Bill Veeck (46 page)

During his first year in Boston, Veeck also weighed in on other aspects of Boston's sports scene, such as the new multipurpose stadium for football and baseball being contemplated by the Massachusetts legislature. The AFL Boston Patriots were playing in Fenway Park, which could then seat 32,000 for baseball and 37,000 for football. Veeck agreed that the Patriots needed a new stadium but was adamant that the Red Sox resist moving, passionately observing, “In a new stadium, the Red Sox would lose one of the most tremendous assets a ball club could have—that feeling of closeness and intimacy Fenway Park provides.”
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Veeck became one of Fenway's great defenders, articulating its appeal at a time when momentum was on the side of multiuse stadiums. “I have never seen a stadium built for both baseball and football that did not take something away from both,” he stated. “I love the intimacy of Fenway Park. I love the feeling of involvement. You feel as though you are part of the game.”
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Veeck's third and last meeting of the 1969 season ended in late November with a series of harness races and another personal close call. At about 5:00 a.m. on November 24, Veeck, who was living at the track during the week in a small apartment, smelled smoke. His normal escape routes to an inside stairwell and an elevator were both blocked by billowing smoke, so he climbed out a window, worked his way across a ledge, and escaped via an outside stairway. The fire was put out after Veeck called the fire department. “It does pay to live on the premises,” he quipped.
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The final accounting done in early December showed that the track had thrived under Veeck's leadership. The Commonwealth's share of wagers and licenses for the three meetings at Suffolk was a record $8,219,120. The holding company was thrilled with the profits it was taking from the track.
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As 1969 ended, Veeck got in one final jab at the Establishment—this time it was Harvard University. In early December, John Yovicsin, the popular Harvard football coach who had permission from the university to take an off-season job, was hired by Veeck to help with group sales. When the news became public, Harvard officials and influential alumni were outraged, and the coach was forced to state, “I have completely given up any plans for working at Suffolk Downs.” Harvard was so embarrassed by the incident that it withheld the announcement until just before the December 18 wedding of falsetto-voiced singer Tiny Tim on Johnny Carson's
Tonight
show (an event
that drew 40 million viewers). But it still made news and attracted comments that were not kind to the Crimson. “I prefer the University for environment, but for company, I'll take the track,” said Nathan Perlmutter, vice president for development at nearby Brandeis University.
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Veeck came out ranting, filling columns in newspapers from coast to coast with inspired invective. “The Harvard people are being stuffy. One of their people at the race track, perish the thought! It was like attacking the Virgin Mary…. It's all right for their faculty to work on lend-lease for the government on atomic bombs and germ warfare. But it's not all right to work at a race track.” One of his favorite anti-Harvard punch lines reminded everyone of its nonprofit status: “Those bums haven't paid taxes in 320 years.” Harvard now had something in common with the New York Yankees—both were in Veeck's crosshairs.
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Early in the new year, Veeck returned to Chicago to celebrate the ascendency of his protégé Pat Williams as the general manager of the surging National Basketball Association Chicago Bulls. In turn, Williams staged “Pack the Joint for Bill Veeck Night” on January 10, 1970. In early February, Veeck also threw himself directly into the problems of the Boston Patriots football team, which found itself within weeks of being forced to leave New England for lack of a stadium in which to play. The AFL Patriots had played their first two seasons in Fenway Park, then moved to Boston College's stadium for a season, but neither venue was large enough to meet National Football League standards that were applied as the two leagues merged. The only remaining option was to play at Harvard Stadium, which had turned down the team initially and again in early February.

The National Football League was scheduled to meet on March 15 in Hawaii, and any team without a stadium with seating for 50,000 would have to move its franchise to a city that did. With no other solution in sight, it appeared that the Patriots would end up in one of several southern cities that wanted a pro team and had an acceptable playing venue. Out of the blue Veeck offered a solution: he would get twelve extra racing dates, which would net the Bay State an additional $1.2 million a year, over time providing the $16 million needed to build a new stadium. The beauty of the plan was that the money would come not from taxes but from betting, which was voluntary.

