The next morning, Weeghman showed up once again at Lasker’s office. He hadn’t found another buyer. Would Lasker consider buying in?
This time, Lasker had an answer. He would take a 15 percent share in the team for the stated $150,000, he told Weeghman, but he had to be “protected.” First, one of his own lawyers, Alfred S. Austrian, had to be retained as the Cubs’ attorney. Extremely well connected, Austrian boasted a client list that included not only Lasker and other prominent Chicago business leaders, but also Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox. Austrian was an art collector, the owner of a page from an original Gutenberg Bible, and a scratch golfer, and was both extremely intelligent and likeable.11 This latter quality, Lasker once commented, served his lawyer well: “Mr. Austrian was a man who was very aggressive in that way—a very dominating man—but with a very wonderful personality so that he often got away with it.”12
Weeghman agreed to hire Austrian. Then came Lasker’s second condition: Lasker wanted the right to approve the directors of the franchise. Again, Weeghman agreed.
At the organizational meeting of the team’s owners, Lasker announced that he wanted both William Wrigley and Ogden Armour to serve on the Cubs board. Neither man was in attendance at this unimportant meeting, of course; they had sent proxies. Armour’s representative made it clear that the prominent meatpacker had no intention of participating in the affairs of a ball club. Lasker then demanded that George Marcey—head of Armour’s grain division, whom Lasker knew—be elected instead. Marcey, reached by phone, agreed, and was elected to the board.
Wrigley’s representative proved less successful at fighting off Lasker. Lasker announced he was certain that Wrigley—then out of town and unavailable by phone—would agree to become a director, and insisted that the group elect him in absentia. (This was pure bravado on Lasker’s part; he didn’t even know Wrigley.) Wrigley was elected.
Then the aggressive new minority owner took steps to make the election stick. As Lasker later recalled: “When Mr. Wrigley returned, I went to see him. He had no interest in baseball. I don’t think Mr. Wrigley even knew that there were three strikes for an out. I mean that seriously. I’m sure he didn’t know what a squeeze play would mean. However, he assented when I put my reasons before him. He immediately became intrigued with it as an avocation.”13
“Intrigued,” perhaps, but not particularly involved. So Lasker continued to cultivate Wrigley, whose office was just across the hall from his own “hideaway” suite in the Maller Building. Lasker talked baseball with the chewing gum magnate. He took him to Cubs games. He persuaded Wrigley to allow the franchise to rename Weeghman’s elegant North Side ballpark “Wrigley Field,” on the grounds that it would be good for business. And when Weeghman’s financial condition worsened, Lasker persuaded Wrigley to join him in buying Weeghman out.
Throughout, Lasker—the team’s largest shareholder—stayed well behind the scenes. “I am perfectly willing to put you out in front as main owner of the team,” he told Wrigley, “and let you get this publicity.”14 Lasker, who judged Wrigley to be a “one-idea man,” knew what motivated his fellow owner: “He lived for Wrigley’s Chewing Gum.”15 If something could get the Wrigley name in front of the public, that was enough for Will Wrigley. Not until December 1918 did Wrigley attend a Cubs board meeting, although by that time he had been a director for nearly two years.
Gradually, with Lasker’s encouragement, Wrigley got more involved with the Cubs. It was his idea, for example, to hire Chicago American sportswriter Bill Veeck as the team’s general manager—a job at which Veeck proved to be enormously talented.16 With Lasker pushing from behind, “Wrigley’s Cubs” made headlines by buying the outstanding pitcher-and-catcher combination of Grover Cleveland Alexander and William Killifer Jr. from Philadelphia in December 1917 for the then staggering sum of $50,000. “Nobody had ever heard of money like that,” Lasker crowed.17
In the spring of 1919, Veeck learned that he could buy the contract of Lee Magee—a gifted second baseman with the Brooklyn Robins (soon to be renamed the Dodgers)—for a modest $5,000.18 Even as the deal was being closed, Veeck confessed to Lasker that he was worried.19 Magee had passed the Cubs’ physical exam with no problems. So why was Brooklyn owner Charlie Ebbets so eager to deal him away?
