As we have seen, the Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Giants were two of the best-run franchises in the game in the early years of the twentieth century, though they were run very differently. Pittsburgh’s Barney Dreyfuss was a hands-on owner who established a respectful working relationship with his field manager to build and run the club. The Giants’ owners, on the other hand, gave John McGraw complete authority to create and manage his team. Both examples—the hands-on baseball-savvy owner and the strong, energetic manager—were destined to be overtaken eventually by a new model, one that has dominated baseball front offices for the past nine decades.
Prior to World War I baseball franchises were generally owned not by the wealthy upper class, but by men who had modest wealth outside of baseball. Only two teams, the Cincinnati Reds, principally owned by the wealthy Fleischmann family of the Fleischmann Yeast conglomerate, and the Detroit Tigers, partially owned by Michigan lumber and mining heir Bill Yawkey, had owners near the top strata of American wealth. Neither spent their private riches on their team, and both delegated the management of the franchise to a minority owner—Garry Herrmann in Cincinnati and Frank Navin in Detroit. Most teams had a couple of principal backers, with the most interested large investor operating the club as the president.
Baseball management reflected the way American businesses had been run in the mid-nineteenth century. “The largest firms,” wrote business historian Alfred Chandler, “were directed by a general superintendent and a president or treasurer. The general superintendent personally supervised the labor force.”1 Sixty years later baseball teams were still being run this way: with a president who represented the ownership syndicate, a business manager (for back-office functions such as travel arrangements, ticket sales, and uniforms), and a general superintendent in charge of the labor force (the manager). The relative influence and power of the president and manager in assembling the team depended on the relationship between the two and the president’s desire and belief in his own baseball acumen. Owners such as Charles Comiskey in Chicago and Dreyfuss in Pittsburgh either made most of the key player-personnel decisions or played a large role in them. The Giants, on the other hand, allowed McGraw pretty much a free hand, with his oversight restricted mainly to budgetary limits.
In 1914 and 1915 the Major Leagues faced a new competitor, the Federal League, which bid for the best players and competed in the same cities with many established teams. Facing fresh competition, organized baseball needed to bolster some of its more poorly capitalized franchises. In one of his big successes, AL president Ban Johnson recruited millionaire brewer Jacob Ruppert to purchase the New York Yankees along with partner Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston. Bringing deep-pocketed owners to Gotham also helped provide a safeguard against Federal League threats to relocate a team there.
The Federals recruited some wealthy owners of their own: bread manufacturer Robert Ward in Brooklyn, ice-plant builder Phil Ball in St. Louis, and oilman Harry Sinclair in Indianapolis. When the Federal League folded after the 1915 season, Ball was allowed to purchase the American League’s St. Louis Browns. Similarly, Chicago Federals owner and restaurateur Charles Weeghman, backed by a moneyed syndicate that included chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley, purchased the Chicago Cubs. When Weeghman ran into financial difficulties several years later, Wrigley gained control of the franchise. These new owners, Ball and Wrigley, boasted two things many of the previous owners lacked: a lot of money and an understanding of how to run a business.
Meanwhile, American business management had evolved considerably in the past half century. “At the close of World War I,” wrote Chandler, “most larger industrial companies whose executives paid any attention to organizational matters were administered through much the same type of organization—the centralized, functionally departmentalized structure.”2
Professional management soon came to baseball as well, and its importance can hardly be overstated. “It is management, and management alone,” wrote the late management guru Peter Drucker, “that makes effective all this knowledge and these knowledgeable people.”3
Because the new breed of baseball owners had little background in their new field, they recognized that they needed professional help in running their new baseball companies. Moreover, because of their wide experience in large industrial enterprises, they also realized that the effort of both finding players and managing the team had become too overwhelming for one man. Accordingly, over the next several years, baseball executives took the logical step of hiring veteran baseball men to run their front offices, to oversee the business of the ball club, and to take responsibility for finding players and building a team. Confined principally by the owner’s budget, these men were in charge of purchasing or drafting players in the Minor Leagues, trading or acquiring players from other teams, and assembling a competitive roster for the field manager.
For many years there was no generally accepted title for the men (thus far, they have all been men) who performed this role. Eventually, he came to be called the “general manager” or “GM,” though even today teams are not consistent about this. In the early days the breakdown of duties between the owner-president, the GM, and the field manager was imprecise. As this new model evolved, both the team president and the manager were often involved to a much larger degree than they would be when the front offices became larger and more complex.