Veeck then went on the offensive at a packed Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Sheraton Plaza Hotel, pointing out that Boston had lost one
baseball team (the National League Braves) and two football teams (the 1936–37 Boston Shamrocks of the former AFL and the NFL Boston Redskins, driven to Washington in 1937 because of the popularity of the Shamrocks, which moved away shortly thereafter). “If we lose the Patriots now, we may be losing the Red Sox and Celtics one of these days.” Veeck was now using the pronoun
we
in talking about the dilemma facing
his
city. He wound up his Chamber of Commerce talk by saying that Boston was unfairly regarded as a cold city, supposedly unfriendly toward strangers. “I have worked and lived at various times in virtually every large city from coast to coast. I tell you Boston is the most abused of cities. In my ten months here, you people couldn't have been more wonderful to me and my associates. It is to show my appreciation that I made the offer to contribute something to make the stadium possible.”
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Veeck also went on the offensive in the media: “I can't understand why more important people haven't come out in favor of the plan. I for one don't want to see the Patriots leave Boston, but I guess most people just don't care enough about this,” he told Tony Romano, a writer for the
St. Petersburg Evening Independent
. Romano added his own comment: “Bill Veeck, a man with only one leg, and the Boston Patriots, on its last leg, may well be fighting a losing battle in efforts to convince the people and the legislators of Massachusetts that pro football in this day and age is no liability, regardless of the problems that may be involved.”

Veeck's plan to save the Patriots was ultimately rejected by the Commonwealth, but it was instrumental in getting the NFL to give the team an extension on its deadline; ultimately, the team landed in Foxboro after playing at Harvard Stadium for one season.
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Columnists around the nation were aghast that Veeck's solution was not accepted. Wrote Red Smith: “The state government contributes nothing and takes about $7 million a year from
Suffolk; Veeck had the naïve notion that nobody would mind seeing the stadium project helped.”
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During the early months of 1970, Veeck had become attracted to the case of a thirty-two-year-old African American outfielder named Curt Flood, whom Veeck, in his normal manner, insisted on calling Curtis. Flood had enjoyed a twelve-year stay with the St. Louis Cardinals and saw himself as one of the team's leaders. On October 7, 1969, the Cardinals announced an off-season trade, sending Flood, Tim McCarver, Byron Browne, and Joe Hoerner to the Philadelphia Phillies for slugger Richie Allen, Cookie Rojas, and Jerry Johnson. Flood termed the move “impersonal” and loudly protested being traded to a club that had just had a terrible season and played its games in an old, drab stadium before notoriously belligerent fans. Flood decided he would challenge the trade through the reserve clause. He first asked Commissioner Bowie Kuhn to declare him a free agent, and was of course denied. On January 16, 1970, stating that baseball had violated the nation's antitrust laws, Flood filed suit to have the reserve clause overturned, demanding treble damages amounting to $3 million. Former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who coincidentally was running for governor of New York state, agreed to take Flood's case for expenses and assembled a team of lawyers.

Veeck had been a decades-long foe of the long-established reserve clause in baseball, which bound a player to a club in perpetuity and allowed the player to be traded against his will. Players were generally given new contracts each year, but the clause required a player to stay with whatever team first signed him as long as that team wanted him. Team owners, however, could trade a player whenever they desired. At the core of the reserve clause was baseball's exemption from the antitrust laws, which had been granted by the Supreme Court in 1922 and later reaffirmed by Congress. As Bill Gleason of the
Chicago Sun-Times
observed, Veeck had been warning baseball owners for years: “You'd better give them free agency or the courts will give it to them for you.”
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Even though Flood was making $90,000 at the time, he likened “being owned” to being “a well-paid slave,” an assessment with which Veeck agreed. Veeck had made the same point in a phone conversation with Marvin Miller of the Major League Baseball Players Association shortly after Flood's suit was filed. Miller and two of the attorneys who were working for Flood
persuaded Veeck to testify against Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and Major League Baseball.
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Veeck suspected—and was reminded by others—that his testimony in support of Flood might be another nail in the coffin regarding his chances of getting back into baseball, but he was willing and eager to speak out for Flood and against Kuhn, whom he disliked intensely.

