Fenway 1912 (5 page)

Privately, however, the Taylors still placed some conditions on their willingness to build a new park. For one, they did not want to go into debt to finance construction. Second, the location of the park had to serve two purposes: not only did it need to be convenient for the fans, but it needed to be convenient for the Taylors. The family and others in their social circle owned a great deal of land in Boston, particularly in the Back Bay and the Fenway. With the building of the Opera House, the Museum of Fine Arts, and other cultural institutions, as well as the completion of Olmsted's park, real estate in the area was rapidly increasing in value. Property values between Massachusetts Avenue and Longwood Avenue, encompassing both sides of Huntington Avenue, had risen more than 50 percent in the previous two years, and as Charles Restarick wrote in the
Globe
in December 1911, "The main defect in the Fenway up to this year has been the lack of building operations in this vicinity." The new ballpark would spearhead a change in those conditions. The Taylors formed the Fenway Realty Company to market their holdings, and a ballpark in the area would help give the area a new identity—as yet the only commercial use of the "Fenway" name was by a line of chocolates. The city of Boston, whose major officeholders and officials traditionally received free season passes, had already promised a convenient trolley and subway line.

While the Taylors could easily have financed the new park themselves, ever since buying the team they had paid a healthy premium each year to the Boston Elevated Company, which owned the land on which the Huntington Avenue Grounds was built. The arrangement was not lost on the Taylors—the company had probably made just as much money off the team as they had, all with far less risk and many, many fewer headaches. That apparently gave the father and son an idea.

They decided to sell the Red Sox—or at least part of the team—and turn the day-to-day management of the club over to someone else. The club was already profitable, but the real carrot on the stick in any sale was a new ballpark, which would not only promise increased revenue for the new owner but allow the Taylors to use the proceeds of the sale of the club to finance the new park themselves on land they owned and then lease the facility back to the club. That meant that even after they sold the team they would still participate in any increase in profits, as well as pay rent to themselves and receive an annual payment for the park from a new investor. There was virtually no way they could lose money on the deal.

Naturally, Ban Johnson already had some potential buyers lined up, all of whom were close personal friends. Washington manager Jimmy McAleer, a tall, rail-thin ex-outfielder who played with National League Cleveland for most of the 1890s, led the list. McAleer, known as a great fielder but not much of a hitter, had thrived during the era of "inside baseball," when offense was generated by the bunt, the stolen base, and the hit-and-run play. For him to become owner of the Red Sox would require its own kind of "inside baseball."

McAleer first ingratiated himself to his master in 1901, when Johnson asked the recently retired Youngstown, Ohio, native to serve as manager of Cleveland in the American League's inaugural season. Later, when Johnson went into direct competition with the National League and declared that his league was its equal, McAleer assisted Johnson in his player raids on the National League and in 1902 was rewarded by being named manager of the AL's new team in St. Louis.

McAleer had since followed Johnson's directives as if he were a base runner dutifully following signs flashed by the third-base coach. He soon became one of Johnson's trusted confidants and toadies and even went on hunting excursions with the league president and his personal secretary, Robert McRoy, at Chicago owner Charles Comiskey's Wisconsin hunting lodge. The annual outing often included other movers and shakers in the baseball world and made McAleer part of a select social circle, that of the baseball magnate. He was one of many men who hovered around Johnson, hoping to feast on fallen crumbs. McAleer made it clear that his real goal was not managing a team to the World's Series as much as it was working in the front office as the president and owner of his own team—being around Johnson, he had quickly learned that was where the real money was.

When McAleer first heard that the Taylors were considering selling out, he balked at making a bid when he learned that they planned to retain part of the team. He was tired of being dependent on others. But over the course of the summer, as Johnson periodically checked in on the Taylors and their plans for a new park, McAleer slowly came back into the fold. In reality, he was in no position to set conditions, for he didn't have enough of his own money to buy the team outright. He could raise only $50,000, just one-third of the Taylors' asking price.

