Bill Veeck (30 page)

As the 1949 season came to an end, a dispute broke out in print between the sports editors of two African American newspapers. Wendell Smith of the
Pittsburgh Courier
penned a column entitled “What's Happening in Cleveland?” It not only asserted that the city had tried to double Veeck's rent and had not provided him enough police protection for his big crowds, but also alleged that “politicians” in the city had led a campaign against him for hiring Negro ballplayers. “Through devious ways they organized a gang of hoodlums who are operating daily at the ball park. Their precise job is to harass Larry Doby, Satchel Paige and Luke Easter.” Smith declared that Cleveland did not deserve a man of Veeck's integrity, and he accused the people of Cleveland of being “a sheepish, shiftless and ungrateful lot.”
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John Fuster of the Cleveland
Call and Post
offered a blistering response, claiming Smith's comments did not appear in the Cleveland edition of the
Courier
because local readers would know that the article's claims were false. “As one of those more than one million Clevelanders whom Mr. Smith has glibly called ‘lazy and placid'—and as one of those more than 2,000,000 Clevelanders who last year paid their way into Cleveland Stadium
to cheer … the Indians on to the 1948 world's championship, I resent Mr. Smith's uncalled for, vicious, and locally untrue statements.” Fuster noted that when Larry Doby made a magnificent catch against the Chicago White Sox, he received the greatest ovation Fuster had ever heard at the stadium; that all of the Indians players, white and black, were booed at one point or another, with the single exception of Satchel Paige; and that as far as Smith's hometown was concerned, the Pittsburgh Pirates had still not signed a black player.
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Rumors about the impending sale of the Indians had begun to circulate in July 1949; a wealthy Colorado cattleman named Dan Thornton was allegedly buying the Indians. Veeck denied it, saying there was about as much chance of his taking over Thornton's cattle business as there was of Thornton buying the Indians. However, Veeck did not deny that the team was for sale at the right price. Such reports continued through the remainder of the season, including one in late August claiming that Veeck had sold the team to Hank Greenberg, who flatly denied it.
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In early October, following the season's last game, Bill met Mary Frances Ackerman, a twenty-eight-year-old onetime drama student who was the press agent for the Ice Capades, then performing in Cleveland. They dated almost daily for two weeks, and then Bill asked her to marry him as soon as his divorce was finalized, which it shortly was. But the new union could not be simple: Mary Frances was a devout Catholic and Bill a divorced man. Her conditions for the marriage were that Bill become a Roman Catholic and immediately begin taking instruction and that they stay apart from each other for a period of six months following his formal divorce.

Years later baseball executive Buzzie Bavasi recounted a call he received from Veeck at the time: “Bill called me at home, about 10:00 p.m. He said, ‘Buzzie, I know that you are a good Catholic, and I need a favor. I have asked Mary Frances to marry me. She agreed, provided I take six weeks of instruction in the Catholic Church. I agreed to this, but there is no way I can do it. Being a good Catholic, I am sure you know the Pope. Please call the Pope on my behalf and ask him if I could be excused from doing the six-weeks bit and still become a member of the Catholic Church.' To this day, I think Bill thought it could be done.”
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His reluctance notwithstanding, Veeck soon found himself taking
instruction, albeit with a healthy skepticism. “He had the toughest mind I've ever encountered,” recalled the Rev. George Halpin, the priest who ultimately brought Veeck into the Church. “He was a great student of comparative religions. He never asked an ordinary question.” When Veeck questioned a footnote in a 600-page volume on Catholicism, Father Halpin spent three days probing through various books in an effort to establish its intellectual validity. Following instruction, Veeck was baptized in the fall.
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With remarriage as an added incentive, Veeck needed money in hand to put in trust for his children as part of his settlement with Eleanor. Because of the income tax rates then in place, the only means of gaining such funds was from a sale of the Indians. He also realized that the team might be near its peak value; despite the falloff from 1948, the Indians were a solid squad.

“The only way a man can make a big chunk of money under the present tax setup is to sell something he has created,” Veeck observed. “I could have borrowed the money I needed in any one of several places, but I couldn't have paid it back in less than 20 years because I couldn't make enough money out of salary and dividends—after taxes. I don't know if I will be alive 20 years from now and I don't want my children to be in hock to a creditor.”
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The effective tax rate on the $25,000-to-$50,000 income bracket was 52 percent in 1949; above that, the top rate rose to a maximum of 82.1 percent.
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Veeck began getting serious offers as soon as he announced his intention to sell. On Tuesday, November 15, Gordon Cobbledick reported in his
Cleveland Plain Dealer
column that a group that had unsuccessfully attempted to buy the Indians had said it would dispose of the Indians Negro personnel as quickly as it was convenient to do so. The
Call and Post
phoned Cobbledick that afternoon. He said that the statement in his article was absolutely true but that he had pledged not to reveal the names of the men who had made the statement. He admitted it might be possible that this had figured in Veeck's refusal to sell the club to this group. But by the time the article had run in the
Call and Post
on Saturday, prospective new owners had been announced and had assured the newspaper that there would be no change in policy on Negro players.
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On November 21, 1949, Bill Veeck sold the Cleveland Indians for $2.2 million to a group of local businessmen led by a forty-five-year-old insurance
executive named Ellis W. Ryan. Veeck's delighted investors got a payout that represented close to a two-to-one return on their investment—and this was after having taken out “large profits” in the interim. Veeck left the table with nearly $500,000, which was subject to a 25 percent capital gains tax.
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When asked at the signing what major-league city he was planning to invade next, Veeck said: “I'm not even worrying now about getting back into the baseball business.”
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As the new officers and directors were being photographed around Ryan seated at his new desk, somebody puckishly placed one of Veeck's mementos on the desk, a sign reading “Too Many Chiefs, Not Enough Indians.”
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After lunch with close associates, Veeck said his goodbyes to the staff on his way out of the stadium. “It's been swell,” Bill said. “I hope you had as much fun as I did.” The women began to cry, and Veeck had a few tears in his own eyes as he hurried out the door into the snow.

