Bill Veeck (76 page)

^cs
On moving to Foxboro in 1971, the team petitioned to change its name to the Bay State Patriots, which was rejected. The next choice—New England Patriots—stuck. While Veeck had given the Patriots and its owner, Billy Sullivan, enough of a patchwork solution to make it through the owners meeting, he also gave a voice to Boston's professional sports teams, which were on the ropes at the time. His defense of Fenway Park when there were thoughts of replacing it and his assist in keeping the Patriots in New England would later be recalled when he was given the Judge Emil Fuchs Memorial Award in 1981, presented by the Boston sportswriters for long and meritorious service. Fuchs was president of the Boston Braves from 1927 to 1935.

^ct
The trial opened on a light note when a nervous Flood was asked to reel off his season-by-season batting averages. He was unable to recall them until one of his lawyers handed him his bubble gum baseball card that had the exact statistics.

^cu
Mike Veeck, who served as paddock manager for a short period, realized that he was the one to shovel the thirty tons, but he admitted that the tonnage was “slightly exaggerated.”

^cv
Curt Flood played 13 games for Washington 1n 1971, hit a paltry .200, and retired in April.

^cw
One burden he could not get rid of was a requirement to pay Allyn a $50,000-a-year consulting fee for the next ten years. Wags suggested that given Allyn's poor stewardship of the Sox, the club would be better off if Veeck were to pay him $50,000 a year to stay clear of Comiskey Park.

^cx
He became, at once, the man who was an owner in four different decades and the last person to engineer the purchase of a baseball franchise without an independent fortune.

^cy
Not until after Veeck's death did Roland Hemond reveal a trick employed during these Winter Meetings. Veeck had given Hemond several rolls of dimes and said, “Go to a pay phone as soon as there's a lull and start calling me.” Excited by the hullabaloo, teams started making their own calls.

^cz
The contract negotiation in early 1976 between Veeck and Caray was “hilarious, loud, and very public,” as reported in the
Chicago Tribune
, January 14, 1976. The two men were scheduled to meet at the restaurant of the Executive House Hotel. Hard of hearing, Veeck shouted to an approaching Caray and his attorney, Marty Cohn, “Hey, Harry, I want to make you an offer to work for me.” Mocking Veeck's thunderous voice, Caray shouted back, with the restaurant patrons suddenly taking notice, “That sounds great, Bill.”

Veeck then countered: “How 'bout $100,000 a year, Harry?”
Caray's response: “That sounds great, Bill. When do I start?”
The amazed diners applauded the exchange.

^da
As Richard Roeper would later write in his book
Sox and the City
, “The short pants will be mentioned forever on every list of the worst sports uniforms of all time.”

^db
Roger Clark, Veeck's old lifeguard friend, who is also a good friend of Baines's, says that this was instrumental in helping Baines manage his money with great skill. Harold Baines's wife, Marla, is an associate in Clark's real estate firm.

^dc
Blomberg has long been a trivia and
Jeopardy
question because on April 6, 1973, he became the major league's first designated hitter.

^dd
This inspired the fans to hang a sign from the right-field bleachers that read WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE.

^de
After Veeck raised a flap about coverage,
Trib
columnist and Veeck supporter Dave Condon decided to fool Veeck by triple-spacing his copy when he wrote about the Sox so it would look like the team was getting more column inches.

^df
Veeck asked Greene not to write about this good deed, a request that Greene honored until after Veeck was out of baseball.

^dg
Later in the U.S. House of Representatives, he sponsored the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal money being used to fund abortion.

^dh
Baines ended up tenth in the American League MVP voting for 1983, but Hemond was picked as baseball executive of the year, and Kittle won the AL Rookie of the Year Award.

^di
Assisted by the Internet, a “Grimm's ghost” legend has emerged from the spreading of Grimm's ashes, emanating from a Web site hosted by “the Wanna-Be Sports Guy”: “Since his burial, many workers who worked at Wrigley recalled seeing his ghost around the front offices late at night. Many security guards have recalled hearing the phone ring in the Cubs dugout in the wee hours of the morning. Many believe that Charlie Grimm's ghost is trying to call up a pitcher from the bullpen.”

