Bill Veeck (35 page)

During the immediate postseason, Veeck began making moves that would improve the Browns on the field. The most dramatic was the deal he made to acquire shortstop Billy Hunter from the Brooklyn Dodgers for three players and $90,000 in cash—more than the St. Louis Browns had ever paid for a player. The Hunter acquisition represented Veeck's ongoing attempts to turn the Browns into a contender in the American League. Despite his constant ribbing of the team in after-dinner speeches, he was actually trying to develop and trade for players who would make a difference.

In his time with the Browns, Veeck's relationship with the Yankees continued to deteriorate. Veeck genuinely disliked the Yankee brass and they him, but the net effect was to cast him as David fighting the Yankee Goliath. In late April 1952, Yankee public relations director Arthur “Red” Patterson charged Veeck with padding his attendance figures, and claimed that he had also padded his numbers in Cleveland. Veeck offered to open his books to Patterson and suggested that the charge stemmed from the fact that the Browns had outdrawn the Yankees the previous Sunday and that had been an affront to the Yankee ego. “I have never padded my books,” declared Veeck. Remarkably—as if to fend off a counterattack from Veeck—Patterson announced that the Yankees had outgrown the practice. “We announce the exact count now. There were times in the past when we padded figures but we no longer do so.”
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If Bill Veeck was the most constant critic of the New York Yankees brass, he was also one of the strongest supporters of those who wore pinstripes. His friendship with Casey Stengel never wavered even as Veeck's feud with his bosses heated up. In November Rep. Thomas B. Curtis of Montana publicly questioned Mickey Mantle's draft deferment, which had been granted because of his chronic bad knees. The congressman was using Mantle as an example to question why men with more serious disabilities were being
declared eligible and a big star like Mantle was seen as unfit. Veeck jumped into the fray in Mantle's defense, saying that Mantle was willing to serve and that Curtis was simply using Mantle and his relationship to military service as a “cheap way of making headlines”—which, of course, now belonged to Veeck.

The demise of the Browns began off the field after the 1952 season, when Veeck proposed at the league meetings that American League clubs share radio and television revenue with visiting teams. Veeck had several allies, including Fred Saigh, who were prepared to fight for this point. However, at a special American League meeting on television and radio rights on December 4, Veeck was voted down 7–1. The league decided that broadcasting deals should be negotiated separately. Veeck took a “no pay, no television” stance and proclaimed that he would withhold all rights to broadcast games from St. Louis until he got a percentage of the home team television revenue on the road.

Veeck's ongoing feud with the New York Yankees front office escalated to an all-out war during this debate. When he first suggested the revenue-sharing scheme, the Yankee owners were outraged, as were other clubs with a strong presence in the market. “God damn Socialist,” Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was heard to say about him on more than one occasion.
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During the first week of 1953, the wealthier clubs—the Yankees, Indians, and Red Sox—expressed their wrath by withholding from Veeck the lucrative night dates on their playing schedules. The Cleveland Indians, showing no loyalty to their former owner, led the group by not booking the Browns for a single night game in 1953 in an “unmasked piece of retaliation.” Veeck took his protest to the new baseball commissioner, Ford Frick, on Saturday, January 31.
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Veeck argued for a uniform rule giving all clubs equity in night dates. This, he claimed, was the original American League rule passed in 1939 when the
league allowed night games for the first time. “If these clubs can throw me out of their night schedule, which will cost our club approximately $30,000, then there will be no limit to what they can do with their money weapon of night baseball.” Veeck envisioned a poor club being threatened with the loss of night game revenue if the team did not surrender a desired player at a certain price. “That is the point of equity I present.”
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The protest was fruitless. As Veeck put it, “Being fond of wasting time, I appealed to Ford Frick. He took the bull by the horns and ruled that it was none of his business.”
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Frick would later allude to this as Veeck's attempt to “take over the American League.”
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During the previous week, Fred Saigh had been sentenced to fifteen months in jail for multiple charges of income tax evasion. He had pleaded no contest, and as the sentence was handed down, he exclaimed, “Now there is no way I can stay in baseball.” Told that he would begin his sentence on May 4, Saigh received an ultimatum from the commissioner's office: sell the club by February 22 or it would be taken over by a group of St. Louis businessmen who would sell it for him.

