The emergence of management has converted knowledge from social ornament and luxury into the true capital of any economy.—PETER DRUCKER, management consultant
As New York Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert prepared to attend the winter meetings after the 1935 season, he was not a satisfied man. His team had just finished in second place for the third straight season, and as he had told Joe McCarthy upon hiring him five years earlier, “I’ll stand for finishing second this year, McCarthy. But remember, I do not like to finish second.”1 Over the previous seven seasons the Yankees had won only one pennant, with a dominant 107-win team that captured the 1932 World Series in four games.
The 1929–35 teams had been regularly competitive—in their six non-pennant-winning seasons the Yankees had finished second five times and third once—but Ruppert wanted more. Although he had not actively participated in the annual “trading mart,” leaving the baseball matters to general manager Ed Barrow, at the 1935 winter meetings in Chicago Ruppert tried to take matters into his own hands. A year earlier Boston’s new owner, Tom Yawkey, had purchased shortstop Joe Cronin from the Washington Senators for an astounding $250,000—an amount greater than the entire player payroll of fourteen of the sixteen teams. A year later Ruppert mimicked Yawkey’s strategy with Washington owner Clark Griffith, making an offer for second baseman Buddy Myer, the 1935 AL batting champion. But Griffith considered the Cronin sale a onetime thing and had no interest in selling more players. Still, Ruppert demanded that Griffith name a price. Flippantly, Griffith told Ruppert that he wanted $500,000. “And do you know that Ruppert almost made a deal with me,” Griffith recounted. “He actually was going to give the Washington club $400,000 and second baseman Tony Lazzeri for Myer, until Ed Barrow, his business manager, stopped him. If Barrow hadn’t been around that night, I’d have made a $400,000 sale.”2
Though Ruppert did not bag the star, his worries would soon be over. The Yankees were about to embark on one of the greatest stretches of winning baseball in the history of the sport. The credit for this success has been given to many people over the years, but no one deserves it more than Ruppert. The Yankees won because they had an extraordinary organization of talented people—from the general manager, to the farm director, to the field manager, to the players. The person who created this incredible organization, deliberately and brilliantly, was Jake Ruppert.
Beginning in 1932 Major League teams were free to establish tight affiliations with Minor League teams, controlling most or all of the players on the team’s roster. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Jacob Ruppert recognized better than almost anyone the sweeping impact that a farm system could make and was determined to build the biggest and best. There was no blueprint on how to design, organize, and manage a farm system. Ruppert could have simply piled the job onto the existing front-office structure of Barrow and his scouts and let Barrow figure out how to staff and run it. But Ruppert knew that he needed a new kind of executive to run this new, complex organization.
Barrow recommended former Yankee scout Bob Connery, by then the owner of the St. Paul Saints of the American Association. Connery was only forty-eight, but Ruppert decided that he wanted a younger man. He probably viewed the hire for this position as an understudy for the sixty-three-year-old Barrow. Moreover, Ruppert had paid Connery’s St. Paul club around three hundred thousand dollars for players, and other than shortstop Mark Koenig, none had developed into more than a passable Major Leaguer. Additionally, Ruppert suspected he had been treated unfairly in the high-priced acquisition of a player whose rights he believed he already controlled.3 In any event, after a thorough investigation Ruppert chose longtime Minor League operative George Weiss, then the general manager of the Baltimore club in the International League. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Weiss was only thirty-seven, but had already spent nearly two decades in baseball. Like Barrow, Weiss was a workaholic who had begun his career in baseball promotion while still in his teens. Also like Barrow, Weiss proved to be a brilliant hire.4
While Ruppert was restructuring his organization, he also had to deal with transitions in the dugout. Miller Huggins, his handpicked manager who had justified Ruppert’s confidence with six pennants and three world championships in twelve seasons, fell ill late in the 1929 season and passed away on September 25 at the age of fifty. Babe Ruth, who had never liked or respected Huggins, made it known that he wanted to replace him. Ruppert and Barrow never seriously considered Ruth, still the greatest player in the game, and offered the job to three other people before settling on Bob Shawkey, their former star pitcher. Shawkey’s club finished third in 1930, with eighty-six wins, eighteen games behind the Athletics.
