by John Powers
Frazee’s name was mud in Boston, just as it is now. One night he was out in Boston with character actor Walter Catlett. In an attempt to impress a pair of young ladies, Frazee had a cab driver take the group to Fenway Park. He got out of the cab and proudly displayed his baseball empire. The cab driver overheard the boasts and asked if this passenger was in fact Harry H. Frazee, owner of the Red Sox. Frazee said he was, and the driver decked him with one punch.
On July 11, 1923, Frazee sold the Red Sox to Robert Quinn for $1.25 million. The 1923 Red Sox did not have one player left from the championship season of 1918. The man who did the dirty deed didn’t care anymore. While the Sox stumbled through the Roaring Twenties, Frazee finally hit the mother lode in 1925 with No, No, Nanette. It had a New York run of 321 performances and was one of the most successful shows of the 1920s, earning more than $2.5 million for Frazee.
But Frazee didn’t have much time to enjoy his money. The shows after Nanette didn’t do as well, and on June 4, 1929, four weeks shy of his 49th birthday, Harry H. Frazee, or “Big Harry” as he is known in family lore, died of kidney problems at his home in New York City. Frazee always said that the best thing about Boston was the train to New York, and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker was at Frazee’s bedside when he died.
Ruth went on to establish himself as his sport’s greatest performer. He set a major-league record with 60 home runs in 1927 and was still the idol of millions of Americans when he died of cancer in 1948. His record of 714 career home runs stood until Hank Aaron passed him in 1974. He was one of the original five players enshrined in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Red Sox owner Harry Frazee (left) and manager Frank Chance huddled at Yankee Stadium in 1923. Frazee sold the franchise and park in July of that year.
RUTH’S TRIUMPHANT RETURN
Were Bostonians anxiously awaiting Babe Ruth’s return after his trade to the Yankees in January 1920? The day before the Yankees and Red Sox squared off at Fenway, Harry Hooper won a game for the Red Sox against the St. Louis Browns with a home run in the last of the 11th inning. One headline said, “Babe Ruth missed? Not when Harry Hooper decides to settle game with his own bat.”
When the Yankees arrived on May 27, Ruth hit a pair of home runs, but was nearly upstaged by a brawl that started with an umpire and a pitcher squaring off. (The headline read: “Player and umpire fight; Ruth hits two home runs.”) Obviously, there was nary a dull moment, although surprisingly, only an estimated 11,000 attended.
Those fans witnessed “[Pitcher Bob] Shawkey of the visitors attack umpire [George] Hildebrand, who sideswiped the player on the head with his mask. The fans had then watched with consuming interest a regular football scrimmage in which 10 or 15 would-be peacemakers were trying to restrain the belligerents; they had seen Ruth, the demon home run swatter, knock the ball out of the lot twice . . . and altogether, they had had a great day.”
Regarding Ruth, “many in the big crowd had come to see him make a home run, one having been his limit each of the previous three days.” In the sixth inning of New York’s 6-1 win, Ruth homered into the right-field bleachers, “a mighty drive.” In the eighth inning, Ruth “knocked the ball over the left-field fence, an unusual hit for a left-handed batter against a right-handed pitcher. The ball hit the top of the fence and bounded 50 feet beyond, across Lansdowne Street. It was about the same kind of a hit he made on Ruth Day last season.” Ruth would go on to hit 54 homers in 1920; the player with the next-highest total in the league only managed to hit 19.
The next day at Fenway, the story was the assembled crowd, though Ruth again played a prominent role, according to the Globe’s James C. O’Leary: “Babe Ruth and the Yankees, but mostly Ruth, made a cleanup of the Boston-New York series by winning both games of the doubleheader at Fenway Park in the presence of 28,000 fans, one of the largest crowds—and certainly the biggest money crowd—ever packed into the park for any game except a World’s Championship contest. They saw what many of them went to see: the ‘Swatting Babe’ pole out a home run. With one on, he hit the ball high over the clock which tops the left-field fence.”