Two days before the deadline, a deal was reached to sell the team to the deep-pocketed Anheuser-Busch brewery, led by sixty-four-year-old August A. Busch Jr. Veeck knew immediately that he could not outspend a big corporation determined to dominate the market. On meeting Busch for the first time in Fred Saigh's office in Sportsman's Park, across the hall from his own, Veeck welcomed him to the baseball fraternity. “Glad to see you. But I'm afraid you're going to offer us a little difficult competition.”

“You're right,” said Busch, grinning.

“You know I live right next door, you must come and see me,” said Veeck.

“You bet your sweet life I will,” Busch promised.
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Later in the day, Busch toured the ballpark and was horrified by its decrepit condition, despite the cosmetic changes Veeck had made. It offended his Germanic fastidiousness, and he resolved to build a new stadium.
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Veeck now realized with certainty that he had lost the battle for St. Louis and would have to move his franchise, so before February was over, he announced his intention to move the Browns in advance of the regular season, taking advantage of the vague but newly liberalized relocation policy adopted by baseball. No ball club had relocated since 1903, nor had either league added a team. Veeck was poised to force a major change in the geography of baseball.

Knowing that St. Louis could not support two teams, Veeck had begun exploring options after the 1952 season. Although many suitors lined up for the franchise, only Baltimore and Milwaukee, both of which had built publicly funded stadiums hoping to lure a big-league team, had adequate facilities to host major-league baseball.

With fond memories of Milwaukee, Veeck said that he favored moving there. However, Boston Braves owner Lou Perini now controlled the territorial rights to baseball in Milwaukee, and on March 3, 1953, he announced that he would move the Braves there. “I'm sick of pounding my head against a stone wall. This is no sudden thing—I've known for two years it was inevitable,” Perini said. “Boston simply is not a two club city.”
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Baltimore had sought a major league team since Mayor Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr. and lawyer Clarence Miles began a drive in 1951 to return baseball to the city. Older fans could still recall the heyday of the former Orioles, who won three straight pennants between 1894 and 1896 and boasted such baseball immortals as third baseman John McGraw, shortstop Hughie Jennings, catcher Wilbert Robinson, and outfielder Wee Willie Keeler. The Orioles had moved to New York after the 1902 season, the last American League franchise to relocate.

Veeck was fully aware of Baltimore's potential as the new home of the Browns, and in the late fall of 1952 he had begun talking with Jack Dunn, the owner of the minor-league Orioles, for the territorial rights to the Baltimore market. These talks were secret—Veeck even had a code name for them, “Ashtray.” He and Dunn agreed that if the Browns moved to Baltimore, Dunn would be a part owner and Veeck would buy and dispose of his minor-league team.

