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Bill Veeck
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| Owner | Cleveland
Indians/Chicago White Sox
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Bill Veeck |
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| Bill Veeck |
The eccentric owner of the Indians, Browns and White Sox, Bill Veeck consistently broke attendance records with pennant-winning teams, outrageous door prizes, enthusiastic fan participation and ingenious promotional schemes.
He may be best remembered for sending a midget named Eddie Gaedel to the plate against the Detroit Tigers, and for Fan's Manager Night; but he should also be remembered for things like the ivy he planted on the outfield wall at Wrigley Field as a young man; for Bat Day; for the laughing Indian the Cleveland ball club uses as a team logo; for fireworks; and for the exploding scoreboards (the one in Chicago's Comiskey Park still explodes after home runs) and player names on backs of uniforms.
An inveterate hustler and energetic maverick who frequently upset other club owners with his proposals and stunts, he once insured the face of his good-looking infielder Johnny Berardino for $1 million, against line drives and other mayhem.
he grew up in a ballpark and was never happier than when he was roaming the grandstand and bleachers, mingling with fans. An admitted publicity hound and an imaginative innovator, he was also a sound baseball man - he created the teams in Cleveland that won pennants in 1948 and 1954 (and a world championship in 1948) and later won another pennant with the Chicago White Sox in 1959. He signed the American League's first black player — Larry Doby in 1947 — and its oldest rookie — 43-year-old Satchel Paige in 1948.
His father, William Veeck, Sr., was a baseball writer when William Wrigley installed him as president of the Cubs. By the time he was eleven, Bill Jr. was selling soda in the stands, mailing out tickets, and helping the grounds keepers. When his father died in 1933 Veeck quit Kenyon College and went to work full-time for the Cubs. He became treasurer, but at twenty-seven he quit and bought the near-bankrupt Milwaukee team in the American Association. With $11 in his pocket he arrived in Milwaukee in 1941; four years later he sold the club for a $275,000 profit after setting minor league attendance records and winning three pennants. He gave away live pigs, beer, cases of food; he put on fireworks displays, staged weddings at home plate, and played morning games for wartime swing shift workers. But he considered such stunts as extras, not lures, and usually produced them unannounced.
Veeck had initially wanted to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and integrate the National League - in 1943, he had the backing to buy the Phillies and planned to sign several Negro League players. With wartime rosters so depleted, he reasoned that such a move could vault the Phillies to a pennant. His mistake was to mention his idea to the all-powerful Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the man who at the time had almost unlimited powers in baseball. Almost immediately thereafter, the team was no longer available - it was sold instead to lumberman William D. Cox.
Wounds suffered fighting in the South Pacific with the Marines in WWII forced him to undergo several operations on his leg and eventual amputation in 1946. But it didn't slow him down. In 1946 Veeck put together a syndicate and bought the Cleveland Indians. In 1947 they doubled attendance to 1.5 million; a year later they drew an AL-record 2,620,627 while winning the pennant. He signed Larry Doby, the first black player in the league, and Satchel Paige, the first black pitcher in the majors. Paige was terrific down the stretch, going 6-1, and the Indians won the pennant and the World Series.
After selling the Indians for a large profit (he sold them for $2.2 million to a local syndicate headed by Ellis Ryan - Hank Greenberg became the general manager), he took over the moribund St. Louis Browns in 1951, then in debt to the league for $300,000, a number about equal to a season's attendance. In 1952 attendance "soared" to 518,000; Veeck said he lost close to $200,000. Despite the opposition of his three partners, Veeck planned to move the team to Baltimore in 1953. August Busch had bought the Cardinals, who were paying $35,000-a-year rent to the Browns for the use of Sportsman's Park. The deal was to sell the park to the Cardinals and raise money by selling shares to the public in Baltimore. Believing he had seven votes lined up, he put it to the league on March 16, 1953. He lost 5 to 3; only former partner Hank Greenberg and Frank Lane of the White Sox supported him.
Reasons given for the turndown were too many debts, not enough money, and too little time before the season was to open. He had failed to confer with the president of the International League over the Baltimore territory and had not contacted Washington and Philadelphia officials personally. Veeck said, "I am the victim of duplicity by a lot of lying so-and-sos. Every reason they give for voting me down is either silly or malicious, and I prefer to think they were malicious." Most of the press agreed with him. He was forced to sell out. A year later the club was moved to Baltimore.