After a single season Barrow dismissed Shawkey in favor of Joe McCarthy, recently deposed manager of the Cubs. McCarthy was a serious man, suspicious with the press, but he got along well with his bosses and his players. Ruth never stopped thinking that the job should be his, and the big star generally behaved however he wanted, but he and McCarthy managed to coexist for four productive seasons. In McCarthy’s second year, 1932, the Yankees returned to the World Series and easily defeated the Cubs in four straight games.
Though Ed Barrow and George Weiss both reported to Ruppert, in reality they, and Joe McCarthy, all worked together. Ruppert maintained an office in his brewery but talked to Barrow nearly every day. Barrow often called in the late morning to give Ruppert an update of the day’s business. On days without a game, Barrow met with the press on many afternoons to fill them in on those items with which he felt they could be trusted. On game days Barrow would head over to the stadium about one o’clock and eat lunch with McCarthy at the commissary, providing an opportunity for the two to catch up on issues and concerns. Barrow would then retire to his box to watch the game, usually in the company of a couple of friends. When Ruppert went to a game he was notoriously nervous when watching from his field box, fidgeting and anxious unless the Yankees held a big lead. Weiss focused principally on operating the Newark club and overseeing and expanding the farm system. In November, when Ruppert and Barrow headed off to French Lick and its famous sulfur springs for some rest and relaxation, Weiss frequently managed the office in their absence. Often he would follow to Indiana a week or two later, as would McCarthy. The foursome would spend much of their vacation discussing how to improve the ball club.5
The Yankee scouts reported to Barrow, who now redirected his staff to intensify their focus on amateurs rather than experienced Minor Leaguers. After the unproductive $50,000 purchase of Danny MacFayden from the Red Sox in June 1932, the Yankees significantly curtailed their purchases of ready-made ballplayers, whether from the high Minors or other American League ball clubs. Instead, they concentrated on finding players for their own Minor League teams. The timing of this philosophical change was interesting, because in the early 1930s, with the Depression severely affecting baseball, a new source of Major League players suddenly became available. Connie Mack, fresh off three straight pennants from 1929 to 1931, was dumping his stars, as he had in the 1910s.
In his first transaction after the 1932 season, Mack sent Al Simmons, Jimmy Dykes, and Mule Haas to the Chicago White Sox for around $150,000. This represented a huge expenditure for the Chicago owners, the heirs to team founder Charles Comiskey, who were not independently wealthy. Mack seemingly spurned the Yankees when marketing his players, though Ruppert and Barrow were likely not as interested as they would have been in previous years. Other than the Yankees, however, no AL team had much money in those difficult times. Mack’s luck improved considerably when thirty-year-old multimillionaire Tom Yawkey bought the Red Sox and announced his intentions to spend money. The impatient Yawkey soon gave Mack $125,000 for future Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Grove and a couple of other capable ballplayers.
Meanwhile, the Yankees were tiring of Ruth. His habit of showing up whenever he pleased was tolerated when he was hitting .340 with forty-five home runs every year, but in 1933 the thirty-eight-year-old Ruth, increasingly overweight, slipped to .301 with thirty-four home runs. Much of his happy-go-lucky youthful energy had given way to surliness, particularly with respect to McCarthy. After the season Ruppert offered him the managerial position at Newark, as a possible stepping-stone to a Major League job, but Ruth’s ego would not let him accept anything less than a big-league spot. Ruppert had another chance to appease Ruth when Detroit’s Frank Navin, looking to fire up his fan base, asked if he could have Ruth as his player-manager. Ruppert and Barrow agreed to let Ruth go, particularly since they might receive a useful player in return. Believing the opportunity would remain open, Ruth ignored Navin’s request to meet him in Detroit and went off on his scheduled Hawaiian trip. Navin, with no desire to wait and now having observed Ruth’s lack of self-discipline firsthand, chose to move in a different direction. He cobbled together $100,000 to purchase Mickey Cochrane from Mack’s Athletics to be his player-manager. With Cochrane on board, the Tigers captured the American League flag in both the 1934 and the 1935 seasons.