“I want to get married. I want to take a good long rest. After that—believe me, I haven't the faintest idea what comes after that,” he told his friend Gordon Cobbledick, who had defended him in print over his decision to sell the club.
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Time
magazine noted upon his departure that Veeck “had turned the crank that gave [Cleveland] its dizziest merry-go-round ride in years…. With an expense account of about $100,000 a year, he was the town's most avid check-snatcher and tipper, its most unflagging patron of flower shops and buyer of sparkling burgundy (which he called ‘bubble ink').”
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But while Cleveland was sorry to see him go, his fellow American League owners were not. Before Veeck joined their ranks, they had been in a “comfortable rut. Veeck blasted them out of that groove, and for that they dislike him,” wrote Cobbledick. “They never knew which way he's going to jump next and although his fantastically successful club operation has enriched them all, they wish, on the whole, that he would go back to Milwaukee so that they could resume their naps.”
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Arthur Daley was a bit more dramatic in his
New York Times
column: “If we are to believe the history books, there once was a fellow named Alexander. He used to wander about in search of new worlds to conquer. Perhaps Bill Veeck is not a lineal descendant of Alexander the Great but he has the same restless conqueror's zeal.”

Rumors abounded about his next move. Some wealthy Ohio Democrats tentatively suggested encouraging him to run for the Senate against Robert
Taft in 1950, but Veeck never seriously considered the possibility, feeling politics would be too confining and that Taft—albeit a Republican—was actually doing a good job representing the people of Ohio. (On Taft's death in 1953 Veeck was called in to discuss an interim appointment to the Senate with then Ohio governor. Frank J. Lausche. Veeck left the meeting telling reporters that he was sorry he could not take the job.)
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Veeck was anything but apolitical and made no bones about the fact that he was politically left of center and a bona fide supporter of socialist Norman Thomas. “Bill told me he voted for Thomas in every election—even after Thomas had passed away he wrote in his name,” reported Mary Frances.
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Some wondered if Veeck's absence would mean less pressure to sign black players in the American League. In 1950, other than those playing for the Indians, there were no African Americans in the league. Members of the black press were still barred from certain press boxes, and none had been admitted to the Baseball Writers' Association of America. This was ostensibly because the black papers were weekly newspapers and the BWAA was restricted to those writing for daily papers, but Wendell Smith was turned down when he worked for a daily newspaper, the
Chicago Herald-American
. When Vince Johnson, a white reporter working for the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, made an issue of black exclusion, he was urged to resign from membership in the BWAA by the head of the local chapter.
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“My opinion,” wrote Bob August decades later about Veeck's abrupt departure from the club's ownership, “was that the vast reservoir of great African-American players—including Willie Mays, Roy Campanella, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Bob Gibson, Willie McCovey—would be tapped over the next decade or so and almost all the players would go to the National League, swinging the balance of power dramatically in that league's direction.” If Veeck had remained with the Indians, August felt certain, he would have signed more than his share and the Indians could have dominated the American League for many years.
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Veeck planned to spend his time away from Mary Frances at his ranch in Arizona. The divorce settlement gave Bill the ranch, while Eleanor and the children moved to a place farther out in the country. Bill then called one of his closest friends in Tucson, Roy Drachman, a local real estate broker who had been among the few outsiders allowed to ride from Boston to
Cleveland on the 1948 victory train, to find someone to serve as caretaker for the ranch until he got there.

Eleanor had taken everything that was not attached by nail, screw, putty, or cement, even the lightbulbs. Drachman hired a couple, Beth and Sam Smith, who needed pasture for their cattle, striking a deal by which the Smiths became the caretakers of the vacant ranch in exchange for allowing them to keep their cattle on the property.

“One morning at 3 AM, a kinky-headed individual knocked on the door,” Beth Smith recalled. “This guy looked like he just came out of the gutter. He was wearing shorts in the dead of winter.”

“Who are you?” Sam asked.

“I'm Bill Veeck, I live here. Who are you?”

“I'm Sam Smith. I thought I did.”
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The Smiths moved into one of the smaller houses on the property, while Veeck began the task of making the main house appealing for his bride-to-be. The house had eight bedrooms, and somebody always seemed to be filling them, as a stream of friends arrived: Abe Saperstein, Hank Greenberg and his wife, Phil Wrigley and his family, various baseball scouts and sportswriters, club owners and the occasional celebrity. Even Hopalong Cassidy—in the person of actor William Boyd—came for a visit.

An avid tennis player despite his artificial leg, Veeck built a tennis court on the property and brought Lloyd Budge, brother of tennis great Don Budge, to the ranch to give him lessons.
^br
He stayed for several months and Veeck became a fiercely aggressive tennis player. Responding to the question of his playing tennis and paddleball on an artificial leg, he responded, “Does a man stop smiling because he wears false teeth?”
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Veeck's large screened-in front porch came to house some expensive lovebirds, which he named after friends such as Gordon Cobbledick and his wife, Doris, or the Greenbergs. One day Veeck decided that the birds should not be segregated in pairs, so he let them loose on the porch. The birds immediately attacked each other. Beth Smith later recalled that she and Veeck had their hands full catching and re-caging the battling birds. “Then we became aware that someone was watching us.” Seven priests
had arrived for lunch, having met Veeck during his attendance at mass in Tucson. “They got a kick out of it, watching Bill, who was saying, ‘Catch old Hank, catch old Doris.' … Bill asked the priests to help us catch the birds and they did.”
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