Frank Navin could lay claim to having been baseball’s first general manager, though he never had that title. In 1904, while working as business manager of the Tigers, Navin identified and recruited William Clyman Yawkey, a lumber and mining baron and one of the wealthiest men in Michigan, as a potential purchaser for the franchise. Before negotiations were finalized, however, Yawkey suddenly died. Undaunted, Navin pursued the idea with Yawkey’s son, the twenty-five-year-old William H. (Bill) Yawkey, who had reportedly inherited ten million dollars. (Bill Yawkey was the uncle of Tom Yawkey, who in 1933 bought the Boston Red Sox with his inheritance.) Bill Yawkey paid fifty thousand dollars for the franchise, allocating five thousand dollars’ worth of stock to Navin and twenty-five hundred to field manager Ed Barrow.
Though nominally still the business manager, Navin soon became involved with the player-procurement functions typically associated today with a GM. In 1908 Navin assumed the presidency of the team as Yawkey retreated to the background, and shortly thereafter he acquired a larger share of ownership and assumed its oversight. As head of the franchise, Navin became active in league matters, taking on more of a presidential role. But while Yawkey was still involved with the franchise, Navin acted very much like a general manager.
The newer owners who entered the game in the 1910s and 1920s acted to solidify this new function. When Phil Ball bought the Browns in 1916, he inherited field manager Branch Rickey. Ball brought the popular Fielder Jones from his St. Louis Federals squad to manage the Browns, but he kept Rickey, who had signed a long-term contract under the previous regime, to focus mainly on the players the Browns controlled in the Minor Leagues.4 After the 1916 season, when the crosstown Cardinals’ new ownership syndicate was looking for someone to run their organization, they offered Rickey the opportunity to buy a small ownership interest and become team president. Rickey chafed under Ball’s direction, so he eagerly accepted and moved to the Cardinals.
To replace Rickey Ball hired Minor League business manager Bob Quinn and granted him the powers of a modern-day general manager—a role Quinn had successfully filled for a number of years with his team in Columbus. While there Quinn had even briefly affiliated with two clubs in the lower Minor Leagues, creating a rudimentary farm system.5 The Browns, perennially one of the American League’s worst teams, experienced some of their best seasons under Quinn’s oversight. Like Rickey, Quinn eventually grew tired of Ball’s meddling and jumped at the chance to lead an investor group in buying the struggling Boston Red Sox in 1923.6
Meanwhile, new Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley brought in sportswriter Bill Veeck Sr. as vice president and treasurer and soon promoted him to president with control of team operations, a role similar to Quinn’s. At the time of his hiring, Veeck was one of the highest-paid sportswriters in Chicago and considered his prospects carefully before leaving his profession. Veeck alleviated his financial concerns by negotiating a small percentage of the Cubs’ profits.7 Under Veeck’s administration (and Wrigley’s open checkbook), the Cubs returned to being perennial contenders. The team won four pennants and did not finish in the second division from 1926 until 1939, long after Wrigley’s death.
As we discuss in the next chapter, New York Yankees owners Ruppert and Huston first tried to oversee the baseball side of their new club with the help of field manager Bill Donovan and business manager Harry Sparrow. The team improved immeasurably with the hiring of manager Miller Huggins for 1918 and the purchase of Babe Ruth after the 1919 season. When Sparrow passed away in May 1920, the two owners were forced to take on a larger hands-on role than they wanted. Accordingly, after the season they reached out to Ed Barrow, manager of the Boston Red Sox, to oversee their Yankees’ front office.
Barrow had won the World Series in the war-shortened 1918 season and had spent twenty-five years in baseball in virtually every capacity except player: Minor League owner, Minor League president, Minor League manager, and Major League manager. Under Barrow’s leadership (and that of capable field managers Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy), the Yankees developed into one of the greatest dynasties in American sports: they won their first pennant the next year, and during Barrow’s reign the Yankees won fourteen pennants and ten World Series. With the Yankees Barrow formally instituted the separation between the front office and the manager’s domain of the clubhouse, a concept that has survived to the present. “As a front office man, he never interfered in the playing end of the game,” wrote one sportswriter. “His field manager was the boss on the field, the bench and in the clubhouse.”8
Of all the early general managers, Branch Rickey had the greatest impact. After two years overseeing the Cardinals off the field, in 1919 Rickey put on a uniform and managed the club for six years, while still serving as the (de facto) GM. Rickey shouldered a dual role that only a few others took on after World War I, with only Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Bill Terry having notable success. In 1920 wealthy auto dealer Sam Breadon purchased control of the Cardinals from the nearly bankrupt ownership group and assumed leadership of the franchise, while leaving Rickey in his two jobs. It was not until 1925 that Breadon separated the roles and returned Rickey full-time to the front office. “In time Branch, you will see that I am doing you a great favor,” Breadon told a distraught Rickey. “You can now devote yourself fully to player development and scouting.”9 Among his many future contributions, Rickey introduced baseball’s first sophisticated farm system and broke baseball’s color barrier.
When Cleveland Indians president Alva Bradley hired Billy Evans to run his front office in 1927, the longtime umpire became the first person actually given the title of “general manager.” Evans signed one of the era’s most lucrative contracts, covering three years at thirty thousand dollars per year.10 The Reach Guide remarked on the significance of this emerging position: “This is a new office in a ball club and Evans will act as buffer between players and the owners, exercising some of the powers of a club president.”11 The GM role was coming into its own.