The Yankees won the games, 4-3 and 8-3, on a day in which the Red Sox fielding “was far below their standard, and altogether they had a decidedly off-day.” The large crowd necessitated roping off the field, with any hit going into the crowd that ringed the outfield against the fence being ruled a ground-rule double. “The overflow of 5,000 or 6,000 spread out onto what ordinarily is used as the playing field, stretching from back of third base around by way of the terrace in left field (Duffy’s Cliff), across center to and across the right foul line. Many of those in the 50-cent seats hopped the fence and became a part of this mass of humanity, which included many women, who were unable to get even standing room in the grandstand.”
Ruth hit his homer in the fourth inning of Game 1: “With a runner on base, two out and himself crippled with two strikes—though that does not appear to be a disability so far as ‘Babe’ is concerned—Ruth developed two runs in the twinkling of an eye by sloughing the ball over the left-field fence.”
The first game ended pitifully for the Red Sox, as they had the bases loaded with none out in the last of the ninth, trailing by one run, but could not push even the tying run across. Yankees’ pitcher Jack Quinn induced two force plays at the plate, and the game ended on another force play, this time at second base.
In the second game, Ruth banged out a double, but the story noted, “It looked as if Ruth’s double to right was going over into the bleachers, but [Harry] Hooper would easily have captured it if he could have played where he usually sets himself with Ruth at bat.”
After seven years as owner, Frazee wanted out as well. On July 11, he agreed to sell the franchise and the park for a reported $1.25 million to Robert Quinn, the St. Louis Browns business manager who headed a Columbus syndicate and immediately asked fans for a rain check on the rest of the season. “I bespeak patience on the part of the Boston baseball public with my efforts,” he said.
League President Ban Johnson, who despised Frazee, was delighted with the change. “Quinn will have a good team here before you know it,” he predicted. But the manager knew otherwise. “The new owners of the Boston club have the franchise and the park, but they must get a ball club,” Chance said in late August, and then told his players that he’d been misquoted.
The Yankees, who pulverized Boston, 24-4, at Fenway on September 28, with Ruth producing a three-run homer, two doubles, and two singles in six at-bats, now had most of the old club, as more than a dozen former Sox won World Series rings that year with New York. What the Sox had for 1924 was a ball bag full of optimism fueled by Quinn’s promise to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on players, and a new skipper in the person of Lee Fohl, the former catcher for Pittsburgh and Cincinnati who’d produced winning seasons managing the Indians and Browns. “That Quinn and Fohl and time are a winning combination has already been demonstrated,” O’Leary wrote, “and there is no reason to anticipate any reversal of form.”
The Sox blossomed early that year and found themselves in first place in early June but they went to seed in July, losing nine straight at Fenway, including an 18-1 battering by the Tigers. While the seventh-place showing was a slight upgrade from the basement and attendance doubled to nearly 450,000, the season was an outlier—a misleading prelude to the three worst consecutive years in franchise history.
In the wake of the previous season’s fade, Quinn was circumspect about the club’s prospects for 1925. “All I can say is that we have hopes,” he stated in February. But by the time the Sox played their home opener against Philadelphia, they already had dropped five of their first six games en route to a 2-12 start that essentially interred them. “Once again we hear, ‘What’s the matter?’” Mel Webb observed in the Globe. “Just now everything is the matter.”
The Sox ended up losing 105 games, finishing nearly 50 behind the Senators. They were last on merit. Boston had the worst offense (640 runs scor
ed) and worst defense (921 runs allowed) in the league and absorbed scoreboard-busting home beatings—the Athletics lashed their hosts by 15-4, 15-2, and 12-2 margins.
FIRE SWEEPS THROUGH THE GRANDSTANDS
As if their on-field woes were not enough, the Red Sox were dealt a huge blow in May of 1926 when a fire swept through Fenway’s third-base grandstand and briefly threatened the entire ballpark. The fire, on the night of May 8, had followed a spate of small fires under the grandstand during a game the previous day, and caused an estimated $26,705 in damage.
