Even after the big buy from Philadelphia, Weeghman had plenty of kale (that’s 1918-speak for money) remaining, and Hornsby was next. Alexander gave the Cubs the pitching staff of a contender. But the team was far too light on hitting, and though there were high hopes for young second baseman Pete Kilduff and even younger shortstop Charley Hollocher, the Cubs needed an infielder who could hit in the middle of the lineup. They wanted Hornsby, who had just finished his third season. He was a talented but very cocky 21-year-old Texan whose attitude didn’t play well in St. Louis, especially not with Rickey. After 1917, Hornsby demanded a salary of $10,000, a ridiculous amount for a player of such little experience. (Alexander, by way of example, was being paid $12,000 per year and had been in the majors for seven years.) The cash-strapped Cardinals offered $5,400, and the irascible Hornsby threatened to retire rather than sign—a threat that, with no system of free agency, was commonly made by players but rarely acted on. Still, Hornsby’s threat created a window for the Cubs. Hornsby would later become the greatest right-handed hitter in history, winner of seven batting championships and two triple crowns. But, as of that winter, no one knew Hornsby would be that good. He was just a young player with big potential and a bigger ego.
Weeghman and Rickey had been dueling publicly over Hornsby. Without being quoted directly, Weeghman showed a letter to Daily News reporter Oscar Reichow in which he wrote, “What are you going to do about players? The offer for Rogers Hornsby still goes. There is $50,000 in the bank, you can take it or leave it.”17 The letter was addressed to Rickey. Two days later, Rickey blasted Weeghman, denying that any offer had been made and asserting that Hornsby could not be bought. Weeghman responded with feigned surprise. He was shocked—shocked!— by Rickey’s accusation, apparently forgetting the letter he’d shown Reichow. “In my talk about players needed I have not mentioned St. Louis or any other club by name,” he said. “As for Horsnby, I have not tried to get him.”18
This is how the Hornsby negotiations went all winter. Weeghman and Rickey poked each other publicly and made angry statements but continually held secret talks. Weeghman and Rickey met during the NL meetings and again later that week. On December 21, the Daily News reported that Weeghman “padded his feet and tiptoed out of town last night to attempt to close a deal” in St. Louis for Hornsby, estimating that Weeghman would offer $75,000.19 But Rickey put out word that he would not give up Hornsby for cash alone. At another meeting in Cincinnati in January, Weeghman was so confident he’d land Hornsby that he brought a contingent of Chicago writers. The Tribune reported, “Diligent scribes had Hornsby sold to the Cubs today. In exchange, they allowed the Cards pitchers [Claude] Hendrix, [Paul] Carter and [Vic] Aldridge, shortstop [Chuck] Wortman and a bale of cash.”20 But the Hornsby deal—discussed into March—never happened, and the scribes’ diligence was misplaced.
Missing out on Hornsby was a personal defeat for Charley, on two fronts. First, by focusing so intently on Hornsby, the Cubs missed other opportunities to upgrade their offense, by adding either a different infielder or an outfielder. The Cubs did get 36-year-old Dode Paskert from Philadelphia, swapping talented hitter Cy Williams. They also landed pitcher Lefty Tyler, a protégé of Mitchell’s when he was coaching for the Braves, for two players and $15,000. But, as the winter went on, it became clear that other owners were embittered toward Weeghman. He was too public about his $250,000 bankroll, and his offers for Hornsby only further swelled Hornsby’s ego and made him firmer in his contract negotiation with St. Louis. Rickey made a strong anti-Weeghman speech at one NL meeting, and Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss accused Weeghman of tampering.
That bitter cold of December was a harbinger of one of the worst Chicago winters on record. By the middle of January, Chicago was brought to a standstill by snow, keeping residents homebound for much of the month—in all, a record 42.5 inches of snow fell that January, which did not help Weeghman’s restaurants. Nor his mood. Charley was, according to The Sporting News, “somewhat depressed and out of humor.”21 He’d already indicated a desire to get out of the Cubs presidency, which probably had more to do with his sliding financial condition than with a desire to leave. But the Rickey mess further soured him. The Alexander-Killefer trade was great, but Weeghman had been foiled and humiliated in his attempt to decorate the Cubs roster with star players. The Mad Spendthrift hadn’t come close to using all of his $250,000, and the Cubs eventually saved face by putting $100,000 of the bankroll into a Liberty Bond.