The Ruth problem continued to fester—he further tumbled to .288 and twenty-two home runs in 1934—and when he returned from a baseball tour of Japan after the season, Ruth publicly declared he would come back only as a manager. Although Ruppert liked Ruth, he and Barrow had no intention of acquiescing. To alleviate the problem once and for all, the two orchestrated the transfer of Ruth to the Boston Braves, where he would have the titles of vice president and assistant manager, while also playing. Braves owner Judge Emil Fuchs hoped that by returning Ruth to the city where he had debuted as a Major Leaguer, he could rekindle some fan interest in his Depression-ravaged team.
The Ruth saga tells us a lot about how Ruppert wanted his organization to run. All of his important hires—starting with Huggins and continuing with Barrow, McCarthy, and Weiss—were highly skilled men who offered very little drama or personality. Highly competitive and laser-focused on doing their jobs, they gave nothing to the hungry New York press corps other than winning teams. Many of the best Yankee players, especially Lou Gehrig, were much the same way. Babe Ruth, of course, was the great exception to this rule, and part of his larger-than-life story is that Ruth was surrounded by highly accomplished people perfectly willing to let him have all the attention. No matter how well Huggins or McCarthy managed, or how well Barrow provided talent, the Yankees were always going to be Ruth’s team. Had Ruth played for a different sort of manager, someone like John McGraw, things might not have gone so smoothly.
Ruth’s massive ego and irresponsible personal habits were a small price to pay for having the greatest player in the world on one’s team. But the idea of this man being the Yankee manager seems completely incongruous from what we know about Ruppert and, particularly, Barrow. The two executives might have wanted the likable Ruth to get a chance to manage in the Major Leagues—but certainly not for the Yankees.
The first Yankee season without Ruth, 1935, went much the same as their previous two with him: second place, this time just three games behind the Tigers. These Yankees had a lot of young talent. Of the starting eight position players on the 1935 squad, only 1920s holdovers Gehrig and Lazzeri were over thirty. Shortstop Frank Crosetti and catcher Bill Dickey had been purchased from the Minors in the late 1920s. Among the top starting pitchers, Red Ruffing and Johnny Allen were the old men at thirty. Ruffing had come from the Red Sox in 1930, while fellow ace Lefty Gomez had been purchased from San Francisco. Solid midrotation starters Monte Pearson and Bump Hadley were acquired via trade after the 1935 season.
What turned this good team into a great team was George Weiss’s new farm system, which began to bear fruit. Third baseman Red Rolfe, signed by Krichell off of the Dartmouth campus, had been one of the first amateurs signed for the system, and outfielder George Selkirk, although purchased from the Minors, had spent several years on Weiss’s farm. Starter Johnny Broaca had been signed by Krichell from Yale University and also spent time in the system. All three were key performers on the 1936 squad.
Another pitcher, Johnny Murphy, used his fine curve ball to earn a total of twenty-four wins over the 1934 and 1935 seasons. McCarthy believed a starter could not be successful with only one Major League–caliber pitch and felt Murphy would never develop another one. Rather than casting his pitcher aside, he turned Murphy into an ace reliever, a role no high-quality pitcher had held since Firpo Marberry several years earlier.
But the greatest addition to the 1936 Yankees was acquired the old-fashioned way. In November 1934 Yankee scouts Bill Essick and Joe Devine convinced Barrow and Ruppert that a knee injury suffered by San Francisco outfielder Joe DiMaggio was not chronic. DiMaggio had been one of the brightest prospects in the country before he got hurt that season, causing most teams to back away from pursuing the youngster. Before the injury Seals owner Charley Graham had hoped for a huge payday, but with his team badly hurt by the Depression, he chose not to wait for a better deal.
“Development of our farm system does not mean we are not open for purchases,” Ruppert said a few years later. “It was in the open market that we found Joe DiMaggio with the San Francisco Seals. A bad knee had scared everybody else off DiMaggio. But we risked $25,000 in cash and five players, and landed a star whom I would not sell for $250,000.”6 As part of the deal, the Yankees allowed DiMaggio to spend another season with the Seals. He hit .398 over 172 games in 1935, showing now jealous suitors what they had missed out on.