The headline in the Globe of May 10 described the third-base “bleachers” as a mass of ruins and told of plans to put a concrete stand in place later. The team co-owner and president, Robert Quinn, already financially strapped, never implemented the plan, and until Tom Yawkey bought the team in 1933, the park had a gap where the burned stands had been torn out. This meant that for the next several years, the area occupied today roughly by grandstand sections 29 to 33 was an open area that was in play. This made for a huge foul territory, and the left fielder often disappeared from view chasing balls, with the bases umpire scurrying after him to rule on the play.
The Globe story by James O’Leary also said: “The destruction of the bleachers was complete, only charred timbers and boards remaining. The boardwalk on the roof leading to the press box caught fire in two or three places, and a small blaze started under the floor of the press box; only fine work by the fire department saved the grandstand. The burnt section of the bleachers will be roped off today, and when the debris has been cleared away, a concrete stand will be erected. . . .
“Since he bought the club a little more than two years ago, Pres. Quinn has spent between $65,000 and $70,000 in renovating the plant and bringing it up to date. Mr. Quinn appeared yesterday to be more concerned over the poor showing, thus far, of his ball club than he was about the fire loss. . . .
“President Quinn had been tendered the use of Braves Field for as long as he wished to make use of it by the Boston National League club, but finds that he will not have to avail himself of the courtesy.”
The story ended: “The Boston baseball public realizes what a difficult task he has had and has a world of sympathy for him.”
BC DEFEATS HOLY CROSS
More than 30,000 football fans turned out on the last day of November 1929 to watch the archrival Boston College and Holy Cross squads square off in their annual contest, with BC taking the victory, 12-0. The Globe stories of the next day described the scene in the ballpark and in the streets around Fenway.
In the game story, Melville E. Webb Jr. wrote: “In freezing weather for player and spectator alike, the Eagle[s], superior on attack, unpassable on defense, twice scored on its Worcester rival. One touchdown, a fierce, unbroken march for more than 25 yards followed the recovery of the ball on a flubbed kick. A second touchdown scored as the shadows were dark upon the flinty field during the closing moments, when Michael Vodoklys seized a Crusader forward pass, hurled from behind the Purple’s goal, and tore relentlessly back to a point behind the Worcester posts. . . .
“The chill numbed but did not drive many from the hard-fought game. . . . No more grueling, slashing, desperate football fight ever has been waged between the forces of Boston College and Holy Cross than that on the Fenway battleground yesterday. No game ever was more productive of exciting thrills or more frequently marked by error, for the most part almost instantly redeemed. . . .
“Two hours freezing play, yet in all save less than five minutes of it a Worcester team threatening ever but never coming through. On Boston’s door the Crusader was thumping all day long—but the stronghold never once gave way.”
The postgame scene was described in another story: “Fewer than 10,000 persons who attended the game parked cars in the nearby streets, and when the flood of shivering fans rolled out after the game there was no long delay or jam. About 200 policemen helped enforce the rules, which prohibited parking on Brookline Avenue, Jersey Street, and Commonwealth Avenue, near Governor Square (known as Kenmore Square starting in 1932). Jersey Street and Brookline Avenue were made one-way streets during the game.
“After the game, about 500 BC students and friends who had secured a parade permit to march from the field to the Common via Commonwealth Avenue started a celebration and snake dance. The lines of cheering students were admirably handled by the police so as not to conflict with traffic, but the victors’ enthusiasm wore off quickly and none of the group got much farther than Massachusetts Avenue before seeking shelter.
“Some careless motorists found their radiators had frozen during the game, and nearby garages did a rushing business thawing them out.”
“I never believed in ‘crying over spilled milk,’” Quinn declared as the campaign was winding down in September with attendance nearly halved. “And there isn’t any use in alibiing a team which has finished last in every department of play.” Only a rainout of the season’s finale with Washington prevented the club from finishing with the worst record in franchise history.
But the bad news didn’t end with the season. In November, the state board of appeals ruled that Quinn had to pay an additional $27,575 in taxes on the club’s profits from the sale of Ruth and Mays to New York.