Out of baseball, Veeck tried to buy the Ringling Brothers circus, researched the
Pacific coast for major league possibilities for Phil Wrigley, publicized a
passenger ship in Cleveland, worked for ABC sports and NBC game of the week,
tried to buy the Tigers in 1957, and went after an NBA franchise for
Cleveland. He was back in the game in 1959, heading a group that bought
the White Sox. They won their first pennant in 40 years and drew a
club-record 1,423,000. In 1960 Veeck unveiled the exploding scoreboard and
drew 1,644,460 for a club record that stood for almost 20 years. On advice
of his doctors he sold the club and retired to his Maryland farm. But after
operating Suffolk racetrack, writing book reviews for newspapers and his own
story,
The Eddie Gaedel stunt: In 1951, Bill Veeck bought the moribund St. Louis Browns - the year that the American League was celebrating it's 50th birthday. Veeck thought he could make more money with a bad team and a lot of gimmicks than he could with a winning team. One of his gimmicks involved Eddie Gaedel, a 3'7" 65-pound midget, who was sent in to lead off the second game of a double-header against the Detroit Tigers on August 19, 1951, by which time the Browns were 36 games out. Veeck threw an immense birthday party for the AL, with fireworks, jugglers, acrobats, a band led by Satchel Paige, baseball clown Max Patkin, and a birthday cake that was rolled out to the pitcher's mound.
Out of the cake popped Eddie Gaedel, wearing the number 1/8. Veeck had offered him $100, and told him what he wanted to do - he had measured Gaedel's strike zone in a crouch at 1 1/2 inches high, and threatened to shoot him if he took a swing. But Gaedel had thoughts of glory, and kept trying to show off his swing. He asked Veeck, "How tall was Wee Willie Keeler?" Veeck replied with a straight face, "He was six-foot-five-inches tall."
The Browns first batter was Frank Saucier, but Gaedel was sent in as a pinch-hitter. To Veeck's horror, he didn't go into a crouch, but instead stood straight up in a fair approximation of Ty Cobb's stance. Nevertheless, Tiger pitcher Bob Cain was laughing so hard he walked him on four pitches. Gaedel took first base, and everyday right fielder Jim Delsing went in to pinch run for him - on his way out, Gaedel patted Delsing on the rear in true baseballer fashion.
Veeck later hired Gaedel for other stunts. The last of these came at Comiskey Park in 1959, when Veeck was owner of the White Sox. Gaedel and three other midgets, all dressed as Martians, dropped from the sky and "captured" the White Sox tiny double-play combination of Nellie Fox and Luis Aparicio, who would finish one-two in AL MVP voting that year. The Martians quickly made Fox and Aparicio honorary Martians, and informed the crowd that they were there to help them in their battle against the giant Earthlings.
Unfortunately, the story of Eddie Gaedel doesn't have a happy ending. His brush with fame faded quickly, and three weeks after his appearance he was arrested for disorderly conduct, and he ended up working for the Ringling Brothers Circus until 1961. In June of that year, with his health suffering terribly, he was robbed and beaten, and although he managed to get back home, he died of a heart attack in his bed.
Later, a man asked his mother if the Hall of Fame could have the bat and uniform from Gaedel's major league appearance. She gave him the equipment - but he wasn't from the Hall of Fame and she was left with no mementoes of her son's appearance.
Fans Managers' Night - August 24th, 1951: In another of Bill Veeck’s legendary PR stunts, "Fans Managers’ Night," the Browns defeated the Philadelphia Athletics 5–3. Manager Zack Taylor was outfitted for the game in slippers and civilian clothes, and sat at the top of the dugout in a rocking chair. Fans had been asked to pick the Browns' starting lineup from a ballot printed in a St. Louis newspaper. At each strategic juncture in the game, the Browns coaches and Veeck's publicity man (Bob Fishel) held up placards for 1,115 fans, who voted "yes" or "no" on the options given them - things like "SHALL WE WARM UP THE PITCHER?" or "INFIELD BACK?" The fans would decide, and a circuit judge would quickly tally the votes, relaying the instructions to Johnny Berardino in the third-base coach's box.
Adding to the festivities was Max Patkin, the clown prince of baseball, who coached at 1B for several innings. Sherm Lollar, who was voted in behind the plate instead of Matt Batts, has three hits including a homer, and Hank Arft, also voted in, knocked home two. Gus Zernial's 28th HR, off Ned Garver, accounted for all the A's runs. When the stunt was announced on August 15th, A's GM Art Ehlers bitterly denounced it as "farcical."
Picture from National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc.
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