Harry Frazee Book Available for Purchase
April 2, 2008 by Mike Lynch · Leave a Comment
Harry Frazee, Ban Johnson and the Feud That Nearly Destroyed the American League is now available for purchase!
An attractive lie sounds infinitely better than a mere statement of truth—From the play Nothing But The Truth, produced by Harry Frazee
For years Red Sox Nation has been led to believe that Harry Frazee, “the man who sold Babe Ruth,†was the devil; that he was responsible for the ills that plagued the Red Sox franchise from 1919 to 2003 and was the reason the Old Towne team suffered through an 86-year drought that brought them no world championships while the hated New York Yankees were copping 26 of them. When New York Times sportswriter George Vecsey, who penned the headline “Babe Ruth Curse Strikes Again†when the Red Sox lost Game 7 of the 1986 World Series to the New York Mets, attributed the Red Sox’s run of bad luck to an imaginary affliction eventually dubbed the “Curse of the Bambino,†animosity towards Frazee grew. Not only did he sell the greatest player in baseball history to the team’s hated rivals, but he was now responsible for a hex that kept the Red Sox from winning the World Series for 86 years.
It was while doing research for another book that I realized there was much more to Frazee’s story, though. Initially I wanted to redirect the anger of Red Sox Nation away from the sale of Ruth and educate fans about the other ill-advised deals Frazee made with the Yankees that resulted in the methodical transfer of 11 Red Sox players to New York that contributed to the Bronx Bombers’ dynasty of the 1920s and was described by the Boston Herald’s Burt Whitman as the “rape of the Red Sox.â€
As I began to research Frazee and the events surrounding the sale of Ruth to the Yankees, however, I realized I didn’t know as much about the story as I was led to believe. What I believed happened, as do most baseball fans in general, was that Frazee was an unsuccessful theatrical producer, who cared more about his Broadway shows than his team and sold his best players to finance his various productions. Legend has it that Ruth was sold for upwards of $125,000 so that Frazee could invest his new found riches in a musical called No, No Nanette and that he was struggling so badly financially that he also procured a $300,000 loan from the Yankees, for which he used Fenway Park as collateral. He then embarked on a series of trades and sales that sent his best players to the Yankees for loads of cash and a slew of players who were lucky to be wearing major league uniforms let alone good enough to help
But the truth, wrapped in a web of politics, behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and bigotry, is far more complex.
American League president Ban Johnson ruled his circuit with an iron hand and served as its puppet master, pulling the strings on every transaction and putting players, managers and owners where he felt they’d best serve the league. A deal wasn’t made without his knowledge or blessing. That is until Harry Frazee bought the Boston Red Sox from Joseph Lannin on November 1, 1916. While Johnson publicly expressed satisfaction with the sale after meeting the theater magnate for the first time, privately he seethed and vowed to rid his league of the new
It was an ironic claim, considering that Frazee was trying to exterminate Johnson as well. He aligned himself with White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, Johnson’s former best friend-turned bitter nemesis, and Yankee co-owners Colonels Jacob Ruppert and Tillingham “Cap†Huston, to form an alliance that would come to be known as the “Insurrectos†and who would go into battle against the “Loyal Five,†the five remaining American League owners who were still loyal to Johnson. The “Insurrectos†and the “Loyal Five†waged war on several issues, most notably the Red Sox’s sale of Carl Mays to the Yankees on July 30th, 1919, which brought the competing factions into court and almost destroyed the American League. Frazee eventually accused Johnson of “gross stupidity and incompetence†and demanded his resignation. He also championed the Lasker Plan, whose purpose was to replace the Johnson-influenced National Commission with a single commissioner.
When Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees on December 26th, 1919, the course of baseball history took a dramatic turn. Ruth’s move to the world’s grandest stage propelled him to legendary status and he would eventually be credited with saving baseball as his prodigious circuit clouts brought fans back to a game tainted by the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal. It also ushered in a prosperity that had eluded the Yankees up to that point. While Ruth was being canonized amidst his team’s new found success, Frazee was fighting for his baseball life.
The Dearborn Independent, a newspaper published by one of this nation’s most infamous anti-Semites, automobile pioneer Henry Ford, gave Johnson an ally in his fight with Frazee. In an article titled “The Jewish Degradation of Baseballâ€, the newspaper insisted that Frazee was a Jew, that he was out to “get†Johnson and that the Lasker Plan was a grand Jewish conspiracy designed to place Organized Baseball under Jewish control. Frazee was in fact Presbyterian and a Mason and, though he was not Jewish, being a Freemason branded him guilty by association. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forgery originating in
From the time Frazee joined the ranks of the American League, he and Johnson fought to gain control over the other, but neither man would really earn the upper hand. Eventually each would see their wishes come to fruition, however. In the wake of the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal, the Lasker Plan was adopted and the National Commission was replaced by a single governor, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, in November of 1920. Johnson, his powers stripped by the appointing of Judge Landis, continued to serve as American League president before finally resigning against his will in 1927, having been abandoned by all but one of his “loyalists.â€
Before he left, however, he ushered Frazee out of baseball. Amid constant rumors that he was trying to unload the team, Frazee sold the Red Sox in 1923 and returned to
Johnson and Frazee’s respective victories would be short-lived. Before the decade of the twenties could turn its final page, Frazee would be dead at the age of 49, a victim of Bright’s disease. Johnson’s death would follow two years later after a long battle with Diabetes.
Eugene C. Murdock wrote a very flattering biography of Ban Johnson 25 years ago that glossed over Johnson’s faults and blamed everyone else for his undoing, but he barely scratched the surface of the feud Johnson had with Frazee. Harold Seymour was more even-handed in his accounting of the events surrounding the Carl Mays case, World War I, the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal and the eventual fall of the National Commission, but Frazee is a secondary character throughout. Glenn Stout did a fantastic job delving into Frazee’s background as a theatrical producer and raised the specter of the possible bigotry Frazee may have faced in light of the
Other fantastic books have been written about Babe Ruth, Carl Mays, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, John McGraw, Connie Mack, Henry Ford, the Yankees, the Red Sox, and most of the other characters crucial to this story. But, to this point, no one has focused so heavily on Frazee’s life, his career in the theater and as a baseball magnate, and his battles with Johnson. Until now, few have taken the time to examine Frazee’s theatrical productions and put them into their proper context, but that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve also consulted with religious scholars not so much to understand the implications of the
History’s brush has painted pictures of Harry Frazee and Ban Johnson in broad strokes; the latter as a man whose unwavering dedication to his league and autocratic style of ruling brought prosperity to the game as a whole and earned him the title of “Czar of Baseball;†the former as a struggling Broadway producer who engineered the “rape of the Red Sox†and gutted a once proud franchise of its star players for a quick buck so he could finance theatrical productions that eventually flopped, leaving the Red Sox and his family in ruins.
Neither man is who he appears to be.
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