In 1936, with the twenty-one-year-old DiMaggio in their outfield, the Yankees exploded from the gate. After sweeping a July 4 doubleheader in Washington, the Yankees’ record stood at 51-22. Boasting six future Hall of Famers all having good seasons—Gehrig, Lazzeri, DiMaggio, Dickey, Ruffing, and Gomez—the team finished 102-51, 19.5 games in front of the second-place Tigers. The powerhouse club excelled both at the bat and in the field, scoring 1,065 runs, the second-highest total in league history, while leading the league in ERA. In the World Series the Yankees beat their bitter crosstown rivals, the New York Giants, four games to two.
Ruppert, Barrow, and Weiss did not rest on their laurels. During the following off-season the team brought the Kansas City franchise (American Association) into the Yankee fold. The Yankees now possessed a ten-team system: four by outright ownership and six by working agreement. Only Branch Rickey’s St. Louis Cardinals could boast a larger chain, and no other Major League organization was at the level of these two.
By early in the 1937 season it was clear that Ruppert, Barrow, and McCarthy had created something special. That season played out much like the previous one, quashing any hope by their AL rivals that the 1936 runaway had been a fluke. DiMaggio led the league in home runs and hit .346. Gomez won 21 games and led the league in ERA. McCarthy continued his brilliant use of ace reliever Murphy, who started only 4 games but finished 13-4 in 110 innings pitched. Their most important addition was rookie Tommy Henrich, who joined the team early in the season from Newark. The Yankees had signed Henrich just prior to the season after Judge Landis voided his Indians contract, ruling that Cleveland had conspired to keep him hidden in their farm system. Henrich hit .320 in 67 games and promised more. The Yankees again won 102 games, while leading the league in runs scored and fewest runs allowed. And again the Yankees dispatched their New York rivals in the World Series.
What made the Yankees’ dominance even more disheartening for their fellow American League franchises was the amount of talent they had in the Minor Leagues, nearly ready to join the powerhouse in New York. The Yankees’ top farm team in Newark compiled a winning percentage above .700 and won the International League title by a record 25.5 games. It boasted a number of future Major League regulars, including Joe Gordon, Babe Dahlgren, Charlie Keller, George McQuinn, Atley Donald, and Marius Russo.
These players testify to the successful change of focus by the Yankees’ scouts from the high Minors to the amateur ranks. Bill Essick signed Gordon from the University of Oregon and assigned him to Oakland for the 1936 season, before bringing him to Newark. Krichell signed Russo, a collegiate star at Long Island University who had also pitched semiprofessionally. Donald pitched for Louisiana Tech and was so determined to join the Yankees that he rode the bus to St. Petersburg for a chance to try out during spring training and was signed by scout Johnny Nee. Another top-notch scout, Gene McCann, landed University of Maryland star Keller. “I have just signed the greatest prospect I have ever seen,” McCann wired Barrow afterward.7 McCann also signed McQuinn.
Prior to the 1938 season DiMaggio engaged in a bitter contract dispute that kept him away from the team for several weeks. When he finally signed in late spring, the Yankees arranged a publicity event. Ruppert uncharacteristically hurried through the affair, saying that he had some important business. In fact, Ruppert had a doctor’s appointment to treat phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins in his left leg. Although the condition was not thought to be serious, Ruppert was confined to his home for several days.
With DiMaggio in the fold, the 1938 Yankees won their third straight pennant and World Series, sweeping the Cubs, and again led the league in both runs and ERA. The Yankees were again unafraid to integrate high-quality young players into their lineup, bringing up Gordon to replace Lazzeri at second base and handing the full-time right-field job to Henrich. Gordon and Henrich went on to become vital components of the Yankee lineup for several years.
Ruppert and the Yankees did experience an embarrassing episode that exposed how far the Yankees, baseball, and America had to go on racial matters. In late July, while on a road trip to Chicago, reserve outfielder Jake Powell was asked on a radio show how he kept in shape over the winter. He replied, “Oh, that’s easy. I’m a policeman and I beat n—s over the head with my blackjack while on my beat.”8 In 1938 organized baseball was still several years away from employing black players. Because African Americans were denied access to most of the fruits of American society, baseball owners, players, fans, and the mainstream media did not concern themselves much with the all-white nature of their sport.