By 1930 the GM job was largely recognized as a vital role. “[These new owners] with their huge investments, they can’t afford to take a chance of directing the club with their own slim knowledge of the baseball business,” wrote John Kieran. “They need men who know baseball from a business standpoint and business from a baseball standpoint. . . . Thus—and at last the heroes of the story appear—Colonel Ruppert has Ed Barrow . . . Mr. Wrigley has William L. Veeck . . . and Mr. Bradley has Billy Evans.”12
Like most institutions, however, baseball progresses deliberately, and there were a few teams that resisted the new model. Connie Mack, a hybrid in that he was both the principal owner and the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, had intermittent periods of considerable success through 1931 before a lack of financial resources led to two decades of struggle. Clark Griffith, like Dreyfuss, a hands-on owner with Washington, won his final pennant in 1933 and had trouble competing for the next twenty years. McGraw fielded competitive teams throughout the 1920s, and his successor, Bill Terry, also served as the primary team builder and won three pennants in the 1930s. By the end of the decade, however, Terry recognized the merits of the new organizational structure and asked to be relieved of his field-manager duties to focus solely on overseeing the club off the field. Young owner Horace Stoneham, who remembered the glory days of his father and John McGraw, insisted that Terry handle both positions.13
Nevertheless, baseball front offices inexorably progressed toward professionalism. The general manager, by whatever title, continued to catch on throughout the 1930s, particularly in the American League. “On many major league clubs today it is the general manager who directs the team’s affairs,” wrote John Drebinger, who lamented the new model. “Moving quietly behind the scenes, usually in the seclusion of a ‘front office’ and behind a big desk, he hires not only players but the manager as well. He makes all deals and trades, handles the player manipulations between parent club and its farm connections and, in short, has reduced the once-powerful manager to a position that is little more than a field captain, giving signals from the bench, yanking pitchers and sending up pinch hitters with the fervent hope that they deliver and thereby help save his job.”14
Table 3 lists the 1938 executives primarily entrusted with building a team’s roster.
Table 3. Team builders, 1938
|
League |
Team builder |
Role |
|
|
Boston |
AL |
Eddie Collins |
GM |
|
Chicago |
AL |
Jimmie Dykes |
Manager |
|
Cleveland |
AL |
Cy Slapnicka |
GM |
|
Detroit |
AL |
Mickey Cochrane |
Manager |
|
New York |
AL |
Ed Barrow |
GM |
|
Philadelphia |
AL |
Connie Mack |
President-manager |
|
St. Louis |
AL |
Bill Dewitt |
GM |
|
Washington |
AL |
Clark Griffith |
President |
|
Boston |
NL |
Bob Quinn |
President |
|
Brooklyn |
NL |
Larry MacPhail |
GM |
|
Chicago |
NL |
Phil Wrigley |
President |
|
NL |
Warren Giles |
GM |
|
|
New York |
NL |
Bill Terry |
Manager |
|
Philadelphia |
NL |
Gerry Nugent |
President |
|
Pittsburgh |
NL |
Bill Benswanger |
President |
|
St. Louis |
NL |
Branch Rickey |
GM |
The three teams with a full-time GM in the National League (the Cardinals, Reds, and Dodgers) were the best teams in the league in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The AL was dominated by Barrow’s Yankees, with Eddie Collins’s Red Sox usually finishing second. The teams that operated without a GM were generally not as successful by the late 1930s. After Veeck’s sudden death in 1933, Phil Wrigley (who had recently taken over the team after the death of his father) kept the team competitive for a few years without a GM, though he struggled with defining front-office roles and experimented with other management structures. “What he was striving for, from the moment he took over the Cubs,” wrote sportswriter Warren Brown, “was a compact organization which would run the baseball property, make its own decisions, and not bother him with every minute detail. Unhappily it was many years before he was to have his hopes realized.”15
Because most teams still did not have extensive Minor League systems requiring a farm director, or formal scouting systems—as late as 1938 eight of the sixteen teams still officially employed two or fewer scouts—general managers still operated with only skeleton staffs.16
But the structure had been established. As baseball revenue exploded after World War II, the attendant leap in operating specialization and new departmental responsibilities fell under the aegis of the general manager. How he handled all his charges would often determine the fate of the franchise.
As the sport evolved, most successful baseball owners understood the importance of professional management, both on the field and in the front office. Perhaps no other action could be as influential in the success or failure of a franchise as hiring the right person as GM. The owner needed to provide a budget and remain engaged but otherwise let the general manager do his job. The relationship between the owner and his GM arguably became the most important one in a baseball organization, with the potential to create a first-rate organization and consistent on-field success.