Weeghman had been suckered. “There is good reason to believe that Branch Rickey of the St. Louis Cardinals did rather encourage Weeghman in the idea that the Cubs could land Rogers Hornsby,” The Sporting News reported, “but when it came to a showdown, Rickey changed front.”22
The Cubs would enter the 1918 season with a revamped pitching staff but with a questionable offense. It seemed to Weeghman that there was a conspiracy against him on the part of other owners. Maybe it was payback for his Federal League involvement or, more likely, payback for his parading about with an enormous bankroll. Or maybe the conspiracy was all in Weeghman’s head. Maybe, for once, he was just unlucky.
THE ORIGINAL CURSE: CHARLEY WEEGHMAN
The 1918 season was the last time anyone would, without irony, call Charley Weeghman “Lucky Charley.” By December, Weeghman had sold all his stock to Wrigley and was out of baseball. Just over a year later his wife, Bessie, filed for divorce, citing infidelity—she was awarded $400 per month, a good indication that Charley was no millionaire. On August 9, 1920, Charley’s business interests were placed in receivership for failure to pay bills. As Wrigley put it, Charley had tried to “butter his bread too thin.”23
Weeghman left Chicago but failed in three separate efforts to start restaurants in Manhattan. Far from matching his former wealth (real or imaginary), Lucky Charley was employed as an associate manager at the Riviera club and restaurant at the Palisades in New Jersey when he died in 1938.
THREE
Preparedness: Harry Frazee and Ed Barrow
NEW YORK, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1918
It should have been a momentous announcement, a decision made after much wrangling, after interviews, after careful consideration of a parade of candidates. But Ed was not going to argue. He wasn’t going to sneeze at a job like this one—not in these times. His resignation was official, to no one’s surprise—his near fistfight with Buffalo owner Joseph Lannin had been the talk of baseball back in December, and there was no way he was coming back after that. Now he was no longer Ed Barrow, president of the International League. The whole thing could go to smash for all he cared, and it probably would with the war on. He had worked hard for the IL. It was an exhausting job. His reward: they cut his salary from $7,500 to $2,500. Ed was through with minor-league ball. For more than two months, Barrow had been advising Red Sox owner Harry Frazee on transactions, and now he officially would be given a job with Boston.
The job itself was a surprise. Manager. It had been 14 years since Barrow had been a field man in the big leagues, those two miserable years with the Tigers in 1903 and ’04. Ed knew he was not the first choice. Frazee had hoped that the previous year’s manager, Jack Barry, might get exempted from the war, or that Bill Carrigan, hero of Red Sox champs past, might be sweet-talked out of the Maine banking game into a return. Barrow, in that case, would have gone to Boston as team secretary. But now it was manager. Ed was not well versed on inside strategy, but he’d get help with that. If there was one thing Ed was sure he could do, it was keep the boys in line, get ’em to bed early, and keep ’em in condition. Barrow had been cast aside by the major leagues after his poor showing in Detroit, which wasn’t particularly fair. A bunch of pikers, that Tigers team. But the Red Sox were not pikers. Ed thought he might do something big with Boston.
Almost as soon as he turned in his official resignation to the heads of the IL, Ed got the call from Frazee. He answered the telephone to Frazee’s voice saying this: “Say, Ed, I have just selected you as manager of the
1918 Red Sox. Want the job?”
Ed replied: “Well, Harry, I wanted that job ever since I knew Jack Barry couldn’t return. But I was afraid that if I asked for it, you might say, ‘Get out of this opera house.’”1
So that was it. Anticlimactic, sure. But he was now Ed Barrow, manager of the Red Sox. He walked out of the lobby of the Hotel Imperial and out of minor-league ball forever. There was a gray chill on Broadway, and Ed looked up 32nd Street to Penn Station. He hoped he was prepared for this.