^dj
Those who believed that celebrity deaths came in threes noted that Veeck's passing followed the air crash that killed Ricky Nelson and the death of movie producer Sam Spiegel (
The African Queen
,
On the Waterfront
, etc.), both on New Year's Eve.

^dk
Veeck did not live to see lights in Wrigley Field. Following the Veeck-directed renovation in 1937, the next upgrade of any significance took place in 1988, when the Cubs installed lights after Major League Baseball decreed they could not host any postseason games until they did. Three banks of lights, each on thirty-three-foot steel towers, were added to the left-and right-field rooftops at a cost of $5 million. After playing 5,687 consecutive home day games, the Cubs played their first night game at Wrigley on August 8, 1988, but it was rained out after three innings. The first complete night game was played on August 9.

^dl
An allusion to Rudie Schaffer, according to Mary Frances.

^dm
On November 10, 2009, I had open heart surgery to correct a defective aortic valve. Dr. Horvath was my surgeon. Hours after the surgery we talked about this book and he said that as a youngster he had been with his father and, on several occasions, met and shook hands with Bill Veeck. I was not all that coherent at the moment, but I mumbled something to the effect that the hand that had saved my life had also touched the hand of the man I was trying to capture in a biography. It somehow seemed proper to include him in the acknowledgments. He is a White Sox fan.

^dn
The authors are described in the 2006
KOM Baseball Research Journal
: David Jordan, the author of three biographies, including one of pitcher Hal Newhouser, is one of the foremost authorities on Philadelphia baseball history; John Rossi is a professor of history at LaSalle University in Philadelphia; and Larry Gerlach, a professor of history at the University of Utah, published the pioneering volume of oral histories
The Men in Blue: Conversations with Umpires
, and, more significant, was the president of SABR in 1998, when the Veeck article was published.

Bill Veeck Collection/The Baseball Reliquary: 4, 5, 7, 12, 15, 22, 41

Cleveland State University Library,
The Cleveland Press
Collection: 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26, 38.

Family photos, courtesy of Fred Krehbiel: 1, 2, 3, 6, 32, 40

Jim Hansen, photographer,
LOOK
Magazine Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, used with permission of Mrs. James T. Hansen: 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36

Museum of Modern Art, Film Still Archives: 23

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York: 20, 25

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York,
LOOK
photo collection, photographs by Bob Sandberg: 8, 9, 10, 11

Robert Lerner, photographer,
LOOK
Magazine Collection, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, used with the permission of Mr. Lerner: 24

Paul Tenpenny collection, 13

Washington Star
Collection, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther King Library, Washington D.C. Public Library: 37, 39.

Paul Dickson is the author of several classic baseball books, including
The Dickson Baseball Dictionary
,
The Unwritten Rules of Baseball
,
The Hidden Language of Baseball
,
Baseball: The Presidents' Game
, and
The Joy of Keeping Score
. He is also the author of the seminal narrative history
Sputnik: The Shock of the Century
, and the coauthor of the acclaimed
The Bonus Army: An American Epic
. He lives in Garrett Park, Maryland.

RECENT BOOKS BY PAUL DICKSON

Sputnik: The Shock of the Century
(2001)

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(2003)

The Bonus Army: An American Epic
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(2006)

Labels for Locals: What to Call People from Abilene to Zimbabwe
(2007)
Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families
(2007)

Baseball's Greatest Quotations
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The Dickson Baseball Dictionary
(Third Edition) (2009)
The Unwritten Rules of Baseball
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A Dictionary of the Space Age
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Drunk: The Definitive Drinker's Dictionary
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Toasts: Over 1,500 of the Best Toasts, Sentiments, Blessings, and Graces
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On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C
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Copyright © 2012 by Paul Dickson

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Walker & Company, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010.

This electronic edition published in 2012

Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York
A Division of Bloomsbury Publishing

Frontispiece: Jim Hansen photograph of Bill Veeck in 1959 shortly after having taken over the Chicago White Sox. Hansen was a staff photographer for
LOOK
. The image is from the
LOOK
Magazine Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, and appears with the permission of Mrs. James T. Hansen.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR.

ISBN 978-0-8027-7831-4 (e-book)

First U.S. edition 2012

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