Bill Veeck (32 page)

Saigh's reply was no, but he challenged Veeck to give the charity $10,000, a gift he would match. A quiet traditionalist, Saigh accused Veeck of creating the event to embarrass the Cardinals. If the game came off, Saigh noted, the Browns would take the credit, but if the game was not played, the Cards would be blamed. The day the written challenge to Saigh was published in the St. Louis papers, they also contained a full-page ad with the message “In 25 years the Cardinals have never asked you, the fan, to take a substitute for quality”—an obvious dig at Veeck's sideshows.
¹⁶

It was now Veeck's turn in what the
Post-Dispatch
described as “the Battle of Sportsman's Park.” He sent in his check for $10,000, still demanding that the two teams play, which would mean that the charity would have $20,000 in the bank plus the gate from the game. Saigh still refused to play the exhibition game, but Veeck later turned over the proceeds of the final Browns game of the season to the Community Chest.
¹⁷

Mary Frances quickly established herself in St. Louis as a fan favorite and den mother to ballplayers. She was as public as Eleanor had been private. This became evident as the the Veecks were settling into their new ten-room apartment in the ballpark. Mary Frances had remodeled the old Browns offices into what she said was a home that was “airy and had the feeling of space. It was also handy for entertaining ball teams, as well as for fans who just got lost and strayed in.” Bill and Mary Frances's firstborn, Mike, had the biggest fenced yard in America to play in, except when the Browns were at home.
¹⁸

Mary Frances was quickly becoming an active player in her husband's baseball life—a self-described “second fiddle” who was very much part of the act. For instance, in early 1952 Veeck came up with a scheme to obtain the names of all the baby boys born in St. Louis that year and mail them a faux contract for the 1970 season. The letter that came with the contract was in the form of a poem written by Mary Frances.
¹⁹

By early August Veeck was looking for something to wake up the team and invigorate its dwindling fan base. On August 5, he went on the radio with the then novel idea of a regular pre-game live radio call-in show, willing to give any fan an opportunity to ask him questions about the losing Browns. The host asked him to assess the teams in the American League, which he did with measured cynicism. “Boston? Well, baseball is still a team game. There've been too many guys on the Red Sox club who do a good job of figuring out their batting averages as they trot down to first base after getting hit…. The Browns? At least they've been consistent.”
²⁰

On August 10 he went down into a coal mine to talk with 200 miners about his plans to improve the Browns the following year. Also on that day he announced a stunt that would rankle baseball purists. In a game against the Philadelphia Athletics two weeks hence, Veeck promised to allow the crowd to manage the team. They would be led by two onfield managers-for-a-day (selected through an essay contest), who would lead the 1,000 “grandstand managers,” who would sit in a special section of the stands and use placards marked YES on one side and NO on the other to decide whether the team bunted, stole a base, changed pitchers, and the like, while manager Zack Taylor would rest in a rocking chair.

As soon as this was announced, Arthur Ehlers, general manager of the Athletics, bitterly denounced the plan as “making a joke out of the game.” The stunt had been staged by barnstorming teams and low-level minor-league
teams, but never in the majors. At least half a dozen other owners agreed, and
Baltimore Sun
columnist C. M. Gibbs called it an “irresponsible idea, indicating that the foresight of the eminent Veeck is limited to the length of his nose.”
²¹

Baseball was, for the moment, without a commissioner. Happy Chandler had resigned effective July 15 after a majority of the owners refused to give him another six-year term. Chandler had facilitated the racial integration of the game in 1947, and he became known as “the players' commissioner” for his work on their behalf. During his term, he presided over the establishment of a pension fund for players, largely created from the sale of World Series television and advertising rights through 1956 for $6 million.
²²