Since it didn’t seem possible that things could be worse in 1926, even Kenesaw Mountain Landis sensed at least a possibility of improvement. “You seem to have a fine lot of athletes here and I wish you all kinds of luck,” the commissioner of baseball told Quinn at the club’s New Orleans training camp, saying that he’d wager “a golf stick or two” that Boston would pull itself out of the basement.
When the Sox came from 10 runs down in the fifth inning to nearly catch the Yankees on Opening Day in the Fens, it seemed that they might at least quicken heartbeats. “If you are inclined to apoplexy, heart trouble, shocks or faints don’t spend your afternoons at Fenway Park,” the Globe’s Ford Sawyer cautioned after the riveting 12-11 loss.
But after the hosts went down, 11-2, to the Indians on May 7, the distress signals were unmistakable. “The Sinking of the Ship. A Farce-Comedy in Nine Acts directed by T. Speaker,” read the Globe headline the next morning. A day later, the theater itself was charred by a three-alarm fire that ravaged the third-base bleachers.
The front office, which had far more seats than it needed for a last-place enterprise, simply roped off the area and continued as before. The owner was more concerned about his ramshackle club, which was a far more extensive and expensive renovation project. “We get players who have been highly recommended, and who were desired by other clubs,” said Quinn, “but when we get them they do not seem to hold up for us.”
By Memorial Day, all that his club was holding up was the rest of the league. The Sox were 18½ games behind, en route to their poorest campaign ever (46-107). After they lost their final 14 games, all at home, Quinn was looking for a savior who actually had seen a pennant flying over the premises.
The obvious candidate was Bill Carrigan, the former catcher-manager who’d led the club to its 1915 and 1916 championships. Carrigan, however, was content with his life in Maine and had no desire to return to the dugout. “I shall not get back in the game,” he declared in October after Fohl had resigned. But by December, after visiting with Quinn, Carrigan found himself back on the payroll. “I got talking baseball,” he said, “and before I knew it I was manager of the Red Sox again.”
No longer a member of the Red Sox, the Babe still went to bat for some Boston causes, including this Girl Scout Day promotion at Fenway in 1923.
He was, Sawyer wrote, “the Moses who is expected to lead a downcast Boston aggregation out of the wilderness of defeat and disappointment.” But Carrigan would have had a better chance of parting the Charles River than of leading the bedraggled Sox to the first division, much less the promised land. His club, a 50-1 long shot to win the 1927 pennant, was dead on arrival by Opening Day.
The Sox dropped the season’s first game by four runs at Washingto
n, as the skipper “exhorted, wheedled, commanded, coaxed, bullied, and pleaded.” They were swept by the Senators, and then lost three of four games at New York, including a 14-2 blasting. By Labor Day, the only reason to come to the park was to watch Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the rest of the Yankees’ “Murderer’s Row” launch baseballs skyward. Nearly 35,000 showed up for the doubleheader with New York, the largest Fenway crowd since 1915, with the Globe reporting that “other thousands crashed the barriers, broke them down and swept into the grounds.”
So fans were startled to see the Sox outlast the Yankees, 12-11, in the 18-inning opener, with Red Ruffing pitching the first 15 innings for the home side. The game lasted so long—four hours and 20 minutes—that the nightcap had to be shortened to five innings, which were completed in a brisk 55 minutes with New York winning, 5-0. The clubs split another twin bill the next day, with Ruth clouting three homers. The first, which cleared the center-field fence to the right of the flagpole, was deemed the longest hit at Fenway up to that point. “Nobody at the park could tell where it landed,” wrote O’Leary, “but when it disappeared it was headed for the Charles River Basin.”
The Yankees went on to claim the pennant by a whopping 19 games and swept the Pirates in the World Series, as Boston was buried 40 games behind in the cellar. Still, Carrigan was optimistic about his men’s chances for 1928, predicting that they’d be “a better ball club in many ways.” Indeed, the Sox climbed out of the basement amid a May blossoming that had them in fourth place after six home victories in a row. “The time-worn theory that there are only eight basic jokes will have to be revised,” the New York Post suggested. “The Boston Red Sox have climbed into the first division in the American League.”
