Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League (review)

Reviewed by: Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League Steve Gietschier Michael T. Lynch, Jr. Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008. 282 pp. Paper, $29.95. Myths die slowly, especially in baseball. If you don't try hard enough to peer through the haze of misinformation, you can still see Abner Doubleday scratching out the rules of the game in the Cooperstown dust, Babe Ruth being orphaned in Baltimore, and Enos Slaughter scoring from first on a single while Johnny Pesky holds the ball. But the myth that seems sturdiest of all is the story of Harry Frazee. It goes like this: Frazee was the owner of the Boston Red Sox and a profligate theatrical producer. He sold Ruth to the Yankees while disregarding the fortunes of his own team and used the revenue from the sale to pay off his debts and finance the musical No, No, Nanette that became a hit. "Myth" is perhaps slightly off-the-mark as an identifier, but the Frazee story has been accepted as gospel for decades. Until recently, historians have never questioned its truthfulness, and in the popular press, the tale's accuracy has been reinforced by relentless references to "The Curse of the Bambino" as an explanation for Boston's lack of World Series success after 1918. In 2005, Glenn Stout and Richard A. Johnson explored the subtleties of Frazee's infamous transaction in Red Sox Century (Houghton Mifflin) and cast doubt on its simplistic veracity, and now Michael Lynch has probed even deeper, fully contextualizing Frazee's actions, both before and after the sale of Ruth, within the larger tumult of American League history. [End Page 156] Lynch argues, as did Stout and Johnson before him, that the sale of Ruth to the Yankees must be viewed as one episode, albeit the most significant, in a protracted struggle pitting Frazee and two other owners, dubbed the Insurrectos, against American League president Byron Bancroft "Ban" Johnson and five owners called the Loyalists. This multifaceted dispute consumed several years and, as Lynch's title suggests, came close to destroying the league Johnson had created. Key to this internecine battle in its early stages were three facts. First, Johnson disliked Frazee intensely, never approved of his purchase of the Red Sox, and wanted him out of the league. Second, Frazee thought Johnson beyond foolish when he volunteered to truncate the American League's 1918 season after the United States entered World War I. Third, Johnson was outraged when Frazee along with some others began to advocate replacing the National Commission that Johnson dominated with one-man rule. This tense situation was further exacerbated after Boston pitcher Carl Mays, ornery under the best of circumstances, walked off the mound during a game in July 1919. Johnson wanted Mays suspended, but Frazee was defiant. He traded Mays to the Yankees, and the New York owners took Johnson to court when the league president tried to void the deal. Frazee's financial situation was complicated. He was an innovative and successful producer and a millionaire, but he spent his money much too freely. Moreover, he had entered baseball not just as a fan but also as an entrepreneur, expecting to make a twenty percent annual return on his investment. Ruth, young and aggressive in his salary demands, was a thorn in Frazee's side as was a continuing dispute over how much money Frazee still owed Joseph Lannin, previous owner of the Red Sox. Lynch argues that Frazee was nowhere close to a financial collapse at the time of the sale. If anything, he may have been in a liquidity squeeze since he was also negotiating to buy Fenway Park. Lynch's point, therefore, is that the Ruth sale is a complex matter and not a simple case of good versus evil. Furthermore, it is a transaction whose details have been further muddled by economist Michael Haupert's investigation into the Yankees' accounting records, a search that has uncovered no evidence to support the oft-told tale that, in addition to the sale, Frazee obtained a $300,000 loan...

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