to socialism.

The next decision, however, was mind-boggling. After playing an abbreviated schedule of only 126 games in 1918 and taking a financial hit, Johnson doubled down and decided that instead of returning to normal as fast as possible like the rest of American society, baseball would behave as if the Hun was still lurking over the horizon. Instead of playing the usual 154-game season that had been in place since 1904, they would play only 140 games in 1919, and wait until April 20 to start playing. They then further complicated matters by deciding on an abbreviated spring training schedule that wouldn't begin until late March, losing out on a couple of extra weeks of free publicity that the newspapers pumped out each spring that got fans excited about the upcoming season.

By way of explanation, Johnson offered that the reason for doing so was to “eliminate the evil of playing double-headers” and to avoid early spring rainouts. It was like waiting to plant corn until the 4th of July to avoid frost.

To a guy like Frazee, it was insane. The Red Sox were defending champions, and with a host of talented players due to return from the service, they seemed well positioned to race to the top and rake in the cash. In theatrical terms, now baseball was closing the balcony and banning the matinee. For the second year in a row, it was as if baseball didn't want to make money … or at least it didn't want the Red Sox to make any.

Boston was not the only team that believed it was a target. In New York, the Yankees were finally out from under the odious impact of the blue laws and in 1919 would finally be able to play baseball on Sundays. Cutting back on the season likely cost them a couple of huge dates. The Yankees' co-owner, Cap Huston, called it a “foolish piece of legislation” and was joined in opposition by not only Frazee, but by Charles Comiskey of the White Sox, who also backed Frazee's plan for a single commissioner, and the Giants were known to be displeased with Johnson as well. There had always been a bit of friction between the two leagues, but now there was also a fissure beginning to show that ran horizontally, potentially splitting the American League in two camps and sending hairline fractures into the NL. Ever so slowly, the Red Sox, Yankees, and White Sox were lining up against Johnson and looking for support from other owners.

They hadn't forgotten that it was syndicated baseball and resulting favoritism that had infected the National League and eroded the public's trust in the 1890s, opening the door for Johnson's upstart American League. They had long suspected that was taking place again, that Johnson had invested personally in one or more ball clubs, that the onetime insurgent had adopted the same tactics he'd once railed against.

Frazee and Johnson didn't even speak during the meeting, but as soon as it broke up neither man could hold his tongue. Johnson fired the first shot, saying he had uncovered “Certified information … that gambling existed at Fenway Park” and claiming that gave him the right to terminate Frazee's tenure as owner.

Gambling at Fenway Park? Why there was green grass and infield clay and peanuts being sold in the stands, too, just as there was at every major league ballpark in the country. If not for gambling, the game wouldn't have survived the 1918 season: the only fans who had turned out in close to their previous numbers were the gamblers, who cared only about the action the game provided, and nothing else. It was a low blow, but Johnson had made his intentions and his strategy clear. In public, he would stake out the moral high ground and try to slur the Red Sox, while in private he'd get down on the floor and dig at the foundations.

Frazee saw it for what it was, “a war of extermination on the part of Mr. Johnson,” with him and the Red Sox franchise Johnson's “particular target,” a threatened species he hoped to hasten toward extinction. Johnson naively hoped Frazee would walk off in a huff and sell the Sox, but he underestimated both Frazee's resolve and his acumen. Frazee knew he was sitting on a valuable property and was in no mood to sell. Besides, he really couldn't. Although Frazee owned the Sox, and acted as such, his power was mostly on paper. He still owed notes to Joseph Lannin, and although few people outside the Red Sox knew it, once those notes were paid Frazee still wouldn't own the team completely free and clear. The Taylor family not only still owned the ballpark, but still retained some stock in the club, as did several of their cronies. Although it wouldn't become clear for some time, the tangled ownership situation would make it almost impossible for Frazee to sell the team for several more years. He wasn't going to be forced out; Johnson would have to take the team, and the legality of that, despite Johnson's threat over gambling, was untenable.

Over the next few months, the war between the two men would escalate. The result would leave Ruth as something of a refugee, another spoil of war.

For now Ruth was either oblivious, unconcerned, or both. Just as the player strike during the Series hadn't been his business, neither was the war between Johnson and Frazee. He installed Helen back at the farm in Sudbury and went on his merry way spending most of his time in Baltimore, Boston, and New York. He returned to the farm for ever briefer intervals as Mrs. Ruth became more and more accustomed to having the same kind of relationship with her husband as his Red Sox roommates; increasingly, she, too, was rooming with little more than his suitcase, all dirty laundry and cigar stubs. Ruth made most of his headlines in the off-season grousing about his contract and indicating that he was after a new one.

It wasn't long after the war that players who had been in the service or had left for war work began returning to the fold. At first, this apparently made a windfall for the Red Sox. They were already world champions, and compared to the competition the deepest team in baseball. Their returning veterans, such as outfielder Duffy Lewis, Jack Barry, and pitchers Ernie Shore and Dutch Leonard, promised to make them even better. Although Leonard had helped for a time in 1918 before taking a shipyard job, the Sox had gone the whole year without the help of Lewis and Shore. Lewis, a valuable outfielder and productive hitter, already had left a lasting legacy in Fenway Park, the earthen retaining wall before the left field wall, called “Duffy's Cliff” after his ability to scale the embankment to catch balls hit over his head. A potent hitter, along with Speaker and Hooper he'd been a part of what once was considered the best outfield in baseball, and a rare successful pull hitter at a time when that ability was not much appreciated. Shore, bought by Boston from Baltimore along with Ruth in 1914, had since proven to be a valuable pitcher, winning 58 games in four seasons. In 1917, he was credited with a perfect game after relieving Ruth when the starting pitcher was thrown from the game after walking the first hitter. Both Shore and Lewis had spent the 1918 season in the Navy, mostly playing baseball, Shore in Boston and Lewis in his native California.