Magee played only eight games for the Cubs in 1919, in part because of rumors that he was “crooked.” Then, on February 10, 1920, Veeck learned the truth: while playing for the Cincinnati Reds in 1918, Magee had tried to throw a game to the Boston Braves. Cincinnati owner Garry Herrmann unloaded his tainted second baseman on Brooklyn, conveniently failing to mention the gambling rumors. When Ebbets got wind of Magee’s reputation, he too bailed out, selling Magee to the Cubs.
Lasker and several other members of the team’s executive committee discussed the situation with Veeck.20 They decided that they would refuse to honor their contract with Magee and that they would demand that baseball’s all-powerful National Commission—consisting of men who were either the heads of leagues or the owners of clubs—throw Magee out of the game.
There were several complicating factors, including the fact that Cincinnati owner Herrmann was one of the three members of the National Commission. This infuriated Veeck, who was a “very high type of man,” in Lasker’s estimation.21 Veeck was incensed that Herrmann—an owner with partial responsibility for the fortunes of America’s national pastime—had knowingly dumped a crooked player on a fellow owner.
Not surprisingly, the National Commission wanted to keep the whole affair quiet. “They said, ‘Oh, no, baseball can’t have a scandal like that,’” Lasker recalled, “‘We mustn’t have a scandal.’”22 But Veeck persisted, and on February 20, 1920, the Cubs unconditionally released Magee.
The drama now threatened to spin out of control. Magee announced his intention to sue the Cubs for breach of contract. The National Commission, headed by Ban Johnson—a legendary baseball figure who almost single-handedly had built the American League into a powerhouse and now controlled the Commission—strongly urged Veeck to settle. If the suit went ahead, they argued, baseball would get a black eye from which it might not recover.
Veeck and the Cubs’ executive committee elected to stand on principle. “We all decided, by gum,” Lasker explained, “that we’d go through with the lawsuit even if it busted up baseball. We didn’t want to be in a thing like that.”23
In federal court in Cincinnati, the Cubs argued that, “previous to the making of the contract the plaintiff was guilty of betting against the team of which he was a member, and sought to win bets by intentional bad playing to defeat said team.” On the witness stand, Magee confessed to having bet on games involving the Reds while he was a member of that team, but argued that his Cubs contract nevertheless should be enforced. The court disagreed. On June 9, 1920, Magee’s suit was thrown out, and he was banned for life from organized baseball.24
By standing up to Ban Johnson, Veeck and his Executive Committee demonstrated considerable courage.25 The National Commission exercised enormous authority over the game and had a history of showing favoritism toward compliant owners and punishing uncooperative ones. Among the latter group were the Boston Red Sox’s Harry Frazee, the New York Yankees’ Jacob Ruppert, the Chicago White Sox’s Charles Comiskey, and the Pittburgh Pirates’ Barney Dreyfuss, each of whom had battled with the Commission. Comiskey was perhaps the angriest of all, believing that several of Johnson’s rulings had unfairly hurt the White Sox.
The story that endures from the 1919 World Series is probably apocryphal. According to legend, a newsboy called out to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of eight Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the series to Cincinnati, as his hero left the Cook County courthouse in Chicago on September 29, 1920. Jackson had just finished testifying in front of a grand jury. Say it ain’t so, Joe, the anguished newsboy implored. Jackson—a wonderfully talented outfielder and, according to both Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, the greatest hitter in the history of basebal
l—supposedly replied, “It’s so, kid.”26
That a group of professional ball players would conspire to rig the World Series deeply offended America. “The country as a whole,” Lasker said, “was almost as shocked as if they had heard that the president of the United States, or members of the Cabinet of the United States, had been bribed.”27
The facts were both simple and baffling. Charlie Comiskey’s Chicago White Sox were the best team in baseball in 1919—probably one of the best teams of all time. (Although Lasker was a Cubs fan, he arranged his business schedule to ensure that he could attend the first game of the Series. “I have never missed an opening game of the Series,” he wrote unapologetically to one business associate, who wanted him to be elsewhere that day.28) The White Sox went up against Garry Herrmann’s Cincinnati Reds, and—astoundingly—lost a best-of-nine series by a score of five to three. Somehow, the White Sox fielders couldn’t field cleanly at critical junctures; their winning pitchers mostly couldn’t win; their fearsome hitters couldn’t come up with timely hits.