That was where Johnson's influence came into play. The league president was a master at making sure his owners owed him, both figuratively and financially. Robert McRoy conveniently was able to provide another $25,000, and Johnson had several other Chicago investors lined up waiting in the wings to make up the difference. They included C. H. Randle, a director of the South Side State Bank, and H. W. Mahan, founder of both the Drexel and South Side Banks and chairman of the board for the Washington Park National Bank. Mahan was no small-time banker, but a major mover in Chicago who listed his home address in the alumni directory of the University of Illinois as simply "the South Side State Bank." It just so happened that Mahan's daughter, Jeanie, had recently married Jake Stahl, the former player-manager of the Senators and ex–first baseman for the Red Sox. Stahl had retired from baseball after his marriage and was working for his father-in-law as vice president of the Washington Park National Bank. Although the involvement of the Chicago men in the sale was unofficial and nothing more than a rumor, an interesting alliance was beginning to take shape.

None of the men were Bostonians, like the Taylors, but they were all Johnson loyalists, which was even more important. And Johnson was savvy enough to realize that McAleer's and McRoy's surnames would play well in the Hibernian Hub. By early September, as the Sox slumped in the standings, the two groups began to negotiate in earnest.

The Red Sox appeared ready to pack it in. Just a few days after dropping the doubleheader to Philadelphia on September 1, Boston dropped another one to New York, launching the Yankees into a tie for third place. Even worse, they lost catcher Bill Carrigan, who broke his right ankle sliding into second on a force play. After the contest John I. was so angry and so upset—fifth- or sixth-place teams were not worth as much as a third- or even fourth-place squad—that he released pitchers Walter Nagle and Eddie Karger, who had combined to lose the second game, 5–1. Nagle, a Californian, had only recently been acquired, but Karger, a Texan, had pitched more than three hundred innings over the past two seasons and in 1907 had hurled a perfect game for the Cardinals, albeit in only seven innings owing to a prior agreement between the two teams.

The move sent shock waves through the Boston clubhouse, especially among the Masons, and particularly after Taylor announced that the two pitchers would be replaced by Buck O'Brien, a player as Irish as his name. The spitball artist and native of Brockton, Massachusetts, had recently had some success with minor league Denver.

With Wood laid up again with a sore arm, the ball club did not respond with honor. In a story headlined "Fading Is the Last Chance of the Crippled Sox,"
Boston Post
beat writer Paul Shannon accurately noted that "their ability to fight seems gone ... the former prides of the Hub are nestled lovingly in the vicinity of sixth place ... with the 'also rans.'" Manager Patsy Donovan threw in the towel and began experimenting with kids. By September 13, when the Sox fell to McAleer's club, 3–1, in Washington, Shannon's observation proved to be prophetic. Boston had fallen all the way to sixth place, four games below .500 and more than twenty games behind first-place Philadelphia. The only bright spot had been O'Brien. On September 9, only one day after crossing the country from Denver, he shut out Philadelphia, 2–0, and a few days later won another game in relief.

The victories represented quite an accomplishment for the pitcher, who at age twenty-nine was ancient for a rookie. In fact, he had only been playing professionally for two seasons. Prior to that he had been toiling in a Brockton shoe factory pitching semipro ball until he learned to throw a spitball—a pitch that drops dramatically just as it reaches the plate. The new pitch suddenly made him stand out and in 1909 finally earned him a professional contract. He had received a tryout with the Sox the previous spring, but a sore finger had led the team abruptly to release him in Denver on the way back east. Shortly after joining the Sox in 1911, O'Brien heard some of his teammates discussing their collegiate backgrounds and offered that he, too, had earned a degree, "a BS from Brockton—boots and shoes." The KCs welcomed the fun-loving, self-deprecating former factory worker like a long-lost brother, but the Masons mourned Karger's departure and thought O'Brien was a flash in the pan.