This is how the devil—or, at least, the greatest boogeyman in the history of baseball curses—once described himself:
Stature: 5 feet, 7 inches
Forehead: High
Eyes: Gray
Nose: Grecian
Mouth: Medium
Chin: Firm
Hair: Black
Complexion: Ruddy
Face: Full, clean shaven
When it comes to Harry Frazee, much is misunderstood, exaggerated, debated, or just plain false. He was wealthy, or he was broke. He was desperate for money to produce a failed musical called No, No, Nanette, or No, No, Nanette was a hit and came well after the sale of Ruth. He greedily sold players for money, or he made shrewd transactions that just didn’t work out in the end. And maybe his contemporaries thought he was Jewish and disliked him for it. Maybe not. At least when Frazee filled out an application for a U.S. passport on June 8, 1911, just three weeks shy of his 31st birthday (he is often listed as having been born in 1881, though he wrote 1880 on official documents), there were some definite truths on the record. He was five-foot-seven, with black hair, for example. His nose was, um, Grecian.
Today’s fan knows Frazee as the Red Sox owner who sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920. That’s true. But he did not, as suggested by popular lore, sell Ruth to support a musical called, No, No, Nanette, which came well after the sale of Ruth. Closer timing-wise was the play on which No, No, Nanette was based, called My Lady Friends, but even in that case there is scant evidence that the sale of Ruth was directly related to the financing of the production. Ironically, No, No, Nanette, so despised by Red Sox fans, was a hit more than a year before it reached Broadway—a 1925 review in the New York Times said, “It was not difficult last night at the Globe Theatre to understand why ‘No, No, Nanette’ for the last twelve and more months has proved so popular with the natives of Chicago and points West, East, North, South.”2 Hits were not uncommon for Frazee, a self-made giant of the theater world. Many of his productions were hits, and he owned theaters in Boston, New York, and Chicago. Frazee did sell Ruth. He sold a slew of stars, mostly to the Yankees, and his ownership of the Red Sox undoubtedly caused him financial distress. But there’s no evidence that his motives for selling Ruth were Nanette-related, as legend holds.
Frazee liked to spend and wasn’t very responsible with his money. But just how irresponsible he was, and what condition his bank account was in when he sold Ruth in 1920, is a subject of testy debate among baseball historians. Frazee owed money to Joseph Lannin, the team’s previous owner, and Ruth had become a headache who was disruptive to the team and to Frazee’s bottom line—Ruth had gotten into the habit of making exorbitant contract demands. When the Yankees made a reported $125,000 offer to Frazee (some historians say it was actually $100,000), it proved too much to pass up. But was Frazee selling because he thought he could make the team better? Or because he was making a cash grab? If he wanted to make the team better, he could have accepted an offer from the White Sox, who would have given up $60,000 and outfielder Joe Jackson. There are tax filings showing Frazee was so down on his luck that he reported negative income in 1918,3 but there is a counterargument that Frazee and other well-heeled men of the day easily found loopholes in the nation’s fledgling income tax system.
Either way, Frazee’s sell-off—though not universally panned by the press—was labeled “the rape of the Red Sox” by writer Burt Whitman, a phrase perpetuated by Fred Lieb’s oft-cited book, Baseball as I Have Known It.4 But Whitman and Lieb weren’t the only ones with a negative view of Frazee. “He was money-mad,” Red Sox outfielder Harry Hooper said. “He soon sold most of our best players and ruined the team.”5 Hooper told another interviewer, “I was disgusted. The Yankees dynasty of the twenties was three-quarters the Red Sox of a few years before…. [Frazee] was short of cash and he sold the whole team down the river to keep his dirty nose above water.”6
That view persists. But go back to 1918 and remember that Frazee was seen as well liked (by most), wealthy, and powerful. His passport application is a reminder that Frazee was just a guy—imperfect, but not the embodiment of evil a generation of Red Sox fans would later imagine. Frazee was heading into his second season as owner, a bit stockier than when he had applied for a passport in 1911, and the stress of his business interests no doubt made his face ruddier. Alcohol added to the ruddiness. Irving Caesar, a lyricist, once said, “Harry Frazee never drew a sober breath in his life, but he was a hell of a producer. He made more sense drunk than most men do sober.”7 In a Baseball Magazine article, Frazee was described as being, “short, stocky, heavy set … his head is enormous.”8 He was a bundle of energy, always talking, shifting from one task to the next. In the clichéd language of the day, Baseball Magazine called Frazee “a sizzling, scintillating live wire.” With an enormous head.