For no apparent reason, just as the Series opened, the gambling odds shifted heavily in favor of Cincinnati. Chicago sportswriters—among them the gifted Ring Lardner, a friend of Lasker’s—smelled a rat, but no one could point to anything concrete. Rumors of great sums of money being bet on the games swirled in the background, but again, no one could turn up proof that gamblers were influencing the outcome. The eighth game ended with Cincinnati taking the championship trophy home, while angry Chicago fans went into the winter months scratching their heads.
Almost a full year later, in an interview in the Philadelphia North American, a shady character known sometimes as Billy “Maharg” (and at other times Billy “Graham”) detailed how the 1919 Series was fixed, with the active involvement of Arnold Rothstein and other prominent gamblers. A grand jury was impaneled, and at the end of September 1920, three members of the White Sox—soon to be known in disgrace as the “Black Sox”—confessed that they and five of their teammates had thrown the Series.
Lasker called an emergency meeting with Veeck and told the Cubs’ manager that he feared the Black Sox scandal might destroy baseball. Veeck agreed. A loss of public confidence in the integrity of the game was only one concern. Far more ominous was an unrelated case then being appealed by organized baseball in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. If the lower court’s decision was not overturned, professional baseball would be deemed a combination in restraint of trade—a monopoly—and effectively dismantled. The Black Sox scandal could nudge the appellate court judge in the wrong direction.29
Lasker told Veeck that the structure of organized baseball—the National Commission—was partly to blame for the fiasco. He had made a similar argument a year earlier, in a reorganization proposal that had been ignored by the Commission.30 “They have vested interests,” Lasker reiterated. “They can’t make decisions freely, because they are too involved themselves.”31
Again, Veeck agreed. But what would an alternative structure look like?
Lasker set out to answer that question. Working closely with his lawyer, Alfred Austrian—who was also the lawyer for both the White Sox and the Cubs, and was deeply involved in the investigation into the Black Sox scandal—Lasker drew up a four-page plan for a new commission, consisting of three independent commissioners: one elected by the National League, another elected by the American League, and a third elected by the minor leagues.32 These commissioners had to be nationally prominent individuals, outside of baseball, and each had to be acceptable to the other two leagues. Lasker’s plan even put forward the names of individuals who he thought would fill the bill, including California’s renegade senator Hiram Johnson.33
Another name on Lasker’s list was that of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Although Lasker had met Landis once, a decade earlier, he knew the judge mainly by his reputation.34 Named for the Civil War battle in which his father had received grave injuries, Landis had achieved national celebrity in 1907 by levying a $29 million fine against Standard Oil for multiple violations of federal laws governing interstate commerce. It was the largest fine ever imposed by an American court up to that point, establishing Landis’s reputation as a tough and independent-minded jurist. Briefly, Landis was touted as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election—a boomlet that he firmly quashed. “I have the best position in the world,” he wrote. “I would not give up the judicial work for three times Mr. John D. Rockefeller’s money.”35
Another qualification that may have helped put Landis on Lasker’s list was the fact that the judge was a Cubs fan. (Landis had been booed by White Sox fans during the 1906 Cubs-White Sox World Series.) But Landis, ever the embodiment of probity, made a point of attending American, National, and Federal League games—and accepting free tickets from no one.36
Lasker first revealed his plan (and his list of candidates) to the Cubs’ Executive Committee. “We are in back of you,” they told Lasker. “Go to it.”37 With this endorsement in hand, Lasker signed up New York Giants owner Charles Stoneham and manager John McGraw in a subsequent meeting.38 Next, a week after the eight White Sox were indicted, Lasker invited representatives of five major league teams to an October 5, 1920, meeting at Austrian’s office. These included the owners of the American League’s White Sox, Yankees, and Red Sox and the National League’s Cubs and Giants. Lasker laid out his plan to them, arguing that the only way to save their game was to give someone from outside of the game “complete power over baseball.” Having people with financial interests in the game make key decisions, he told them, was “bound to result in scandal.”39
Seven team owners agreed to what Lasker dubbed the “Lasker Plan.” It was an uncharacteristic bit of self-promotion. “My little boy was madly in love with baseball,” he explained, “and I wanted to show off for my little boy.”40 The owners signed the document—although, typically, Lasker himself did not sign for the Cubs.