Although Veeck stayed at the racetrack during most of each race season, the family was still living in Easton, Maryland, where writers were still attracted to him as friends but with less frequency for profiles or baseball stories. Dick Victory, thirty-five, was a veteran newspaper and magazine writer who covered sports for the
Evening Star.
In the spring of 1970, on the advice of his editor, Morris Siegel, Victory drove to Easton to spend a few hours with Veeck, believing him always a good subject for a feature.

The two men spoke for several hours on a wide range of matters. The subject of Eddie Gaedel was broached and quickly discharged; to Veeck it was a stunt he once pulled off on a dull day for a duller team but not his preferred legacy. Victory noticed, as so many others did, that Veeck was in pain, but nonetheless he was not given to cursing or complaining. The men talked mainly about politics and the state of the world and also about the furniture in the room and its restoration, all done by Veeck by hand. Victory, whose father was a carpenter, was fascinated.

As Victory drove away, he felt a sense of melancholy, thinking that Veeck's baseball time had passed, that he was now a purely historical figure, and that his might be one of the last interviews that anyone would have with Veeck

One of the opening lines in the first part of Victory's profile captured Veeck's sense of isolation: “His detractors … think of him as a berserk showman who threatened the dignity of the game and accordingly still keep a wary eye on his Eastern Shore retreat, as European heads-of-state once nervously contemplated [Napoleon on] Elba.”
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Victory's fear that his interview with Veeck might be one of the last was premature. The Flood trial got under way on May 19, 1970, and was accorded national attention by the press and the public, not only because of its potential impact on baseball but also because it had such star witnesses as Jackie Robinson and Hank Greenberg.
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Three weeks into the trial, Veeck
arrived in Manhattan late in the evening on June 9. The next morning, he met with Flood's lawyers, one of whom, Bill Iverson, was concerned that during cross-examination, the owners' legal team would conjure up images of midgets and moveable outfield fences to make Veeck appear to be a crackpot. Veeck brought out the embossed tribute that had been given to him on his retirement from the game in 1961, and Iverson planned to bring the tribute into Veeck's testimony, emphasizing the words “many valuable contributions to baseball” and the fact that it was signed by the American League.

On June 10, the sixteenth day of testimony, Veeck was to be the last witness for Flood. Sitting in an adjacent courtroom waiting to be called to the witness stand, Veeck ignored the No Smoking signs and lit up a cigarette, much to the horror of Miller and Goldberg, who told him to extinguish it immediately. Without comment, Veeck pulled up his right pants leg and put out the cigarette in the ashtray carved into his wooden leg.

On the stand for more than two hours, Veeck was serious, polite, and forthright: “The argument that a change in the reserve clause will destroy baseball is absurd.” Alluding to the letter he had sent to Commissioner Landis in 1941 on the subject, he pointed out that he had long been on record as saying that the reserve clause was both illegal and immoral, and he had never wavered in that conviction. Veeck also emphasized his belief that all individuals should enjoy at least one point in their lifetime when they could determine their own future and not be held in perpetuity by a single firm or entity (and he noted that this moment of self-determination should apply to “every person, every human being,” including attorneys).

Again and again, he came back to the immorality of the existing reserve clause and the principle of free choice. Asked how a change would benefit the players and the game of baseball, he responded: “Well, I think that it would certainly help the players and the game itself to no longer be one of the few places in which there is human bondage. I think it would be to the benefit of the reputation of the game of baseball, and I would like to mention just for the record, I happen to think of baseball as the greatest team game there is. I don't happen to agree with all they do, and often I am very unkind about my statements, but I still think it is a game that deserves to be perpetuated and to be restored to the position of honor it once held, and I think this would be a step in that direction. At least it would be fair.”
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