Boston's windfall, however, didn't have a silver lining. With rosters reduced and the gentleman's agreement in regard to a salary cap (generally somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000, depending on the team), Frazee couldn't keep the men—if he did, he'd either blow past the cap and earn the wrath of his peers, including Comiskey and Ruppert, his two new best friends, or he wouldn't have enough money to pay anyone else, particularly Ruth. He couldn't afford to anyway—he needed to recoup his losses as much as the next guy did. It was almost as if the rules were put in place solely to prevent the Red Sox becoming a dynasty after the war.

Given the enmity between Johnson and Frazee, that might not have been far from the truth. Frazee had outmaneuvered every owner in baseball in 1918—now, thought Johnson, was the time to put the Red Sox back in their place.

And there was yet one more ugly little factor to consider. Among the men who owned baseball teams it was widely believed that Frazee, likely due to his ties to the New York theater, was Jewish. There were still occasional veiled references in the press to the “mystery of his religion,” and that Frazee was “too New York.” Frazee was not Jewish, but the lie was widely believed and Jewish owners were still not welcome in the game. It hurt Frazee and it stung. The single best-preserved document in his entire archive collection is a pristine copy of Henry Ford's anti-Semitic broadsheet, the
Dearborn Independent,
dated September 10, 1921. An article entitled “How the Jews Degraded Baseball” presents Frazee as a Jew, using much of Johnson's original argument against letting him in the league as evidence:

A few years ago the owners of the American League entered into a gentleman's agreement not to sell their holdings at any time without first consulting all the other owners. The name of a prospective purchaser was to be submitted and considered, and the deal was to wait upon the approval of all the owners in the league. In the face of that fact many people wonder how Harry Frazee became owner of the Boston American club. It is very simply explained: the agreement was not observed in Boston's case, and thus another club was placed under the smothering influences of the “chosen race.” The story is worth telling.

Frazee, like so many of his kind, was in the “show business,” a manager of burlesque companies. Then he saw a chance in sport.

Regardless, the decision to make trades to rid the team of surplus players—at least how to structure the deals—was never Frazee's alone. Although Barrow would later try to parse his role during his tenure with the Red Sox—decisions well received by history were his, while those that were not were Frazee's—and try to claim credit all out of proportion for Ruth's success, it wasn't Frazee who decided who to take on in trades; it was Barrow. So on December 18, Boston traded Lewis, Leonard, and Shore to the New York Yankees for Ray Caldwell, Frank Gilhooley, Slim Love, Roxy Walters, and what was variously reported as between $10,000 and $15,000. Most observers thought the Yankees, whose manager, Miller Huggins, pushed for the deal, got the upper hand. History, however, would not be so harsh. Both Lewis and Shore would be out of the major leagues in two years, and the deal would prove to be incidental to the success of either team.

Compared to Frazee, Ruppert was in a stronger financial position, both personally and in terms of his ball club. His wealth dated back three generations, and even with two teams (three if one included Brooklyn), the New York market was easily the largest in baseball. Sunday baseball promised a windfall and the Yankee payroll was bigger than Boston's, which gave Ruppert more flexibility. But in December of 1917, a constitutional amendment to ban the sale of alcohol passed Congress, and by the final days of 1918 it was becoming clear that it would be ratified by the requisite three fourths of the states and soon become law. For Ruppert, whose fortune flowed from his brewery and had a near stranglehold on beer sales in New York, Prohibition was not good news. He had to transition, and transition quickly, making baseball, not beer brewing, his main business. The end of the blue laws was a help, and the Yankees had challenged for the pennant in 1918 before fading. In order to compete with the Giants, make some money, and get out of an onerous lease situation at the Polo Grounds, he needed a winning team, a big draw, so he could make some money and build his own ballpark.

Making a trade with Boston helped both teams, and had the added benefit of strengthening their alliance as they did battle with Johnson. Although the deal would later be characterized as the first example of some nefarious plot by Frazee to strengthen the Yankees on Boston's behalf (and some later observers would misinterpret the trade and mistakenly conclude that the Yankees paid $15,000 per player), that's not the case. Although the deal was further complicated when Leonard refused to report and was sent to Detroit, the Red Sox got some value back, both in cash and, potentially, in Caldwell, a talented frontline pitcher, albeit one with a drinking problem. Besides, Frazee had to lower his payroll. Interestingly enough, at this time the assumption was that Ruth would still be a pitcher in 1919. With a roster of only 21 men, his ability to do double duty might be even more valuable to the team—and necessary—than it had been in 1918.

Over the next few weeks, Boston's smoldering fire sale continued, as the Red Sox shed more returnees and worked a trade with Detroit to fill a hole at third base, picking up Ossie Vitt (and including Leonard in the deal). But as the new year reached into spring, Ruth began reaching out for more green. He let it be known he wanted a raise—and a big one. And by the way, he didn't want to pitch anymore.