by Jim Gerard
3. The Phantom Elevator Fight. After the Yanks’ third straight loss to the Dodgers in the 1981 World Series, Steinbrenner claimed that while in his hotel elevator, he “clocked” two Dodger fans who had taunted him by calling the Yanks “chokers” and then hit him over the head with a beer bottle. And yet, according to Murray Chass of the New York Times, nobody believed a word of George’s story. There were no witnesses. Nobody came forward to sue him or even report the incident. “Despite a variety of injuries—a cast-covered left hand, scraped knuckles on his right hand, a bump on his head, a bloody lip—Steinbrenner failed to convince everyone that he really had engaged in a fight,” Chass wrote.
4. Political shenanigans. Besides the illegal campaign contributions, George’s insidious relations with New York City politicos, especially former mayor Rudy Giuliani, are a political hidden-ball trick. He gave Giuliani ample free advertising and electioneering time—even allowing him to do TV and radio interviews with the Yanks’ broadcasters during games. He proffered free post-season tickets and wined and dined top city officials. And he hired as team president Randy Levine, the city’s former deputy mayor for economic development (who was once a Yankee attorney and also worked for Major League Baseball). As one writer put it, “Helps to have a Steinbrenner pal in the mayor’s inner sanctum when you’re trying to get a new taxpayer-funded stadium, no?”
George Goes Bonkers:
A Peek Into the Future
Everybody knows we’ve hardly seen the last of Mt. Steinbrenner. Here are some explosions we’re likely to see from the Yanks’ blowhard owner:1. After a loss to the Devil Rays, George orders Brian Cashman to eat dog food off the floor of his office. Cashman complies; it still beats Stadium hot dogs.
2. Yanks fall into second place. George orders grounds crew to perform “YMCA” routine wearing only thongs.
3. Relievers get hammered. Bullpen coach “disappeared.”
4. Three-game losing streak. George has team physician undo employee’ dental work; fillings are removed, root canals re-excavated.
5. After he runs out of players to get rid of, George picks out random fan from crowd and trades him to Kansas City.
6. George punishes a slumping A-Rod by locking him in a dank Stadium basement chained to John Sterling.
NOTES
1 Selena Roberts, New York Times, September 30, 2004.
2 “The Yankees Most Valuable Player,” Chris Smith, New York magazine, September 2004.
3 The coach was Mike Ferraro, who in Game 2 of the 1980 ALCS against Kansas City, waved in Willie Randolph, who later occupied the same third-base coaching box.
4 From www.thesmokinggun.com/yankees/georgesnitchi. html.
5 Most of the information about the future of the team comes from “Life After the Boss,” New York Daily News, late 2003.
6 Tampa Bay Business Journal, September 13, 1996. American Shipbuilding bought a Tampa tugboat operation, Marine Towing, in 2004 (source: St. Petersburg Times, April 28, 2004).
7 “Steinbrenner Aims to Put All His Houses in Order,” Juliet Macur, New York Times, May 2, 2004.
8 Wayne Coffey, New York Daily News, www.nydailynews. com/sports/baseball/story/47460p-44621c.html.
Chapter Five
THE DARK SIDE OF THE YANKEES
In Yankeeland, nobody lives but heroes, legends, and various kinds of Bronx nobility. The Yankee goats and chokers—like Politburo members fallen into disfavor—have been carefully airbrushed from the official history. But if you peer beneath the team mythology, you’ll find a seamy underbelly of vice, corruption, and bigotry that extends back to the origins of the franchise.
The Yankees would have you believe that the team sprung full-blown into glory in 1920 with the arrival of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox. However, the franchise came into existence originally as the Baltimore Orioles, and then the New York Americans (nicknamed the Highlanders, among other things) under extremely dubious circumstances in 1903.
A little background: At the turn of the twentieth century, there was only one major league, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, which was formed in 1876.1 In 1899, the Western League (a minor league in the Midwest) aspired to major-league status and changed its name to the American League. After the 1900 season, its president, Ban Johnson, and three of the league owners, decided to move their teams into eastern cities to challenge the National League monopoly. They wanted to place one of the new clubs in New York City, but they were stymied by the National League owners, who had strong political ties to the Tammany Hall Democratic machine that had run New York for most of the nineteenth century. The franchise instead was placed in Baltimore, whose National League club had folded the previous year when the league contracted. In 1902, Andrew Freedman, the owner of the New York Giants, bought the Orioles and raided the team for players (a very common occurrence in the Gay Nineties era of “syndicate” ownership). In response to this, Johnson and the league took over the Baltimore franchise, still planning to move them to New York.
According to David Pietrusza, author of Major Leagues: The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present (McFarland & Co., 1991), Johnson found a promising site bordered by 142nd and 145th streets, Lenox Avenue and the Harlem River. The new site was also near a new station of the Interborough Rapid Transit subway. Johnson’s agents convinced John B. McDonald, an IRT contractor, to purchase the land and lease it to the American League. McDonald then persuaded financier August Belmont II to come aboard. However, an IRT director—one Andrew Freedman—soon killed the plan.