The majority of the owners opposed Chandler on one or both of these key issues, but the real reason he was fired may have had more to do with the deep antipathy he had for Cardinals owner Fred Saigh and Del Webb of the Yankees. He would later admit in his memoir that if he had stayed in office, he would have done his best to drive both of them out of the game. Chandler was an authoritarian commissioner who had ruled the game with a strong sense of propriety when it came to things such as conflicts of interest and gambling. On the other hand, Chandler viewed Veeck's antics with a genuine sense of amusement. At a dinner honoring Veeck in 1947 Chandler had labeled him “the type of person baseball needs and is proud of,” and their relationship had been cordial during the course of his term as commissioner.
²³

Veeck himself viewed Chandler as a friend of the people and of the players, which in his opinion led to Chandler's undoing. Anticipating by almost two decades the ultimate fight over the reserve clause by which owners controlled their players, he observed: “The owners became a little nervous that he might be going to take some steps to assist the players and to break up the complete iron-clad control the management had over their employees.”
²⁴

The morning after Chandler resigned, it was announced that he was to meet with H. I. Miranda, a manufacturer's representative for a glassmaking firm, about the formation of a players union. Several columnists saw the meeting as a “slap at the fellows who were instrumental in having Chandler ousted.” Chandler's job would be to negotiate for the union with the owners. After the meeting he said he would be happy to serve the players if they wanted him.
²⁵
Miranda ultimately got nowhere with his movement,
but the concept of unionization was in the headlines for a few days, unnerving all owners save for Veeck.

Absent a commissioner, and with his team languishing, the stage was set for a prime bit of Veeckian anarchy—something far more provocative than drinks on the house or the empowerment of grandstand managers. Attempting to address the most common complaint against the team—that it lacked a leadoff batter who could get on base with regularity—Veeck resolved to find someone sure to get on base, albeit just once. Working with an agency, Veeck sought a perfectly proportioned midget, whose strike zone would be so small that no pitcher could find it, resulting in a walk. After interviewing several candidates he found inappropriate, Veeck signed Eddie Gaedel from Chicago by way of a Cleveland theatrical booking agent named Marty Caine. “When we saw him, there was no question that Eddie was right. He was actually a very attractive guy,” Browns official Bob Fishel later recalled on his first seeing the three-foot-seven-inch, sixty-five-pound man.
²⁶

Two contracts were signed guaranteeing Gaedel $100 for a plate appearance—one for the league and one to be brought to the game in case an objection was made. The contract was not put in the mail to the office of League president Will Harridge until after the last collection of the day, so that it would not appear on his desk before the Monday morning after the game.

Veeck reasoned that this stunt would require a heavy level of secrecy, but it also needed publicity. That night Veeck and Bob Broeg of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
were out drinking, and at about midnight, Veeck looked at his watch, established the fact that the last edition of the paper had gone to bed, and then offhandedly told the reporter of his plan to play a midget the next day. “I'm glad you're telling me,” Broeg replied. “We don't have many photographers working on Sunday.”
²⁷

The stunt was set for Sunday, August 20, 1951, during a doubleheader at Sportsman's Park with the Detroit Tigers. A celebration was planned to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the American League, and Veeck also unilaterally proclaimed the day to be the fiftieth anniversary of the Browns radio sponsor, Falstaff Brewing, in order to gain publicity for the company—although the actual date of Falstaff's founding was uncertain.

More than 18,000 fans, the largest crowd in more than four years, clicked through the turnstiles on a hot, muggy Sunday. The Tigers took the opener 5–2, setting the stage for the between-games entertainment, which included a parade of 1901 vintage automobiles and a comic performance by Max Patkin. As the finale, a giant papier-mâché birthday cake was brought onto the field. The cake was tapped open by a figure dressed as Sir John Falstaff in honor of the sponsor, and out popped Gaedel, dressed in a miniature Browns baseball uniform and elf shoes with curled toes, to be presented to manager Zack Taylor as a “new Brownie.” The fans, who had been given free beer to toast the two anniversaries, cheered approvingly and then settled back for the second game.
²⁸

The Falstaff executives seated in Veeck's box, however, were unhappy. Promised a memorable event that would gain national publicity for the brewery, unaware of what was to come, they saw nothing extraordinary in the appearance of a large cake containing a midget in a Browns uniform. The second game began with the visiting Tigers going scoreless in the top of the first. In the bottom of the inning, the Browns leadoff hitter was scheduled to be reserve rookie outfielder Frank Saucier. At that point, a public address announcement was made: “For the Browns, number one-eighth, Eddie Gaedel, batting for Saucier.”