D'Alesandro and Miles—the brash, sentimental politician once called a man of “flying-wedge persistence”
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and the patrician attorney—were an unlikely pair united by their love of the game and their common desire to get Baltimore a team. In December 1952, D'Alesandro and Miles began discussions with Veeck to bring the Browns to Baltimore before the 1953 season, intending to sell shares of stock in the team to the public, thereby raising enough money to operate the team in a new city. Veeck and the mayor
shook hands on a deal. The Browns went to spring training in 1953 with the expectation that that they would open the season in Baltimore.
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Veeck and D'Alesandro headed to Tampa for a meeting of the American League owners in March, confident that they had six of the eight votes necessary to shift the franchise to Baltimore. On the eve of the meeting, league president Will Harridge indicated that the move had been approved and the vote would be “a mere formality.”
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But on March 16, with the victory champagne on ice, the American League rejected Veeck's request to move by a vote of 6–2. Charles Comiskey later recalled that he and Veeck were the only two affirmative voters. “All the adjustments had been made for the move,” recalled Comiskey, who added, “It would have been a good move financially.” Veeck was dumb-founded by what had happened, and he determined to reverse the decision. “I remember working almost three straight days with Bill as he tried to get the decision changed,” Comiskey related. “I just about wore out my shoes trying to keep up with Bill.” Asked whether he had abandoned the idea of moving to Baltimore, Veeck said he hadn't abandoned anything—but that he had been abandoned.
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Harridge hung the rejection on the tight timing of the move, and one unnamed source at the meeting told
Time
magazine that Veeck's plan was “hasty and haphazard,” but most understood, as John Carmichael said in the
Chicago Daily News
, that Veeck was the victim of duplicity by “lying owners” and that the vote against him was either “silly or malicious.”
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Arthur Daley later summed up what had been done to Veeck: “In a disgraceful demonstration of spite and malice, his fellow owners refused that permission in a blatant effort to impoverish him and drive the nettlesome Veeck from baseball.”
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As if to prove that point, as Veeck, Comiskey, and the Baltimore delegation worked in vain for a reversal in Tampa, the National League, meeting across the bay in St. Petersburg, gave unanimous consent for Perini to move the Braves to Milwaukee in time for Opening Day. Milwaukee's minor-league Brewers would move to Toledo. Clearly Perini was as well liked in his league as Veeck was disliked in his.
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Undeterred, neither an infuriated Veeck nor the puzzled city of Baltimore would take no for an answer. Baltimore immediately began construction of an upper deck for Memorial Stadium with the goal of having it ready for Opening Day 1954. Veeck, D'Alesandro, and Miles negotiated a new plan for moving the Browns. Baltimore investors would buy 40 percent of the
club—half of Veeck's stock—for $1.2 million, with Veeck remaining the principal owner. The deal would be presented to the owners late in the season.

For the city of Baltimore, getting the team had now become a matter of civic pride, all the more so after some called it a bad bet for baseball. “Baltimore is a city of stray dogs, excellent lacrosse players, star-studded experts at the art of the parlay and with a scattering of masterful technicians at pocket billiards,” Washington journalist Dick O'Brien of the
Times-Herald
critiqued, insisting that Veeck had gotten a financial break when the transfer was nixed. Nonetheless, Baltimoreans were buying up as many shares of Browns stock as they could.
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Fans in St. Louis, however, felt betrayed, and Veeck was chided for his less than frank dealings with the baseball public and the stockholders, whose shares he had bought up with the promise of keeping the team afloat. In the midst of recovering from the Baltimore defeat, on March 23 Veeck threw in the towel and signed the radio and television agreement with the American League regarding night games: “We figured to lose out anyway, just like we lost on everything else.” Cleveland restored the Browns night games immediately, with the Yankees and the Red Sox following suit.
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The Justice Department then decided not to conduct an investigation into the relocation issue despite a call for one from two Maryland congressmen, who called the matter a “grave injustice.” Veeck agreed with the Justice Department, stating this was his fight and he didn't want help from anyone.
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Just prior to Opening Day, a series of articles highlighted the differing fates of the Browns and Braves. Seven reasons were listed as to why Veeck and Baltimore had been denied, the first of which was personality: Perini was highly regarded by his fellow National League owners, whereas Veeck was disliked by his peers. The other six reasons were motive (Veeck was steam-rolling his request), money (Veeck was undercapitalized), minor-league opposition (the American Association opposed the move to Baltimore), schedule (Baltimore did not work in an east-west split), commitments (Veeck was not free of them), and three unresolved lawsuits filed by minority stockholders trying to keep the Browns in St. Louis, which, among other things, accused Veeck of “extravagance” in running the ball club.
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