In early 1902, the estate of Josephine Peyton auctioned off 12 parcels of land for $377,800 to John J. Byrne, a nephew of “Big Bill” Devery, who was an active Democrat in Manhattan’s Ninth District, a blatantly corrupt New York City police chief who had been forced out of the department a month earlier, and one of the city’s most notorious gamblers.
As Pietrusza tells it:Devery soon was in business with Frank Farrell, another major operator. Ex-saloonkeeper Farrell owned 250 pool halls in the city and was closely connected to “Boss” Sullivan, an even greater star in New York’s underworld firmament. Coal dealer Joseph Gordon, acting as front man for Farrell and Devery, approached Johnson, telling him his group could easily arrange for a park to be built if given a franchise. Devery and Farrell paid $18,000 for the Baltimore franchise and installed Gordon as president. Devery’s name was missing from those listed as stockholders, although it was well-known he had contributed approximately $100,000 to the enterprise.
“Me a backer!” Devery modestly, if somewhat dishonestly, exclaimed. “I only wished I did own some stock in a baseball club. I’m a poor man and don’t own stock in anything. Besides, how could I pitch a ball with this stomach?”
In another version of the story, as reported by sportswriter Frank Graham, Johnson and his new ownership group were brought together by the New York Sun’s Joe Vila. Vila had known Johnson since the A.L. president’s own sportswriting days and introduced him to Frank Farrell. Farrell was more than eager to purchase the Baltimore franchise, although Johnson was unsure about his prospective new club owner. His reticence evaporated when Farrell produced a $25,000 check and handed it over to Johnson, proclaiming, “Take this as a guarantee of good faith. If I don’t put this ballclub across, keep it.” “That’s a pretty big forfeit,” replied an amazed Johnson. “He bets that much on a horse race, Ban,” Vila informed him. In any case the deal was made between the American League and its somewhat shady triumvirate. For $75,000 in actual construction costs (plus $200,000 in excavating the rocky, hilly terrain) a rickety, wooden, 16,000-seat park was constructed. A local Democratic politico, Thomas McAvoy, received contracts for both phases. On May 30, 1903, the Highlanders opened before 16,243 fans and defeated Washington 6-2 behind “Happy Jack” Chesbro.2
To help shore up the weak Highlander roster (which had finished last in Baltimore), Johnson waved big bucks at famous names such as Brookl
yn outfielder “Wee Willie” Keeler. “I signed Keeler myself,” boasted Johnson, “and I found him an easy man to deal with.” The strengthened club finished a respectable fourth in 1903.
Let’s see: shady owners conspiring with city officials to enable a franchise and build a new stadium, then enticing high-priced talent away from contending clubs. Sound familiar?
PINSTRIPES AND BLACK SOX3
They called him Prince Hal, but he was more like the Prince of Darkness. Hal Chase was considered by his peers to be the greatest fielding first baseman of his era. Yet although his career ended in 1918, he still holds the AL career first baseman’s mark for errors (285) and led the league in that category seven times. How could this be? Real simple: Chase was a crook; he threw more games than Cy Young, betting against his own team for quick scratch. The Highlanders were one stop on his tour of venality. After the 1907 season, Chase held out for a $4,000 salary. After management gave it to him, he had the temerity to jump to San Jose of the California League, where he played under an assumed name. New York suspended, then reinstated him. In the long Yankee tradition of patronizing sociopaths, when he returned, Chase’s teammates presented him with a silver loving cup (which he probably pawned). In 1910 manager George Stallings accused Chase of throwing games. Chase not only beat the charge, he somehow used his evil charisma to become the team’s player-manager at season’s end. In his first full year, the team dropped from second place to sixth. In 1911, Chase resigned as manager, replaced by Harry Wolverton. (Those Ur-Yankees also went through a manager per year.) In 1913, manager Frank Chance accused Chase of “playing below his capability” (e.g., tanking games) and traded him to the White Sox. In 1918, playing for the Cincinnati Reds under the scrupulously honest Christy Mathewson, Chase was suspended for throwing games. According to the excellent website, www.baseballlibrary.com, “He was initially cleared by an establishment eager to disbelieve Chase’s accusers, but the charge was later proven. John McGraw of the Giants, always sure of his ability to reform the wayward, tried Chase in 1919, but by the end of the season wouldn’t play him.” Chase’s piece de resistance was to come: He helped throw the 1919 World Series as a member of the infamous Chicago “Black Sox.” The Highlanders/Yankees were a bad team during that era. When Prince Hal took the field, they were also a crooked one.
THE HOMICIDAL YANKEE
On August 16, 1920, Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman dug in at the plate against Yankees submarine hurler Carl Mays. One of Mays’s pitches froze Chapman and hit him squarely in the temple (which was unprotected by a batting helmet; they weren’t used until years later). Chapman crumpled to the ground and died the next day, the sole on-field fatality in the history of major league baseball.