Nevertheless, blacks attended Major League games and listened on the radio, and many of them immediately deluged the Yankees and the Commissioner’s Office, demanding punishment for Powell and a statement repudiating his offensive remarks. The vehemence of the reaction surprised and confused the baseball establishment. The mainstream press had minimized and underestimated the impact of Powell’s comment on the black community.
As a sop baseball commissioner Landis suspended Powell for ten days in the hope of defusing the situation. Both McCarthy and Landis blamed the press. McCarthy ruled that he would no longer allow radio interviews with his players unless from a prepared script. This suspension and halfhearted response from baseball and the Yankees did little to placate black Americans.
Ruppert no more understood the anger than the rest of white America. For the time, the Yankees had a generally good relationship with the black community. To preserve some of this goodwill, Ruppert and Barrow ordered Powell to make amends by visiting black newspapers, businesses, and bars. Powell dutifully toured these establishments and apologized for his remarks. Some accepted his apology as sincere, but the controversy lingered, with a significant share of New York’s black community calling for Powell’s exile via trade or sale. In the end it turned out Powell had never actually been a policeman in Dayton. In 1948 while in police custody for passing bad checks, Powell committed suicide by shooting himself.
Although the Yankees and the rest of baseball did not know it, the days of half measures to appease the black community would soon come to an end. As the Powell controversy was playing out, Jackie Robinson was a nineteen-year-old star athlete in Pasadena, California.
In 1939 the Yankees captured their fourth straight pennant—tying a record held by the St. Louis Browns of the old American Association and, more important, by John McGraw’s New York Giants. But Ruppert would not live to see it. Throughout 1938 Ruppert had struggled with his phlebitis and its complications. On January 13, 1939, after dropping in and out of a coma for several days, the seventy-one-year-old Ruppert died at his home. Nearing the end, he emerged from a coma to see Barrow standing by his bed. “Do you think we will win the pennant again?” he asked. “We’ll win again, Colonel,” Barrow reassured him.9
The 1939 Yankees were their best team yet. For the fourth consecutive season the Yankees led the league in most runs scored and fewest allowed. The club finished with a winning percentage above .700 and a record of 106-45. At first base Babe Dahlgren adequately replaced Gehrig, tragically deteriorating due to (as yet undiagnosed) amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The rest of the infield—Gordon, Crosetti, and Rolfe—carried over from 1938, and Dickey still anchored the team behind the plate. The team boasted four excellent outfielders: DiMaggio, Selkirk, Keller, and Henrich. Ruffing and Gomez anchored an extremely deep pitching staff. In the World Series the Yankees easily topped the Cincinnati Reds in four games, capturing their fourth straight title.
A comparison of the 1939 team with previous champions from 1923 and 1927 highlights the Yankees’ adjustment to the circumstances of the time. Of the 1923 team’s top thirteen players—eight position players and five pitchers—all but two came from other American League teams. The Yankees purchased eight of them, including four of their top pitchers, from Harry Frazee.
Table 5. 1923 Yankees
|
Wally Schang |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
|
1B |
Wally Pipp |
Acquired from Detroit (AL) |
|
2B |
Aaron Ward |
Minor League purchase |
|
SS |
Everett Scott |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
3B |
Joe Dugan |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
LF |
Bob Meusel |
Minor League purchase |
|
CF |
Whitey Witt |
Acquired from Philadelphia (AL) |
|
RF |
Babe Ruth |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Sam Jones |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Joe Bush |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Herb Pennock |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Bob Shawkey |
Acquired from Philadelphia (AL) |
|
P |
Waite Hoyt |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
Source: Daniel R. Levitt, Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008).
By 1927 the Yankees had retooled with players purchased at high prices from the high Minor Leagues. Combs, Lazzeri, and Koenig cost the Yankees around $150,000 in the mid-1920s. The team still relied on Major League veterans for its starting rotation, but five of their eight position players debuted as rookies with the Yankees.