Brandishing a toy bat, Gaedel stepped up to the plate and immediately crouched so low that his strike zone was only about one and a half inches high. Before the Tigers could protest, the Browns produced a bona fide contract for Gaedel, and the baffled umpire, Ed Hurley, said, “Play ball.” Tiger catcher Bob Swift decided to sit down on the ground but was overruled by Hurley, so he positioned himself on his knees. Pitcher Bob Cain, afraid of hitting Gaedel and knowing there was no way to pitch to his strike zone, admitted defeat by deciding to walk him, which was fortunate for Gaedel. “My teammate Dizzy Trout told me that if he'd been pitching, he would have plunked Gaedel right between the eyes,” Cain said after the fact. Gaedel skipped to first base, was replaced by pinch runner Jim Delsing, and waved to the roaring crowd as he returned to the dugout. As soon as Gaedel had put on his street clothes, Bob Fishel ushered him to the press box, where he got to boast, “I felt like Babe Ruth out there”—except that in his South Side accent it came out as “Babe Root.”

Cain and the Tigers won the game 6–2, but the outcome was overshadowed by Gaedel's unforgettable base on balls. “Pitched as bad as I ever did in my life,” said Duane Pillette, the Browns pitcher that day, who had had
to contend with a chimpanzee sitting in his lap as part of the between-game festivities. “None of the players knew what was going on.”
²⁹
The result was the national publicity Veeck had promised his sponsors, as a photograph of Gaedel at bat appeared in newspapers across the country the next day. Gaedel told reporters he would next like to face Bob Feller and Dizzy Trout.
³⁰

American League president Will Harridge, in the absence of a commissioner, immediately voided Gaedel's contract and banned “midget” players from the game. Harridge, normally a mild-mannered man, seldom swore, but one of the few exceptions was discussing that “blankety-blank” midget of Veeck's.
³¹
For his part, Gaedel claimed he was “burned up” because he had been banned in the best interests of baseball. “Where does Harridge get that stuff? What did I do? I didn't talk to no gamblers. There ain't nothing in the rules about my size.” On the other hand, he told the Associated Press, “I am happy—I've got a clipping of a box score that shows: ‘Gaedel—walked for Saucier in 1st.'”
³²

Veeck had an inkling of what the reaction would be and was not bothered by any of the criticism, justifying the event because the fans loved it and he felt they would come back to the ballpark to see what might happen next. Being contrary, he demanded a ruling on whether New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, at five feet six inches, was a short ballplayer or a tall midget. He also protested that six-foot-five-inch Walt Dropo of the Boston Red Sox, who were to follow the Tigers into St. Louis, was “too tall.” Alluding to that club's great hitter, he added, “I assume that they feel Gaedel provided unfair competition. I might humbly suggest that Ted Williams also provides unfair competition as far as St. Louis is concerned.”
³³

In the weeks that followed, Gaedel's image appeared everywhere and he was paid $17,000 to appear on the Ed Sullivan and Bing Crosby television shows. He got into trouble on a Cincinnati street corner for screaming obscenities while trying to convince a cop he was a major-league ballplayer. He also worked as a Buster Brown shoe man, appeared in the Ringling Brothers Circus, and worked in promotions for Mercury automobiles.
^bt

Responding to speculation as to where Veeck had come up with the idea, the
Toledo Blade
and
The Sporting
News ran columns pointing to James
Thurber as Veeck's inspiration. In his baseball short story entitled “You Could Look It Up,” which first appeared in the April 5, 1941, issue of
The
Saturday Evening Post
, manager Squawks Magrew, with two out and the bases full, instructs his diminutive batter Pearl du Monville to just hold the bat on his shoulder. “There ain't a man in the world can throw three strikes in there 'fore he throws four balls,” Magrew tells him.
³⁴