With few other options, Harry matter-of-factly hired Ed to be his manager in February 1918. There was some question about whether Barrow, accustomed to the front office, could handle the job. From Frazee’s perspective, Barrow’s personnel experience was an added benefit. After his first year in the owner’s chair, Frazee decided that, however much fun it was to own a team, he’d prefer to have someone else make player decisions. Someone like Barrow.
It was an odd match. Barrow was a favorite of AL president Ban Johnson, and after Barrow quit the International League that winter it was Johnson who helped place Barrow with the Red Sox. Frazee wasn’t a likely candidate to be offered—or to accept—favors from Johnson. Though he had been the owner of the Red Sox for only one full season, Frazee already knew that if there was one aspect of owning a baseball team he most disliked, it was dealing with Ban Johnson. The feeling was mutual.
If Frazee remains a controversial figure these days, it’s only fitting, because in his 1918 heyday he was the AL’s most controversial owner—which is to say, simply, that Johnson hated him. As the father of the AL, Johnson ruled his league like a benevolent dictator, though in 1918 his dictatorial grip would begin to weaken. Johnson’s domineering personality helped sustain the AL through hard times, and elder magnates tended to put up with Johnson’s quirks in deference to his past leadership. But Frazee was not an elder magnate. He was young and brash, just 38. When he bought the Red Sox in November 1916, the deal was done strictly between Frazee and Joseph Lannin (the same man who later owned an International League team and nearly came to blows with Barrow). There had been no consultation with Johnson on the sale. That’s just not how things were done in the AL. Everything went through Johnson. Within two days of the sale to Frazee, an article in the Boston Globe said Johnson was already wondering if the deal should be undone. The tone was set for a contentious relationship.
It was contentious, and eventually Johnson and Frazee became the bitterest of enemies. But they weren’t yet enemies in 1918, and Johnson’s fondness for Barrow outweighed his disdain for Frazee. Johnson even manipulated his league’s rosters to benefit Frazee’s club—which, Johnson already knew, would be Barrow’s club too. Frazee, like Weeghman, saw the 1918 season as an opportunity and was a buyer. That winter word spread that Frazee had wagered $2,000 against $12,000 that the war would be over by the time baseball began its season in the spring.9 Even if the war persisted, Frazee thought Americans would attend ball games. “People must be amused,” Frazee said. “They must have their recreation despite the grim horrors of war.”10
Connie Mack, manager of the Athletics, was a seller. The day after Weeghman traded for Alexander and
Killefer, the Red Sox made a blockbuster purchase at the AL meetings in Chicago, facilitated by Johnson. Frazee laid out $60,000 and sent off three players for speedy outfielder Amos Strunk, catcher Wally Schang, and pitcher “Bullet Joe” Bush. At the same time, Mack and Frazee arranged for the trade of another star, first baseman Stuffy McInnis—the pride of Gloucester High, just 35 miles north of Boston—for cash and players to be named, though that trade did not become official until the middle of January. Mack’s once-proud A’s were gutted. The demolition job done on Philadelphia’s AL team ranked only with Baker’s crushing of the NL’s Phillies.
After being traded from the A’s, Stuffy McInnis (left) prepares to sign his contract, with Red Sox owner Harry Frazee (middle) and former manager Jack Barry seated with him. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY, COOPERSTOWN, N.Y.)
The Original Curse Page 4