Meanwhile, Taylor, McAleer, and Johnson were trying to get a deal done, and even though they had a basic agreement, the final details had to be roughed out in person. Both the Sox and the Senators had a few off-days, so after McAleer's club deposited Boston in sixth place, McAleer hightailed it to Boston.

He was met there by Johnson and McRoy, and they checked into one of Boston's finest hotels, the Parker House, where the following morning they received a visit from the Taylors. The party then retired to the opulent Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, a private club that members still tout as "a peaceful haven for Boston's leading citizens to conduct business [and] socialize with family and friends."

At 2:00 p.m., they took a break from the fine china, and everyone went together to the South End Grounds, where they watched the first-place Giants beat up on Boston's pathetic National League franchise—everyone, that is, except Ban Johnson, who still found the notion of stepping into a National League park during the regular season completely odious. The Red Sox got into Boston by train at 3:00 p.m., and many of them went straight to the ballpark as well. The Giants, led by feisty manager John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, one of the greatest pitchers in the game and probably baseball's most admired player, were on the verge of winning the first of what would become three consecutive pennants. Most observers considered them the best team in baseball, and they were impressive, battering the Boston club for the fourth straight time, winning 13–9.

After the game the group met Johnson back at the Algonquin Club and resumed the negotiations. Most of their time was not spent crunching numbers but squinting over blueprints. The Taylors invited their architect, James McLaughlin, to give a presentation about the new ballpark, sweetening the pot and, they hoped, whetting the appetite of Johnson, McAleer, and McRoy to get a deal done.

As McLaughlin gave his presentation the men were indeed impressed. The grandstand at the new park was designed to hold nearly 11,400 fans. Although that was less than half the number that baseball's biggest existing park, the double-decked Polo Grounds, could hold, it was nearly five times the number that could sit in the grandstand at the Huntington Avenue Grounds. There would be room for as many as another 8,000 in a separate, roofed pavilion and space for perhaps 5,000 more fans in the center-field bleachers, making the park's official seated capacity 24,400. Even if the new team failed to draw much more than the half-million or so fans who attended games at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in 1911, the Sox would be able to charge them much, much more than before. The plans, although modest in many ways, still spelled profit, and that was a language everyone understood (see illustration 2).

Still, there were
t
's to cross and
i
's to dot, cigars to smoke and cables to be sent back and forth to the Chicago investors, so it took another day, until the afternoon of September 15, for a final agreement to be reached. By then McAleer had to rush off to rejoin his team before missing any games, while Johnson and McRoy hustled back to Chicago, smugly satisfied.

The sale was announced by proxy in a written statement distributed by the Taylors. It read:

Negotiations connected with the sale of an interest in the Boston American League Baseball Club have resulted in the purchase of a half interest by James R. McAleer of Washington and Robert McRoy of Chicago.

As both these gentlemen have been actively engaged elsewhere they will not be able to come to Boston until the beginning of the year 1912. At that time they will come to Boston to live and join in the active management of the Red Sox. Both are versed in baseball and have marked ability, and they ought to greatly strengthen the organization.

Plans for a new ball park which will be a credit to Boston will now be formulated and the work pushed ahead at a rapid rate.

In English that meant that because McAleer was still the manager of the Senators he would not take over until the club was officially reorganized under the laws of the state of New Jersey, where the Red Sox were officially incorporated, but in practical terms he would begin making most decisions as soon as the season was over. The sale price for the half-share was reportedly $150,000, meaning that the Taylors' original $135,000 investment in the team had more than doubled. While they would still retain a half-interest in the team, they would essentially become silent partners. They would, however, build and own a new ballpark. While that plan had previously been just a rumor, it would now become a reality. The ink was hardly dry before work began on the new park, beginning with clearing the Jersey Street property. The site was virtually empty, home to only a small church and the Park Riding School on Ipswich Street. Although a series of garages occupied the north side of Lansdowne Street, the lots immediately to the west, south, and east were completely unoccupied, the land as open as the Great Plains.