While Mays certainly didn’t have homicidal intent, he was known as a nasty, intimidating pitcher who hunted more heads than a tribe of Amazonian cannibals. Mays’s reputation was smirched but, true Yankee that he was, he brushed off the incident as an occupational hazard. A week later, he shut out Detroit, 10-0, and he went on to have the best seasons of his career. He pitched for nine more years, winning 207 games with a .622 winning percentage, although he, too, was suspected of throwing World Series games against the New York Giants in 1921 and 1922. He lived to the ripe old age of 79. Proving that homicide is contagious, one of Mays’s teammates from the 1922-1923 Yankees, Bullet Joe Bush, was sued for killing a man in an auto accident.4
THE NEW YORK WHITE YANKEES5
When the Yankees were on the road in the 1930s and 1940s, the House That Ruth Built didn’t stand empty. Besides prize fights, college and pro football games, and religious convocations that filled the place, a Negro League team called the New York Black Yankees, originally owned by tap-dance legend Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, played some of its home games there.
Yet until 1955, an occasional appearance by Satchel Paige or Cool Papa Bell was as close as Yankee management would get to acknowledging blacks, either on the field or in the stands. Even in a time of segregated baseball, the Yankees were known as the whitest of the white, and even after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, one writer called the club “the most notorious bastion of the tradition of white baseball in the post-1947 era.”
During the 1930s and early 1940s, the most prominent bigot was team president Larry McPhail, a vicious alcoholic who socialized with mobsters such as Lucky Luciano, and actively resisted the major leagues’ attempt to integrate. While McPhail, owner Jacob Ruppert, and general manager Ed Barrow rigidly toed the color line and constructed an image of haute bourgeois gentility, they had no compunction about signing nasty racists such as Jake Powell if they thought they could improve the team. Powell, an outfielder whose hitting in the 1936 World Series helped the Joe McCarthy—helmed team to the first of four straight championships, was a one-man Klan. In 1935, he broke Tiger first baseman Hank Greenberg’s wrist. He constantly fought with other players, particularly those not white enough for his tastes. He went over the top in a July 29, 1938 postgame radio interview, in which he told broadcaster Bob Elson that in his off-season job as a policeman, he “beat up [ni**ers] and threw them in jail.” Amid the national outrage that followed, Powell claimed that he had fabricated the incident, but Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspended him for 10 games. From there it was all downhill, and ten years later, Powell shot and killed himself in a Washington, D.C., police station while being questioned on a bad-check charge. He’s one guy you won’t be seeing on “Yankeeography.”
The team’s plantation mentality continued even after the truculent McPhail was dismissed and Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947. Under the new ownership partnership of Del Webb and Dan Topping, the Yanks—who continued to win—increasingly drew their fans from affluent, white suburbs. George Weiss, who succeeded McPhail as GM, had this in mind when he said, “I will never allow a black man to wear the Yankee uniform. Box-holders from Westchester don’t want that kind of crowd. They would be offended to have to sit with [ni**ers].” The Yanks’ traveling secretary of the time, Bill McCorry, promised to keep all “[ni**ers]” off his trains.
And so, while their local rivals the Dodgers and Giants were signing the first wave of black superstars, the Yankees stood pat. They were one of the last clubs in baseball to integrate—this despite being one of the first clubs to sign black players. In 1949 Weiss recruited Artie Wilson, Frank Austin, and Luis Angel Martinez, and bought the contracts of Bob Thurman and Earl Taborn from the Kansas City Monarchs. But none of these black players came close to making the big club, and it was obvious that the signings were just PR moves. Jules Tygiel wrote in Baseball’s Great Experiment: In the post-1951 era, the Yankees recruited few additional prospects. Located in New York with a large black population and an active sporting press, the Yankee situation came under more stringent scrutiny than other clubs. As the years passed with no blacks added to the squad, even Dan Daniel, a devoted defender, often accused of being on the Yankee payroll, admitted, “If the Yankees weren’t guilty as charged, they were certainly going out of their way looking for trouble.”
It was only in 1955, eight years after Robinson broke in with Brooklyn, that a black player took the field in a Yankee uniform: the excellent but slow-footed catcher Elston Howard. His promotion led manager Casey Stengel to remark, “They finally got me a [ni**er], and he’s the only one who can’t run.”
Even after Howard was brought on board, the team passed on one budding black superstar after another. Some baseball historians claim that the Yanks could’ve fielded a mid-50s outfield in which Willie Mays and Henry Aaron joined Mickey Mantle. The team also failed to promote the players it signed, such as Howard (who had been signed in 1950), and the velvet-gloved first baseman Vic Power. The first Puerto Rican signed by the team, Power was a black man who led the American Association in hitting in 1953. However, the following year, he was passed over while white Moose Skowron was promoted. As Dean Chatwin writes in Those Damn Yankees: The Secret Life of America’s Greatest Franchise, “Topping’s
excuse was that Power couldn’t field, yet when he did make the majors, with the Philadelphia (and then Kansas City) Athletics and other clubs, he won seven Gold Gloves with his innovative, stylish play and is considered by some experts to be the greatest fielding first baseman of all time.” In fact, Power was so athletic that he was played at second base at numerous times during his career. Some observers speculated that the Yanks took a dim view of Power having a white wife. But this was not only bigoted, but inaccurate: Power’s wife wasn’t white.