The signatories included the owners of both New York and Chicago franchises—“where the big money came from,” explained Lasker. If the New York and Chicago franchises bolted, the existing American and National Leagues could not survive. He made full use of that leverage. That night, he and Veeck mailed out seven hundred copies of their manifesto to the owners of every major and minor league team in the country, as well as to the sports editors of all major newspapers.
None of this could have come as a surprise to Ban Johnson, since the original meeting was reported on in the newspapers and the proposal generated hundreds of telegrams of support, including more than fifty from minor-league owners.41 But Johnson chose to downplay the significance of the rebellion. “Who is this fellow Lasker?” Johnson asked a reporter. “I’ve never heard of him.”42
Lasker felt no personal animosity toward Johnson, whom he considered the “greatest figure baseball ever produced.” But he felt that Johnson had become an autocrat and that the National Commission he headed was hopelessly compromised.43 It was time for a change. When reporters repeated Johnson’s question to Lasker—who is this fellow Lasker?—he responded coolly, “Mr. Johnson will have heard of me before this is over.”44
Five American League teams (Philadelphia, Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, and St. Louis) immediately announced that they would support Johnson and the existing National Commission. In the National League, all but Cincinnati Reds president Garry Herrmann sided with Lasker—and soon enough, the Reds too came around, mainly because Lasker went to see Herrmann’s financial backers (“friends of mine,” he admitted), and they forced Herrmann to sign up with the insurgents. Lasker’s allies announced that, if necessary, they would set up a new twelve-team league that would include a new franchise in Detroit, then one of the American League’s most lucrative franchises.
The American League (except Chicago, New York, and Boston) shot back, publicly denouncing the Lasker Plan as risky and ineffectual. In the face of this opposition, Lasker worked to shore up the resolve of his National League allies. Brooklyn’s Charl
ie Ebbets, for example, asked how long Lasker and the Cubs would stick with a new league that was almost certain to lose large amounts of money.
“Until Wrigley’s lost his last dollar,” Lasker replied.45
On November 8, the National League teams formally voted to overthrow Ban Johnson and establish a three-man commission of outsiders. As its chairman, they selected a figure already well known to both Standard Oil shareholders and baseball moguls: Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
There are several versions of how Landis’s name got put in front of the November 8 meeting.46 As Lasker told the story, his ubiquitous attorney, Alfred Austrian, summoned Lasker to his office while the National League meetings were in process.47 Austrian told Lasker that he had offered the top commissioner’s job to a qualified individual.
“You’ve engaged the man?” Lasker repeated, stunned. “What authority have you to engage the man? You have no authority to engage a man. You’re our attorney. You’re my close personal friend. But certainly, the meeting is going to decide upon who the man is.” No, Austrian replied; the owners would do what Lasker told them to do. Still amazed at his lawyer’s effrontery, Lasker asked to whom Austrian had offered the commissioner’s post.
“Kenesaw Mountain Landis,” Austrian replied.48
Austrian next revealed that he also had promised Landis a salary of $50,000 a year—an enormous increase from his judge’s salary of $7,500. Again, Lasker marveled at his lawyer’s nerve, but admitted that the owners could readily come up with $50,000 from World Series gate receipts.
Then Austrian made one final disclosure. He felt strongly that Landis was the right man for the job, but he also had another motivation for pushing Landis.
The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century Page 21