Table 6. 1927 Yankees
|
C |
Pat Collins |
Minor League purchase |
|
1B |
Lou Gehrig |
Signed as amateur |
|
2B |
Tony Lazzeri |
Minor League purchase |
|
SS |
Mark Koenig |
Minor League purchase |
|
3b |
Joe Dugan |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
LF |
Bob Meusel |
Minor League purchase |
|
CF |
Earle Combs |
Minor League purchase |
|
RF |
Babe Ruth |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Urban Shocker |
Acquired from St. Louis (AL) |
|
P |
Waite Hoyt |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Herb Pennock |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Dutch Ruether |
Acquired from Washington (AL) |
|
P |
Wilcy Moore |
Minor League purchase |
Source: Levitt, Ed Barrow.
The 1939 roster underlines the success of the Yankees scouting staff and farm system in the changing era.
Table 7. 1939 Yankees
|
c |
Bill Dickey |
Minor League purchase |
|
1B |
Babe Dahlgren |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
2B |
Joe Gordon |
Signed as amateur |
|
SS |
Frank Crosetti |
Minor League purchase |
|
Red Rolfe |
Signed as amateur |
|
|
LF |
Charlie Keller |
Signed as amateur |
|
CF |
Joe DiMaggio |
Minor League purchase |
|
RF |
Tommy Henrich |
Signed as Minor League free agent |
|
OF |
George Selkirk |
Minor League purchase |
|
P |
Red Ruffing |
Acquired from Boston (AL) |
|
P |
Lefty Gomez |
Minor League purchase |
|
P |
Bump Hadley |
Acquired from Washington (AL) |
|
P |
Atley Donald |
Signed as amateur |
|
P |
Marius Russo |
Signed as amateur |
|
P |
Johnny Murphy |
Signed as amateur |
Source: Levitt, Ed Barrow.
Only three of the top fifteen players on the 1939 squad were purchased from other Major League organizations. Four were purchased from the high Minors, and unlike those acquired in the mid-1920s, many spent time seasoning in the Yankee farm system subsequent to their acquisition. Six were signed as amateurs and developed in the Minor Leagues. And many were recent young promotions to the big leagues. The Yankees introduced new All-Star-caliber players every year, bringing in Joe DiMaggio (1936), Tommy Henrich (1937), Spud Chandler (1937), Joe Gordon (1938), and Charlie Keller (1939) in only four seasons.10
Major League contenders often resort to finding aging Major League veterans to fill in holes in the club. The Yankees had enough confidence in their scouts and their Minor League system to instead promote their own players. The quality of the Yankee scouting and development system and Ruppert’s willingness to spend made this strategy highly successful.
Jacob Ruppert was a model baseball owner, whose achievements the Baseball Hall of Fame finally recognized with induction in 2013. As a businessman Ruppert understood the importance of professional management, and after a few years of trying to run the team with Til Huston, he brought in Ed Barrow and gave him the budget and authority to make baseball decisions. Ruppert took no financial distributions from the team and paid the highest salaries in baseball. He aggressively pursued the players his executives and scouts recommended, paying top dollar for both Major and Minor League stars. Ruppert also recognized and shaped baseball’s trends. When the price of Minor League stars escalated beyond reason, Ruppert lobbied to amend the roster rules and grasped the long-range implications of the changes. He understood that the changing environment called for an organized farm system, and he hired a new type of executive, George Weiss, who ultimately built baseball’s best.
Ruppert had an almost unerring eye for hiring key personnel. “Pick the right people to pick the right people,” Hall of Fame general manager Pat Gillick once said.11 Ruppert did so magnificently. During his ownership tenure, he hired four managers. Two, Huggins and McCarthy, encompassing twenty of the twenty-four years he owned the club, became legendary managers and are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ruppert had similar success with his front office. His two key hires, Barrow and Weiss, are also in the Hall of Fame, two of the greatest executives in baseball history. Moreover, Ruppert had the conviction to hire Huggins and Weiss over the objections of a trusted partner and adviser, respectively. Barrow followed Ruppert’s lead by hiring the best staff, including some of the most acclaimed scouts in baseball history.
Once he had a crack team in place, Ruppert supervised it flawlessly. He pushed, he asked questions, and he demanded results, but he rarely interfered with his hires’ spheres of authority and backed them up when needed. His men cared little for getting their names in the paper, obsessed only with winning. Ruppert committed most of his own energy and most of his money to the effort. Ruppert had several exotic hobbies, but baseball was more than an avocation. He crafted and oversaw his team with passion and commitment and created the greatest baseball organization of his generation.