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Not How You Start – Yankee Beginnings
Harvey Frommer
With the
start of the 2018 baseball season highly anticipated by fans of the
sport, here
for your reading pleasure is a flashback to the meager roots of perhaps
the
most illustrious franchise in baseball history.
Enjoy
Known as the Baltimore Orioles during the 1901 and 1902 seasons,
the
franchise went out of business and left their American League brethren
much
distressed. Ban Johnson, American League
President, sought balm for the wound - new ownership for the franchise
and
relocation to the major market of New York City.
Despite his
energetic efforts, no
takers surfaced as the 1903
season loomed. Enter William Stephen Devery, a former New
York City police commissioner, and Frank J. Farrell, a professional gambler. The
duo was the
last and least of choices as owners.
A former bartender and
prizefighter “Big Bill” Devery made a
lot of money from shrewd real estate investments that he looked after
from his
estate in Far Rockaway, Queens. He also did quite well it was said,
from graft,
corruption and from his affiliation with the New York City Police
Department.
He moved up the ranks and wound up being the first Police chief. Along
the way,
when he was a police captain, he allegedly told his men: "They tell me
there's a lot of grafting going on in this precinct. They tell me that
you
fellows are the fiercest ever on graft. Now that's going to stop! If
there's
any grafting to be done, I'll do it. Leave it to me.”
The word was correct that
he was skilled in the art and
science of collecting “honest graft” in saloons, brothels, betting
parlors and
gambling dens and dance hall. Protection was a big part of the daily
work of
those under him.
The other part of the ownership
duo was Frank
J. Farrell who was immersed in the New York City gambling world, owned
pool
halls and a casino. He
was called the “Pool Room King” because he controlled over 250 pool
halls or
“gambling dens,” most of them located in lower Manhattan. The short and
stocky
Farrell shared a love of baseball with his Tammany Hall cohorts
Devery and Farrell were
friends, and made millions through
their assorted and sordid ventures and services to Tammany Hall.
A news account of that
time described one of them this way:
“MR. FRANK FARRELL is a
gambler, the chief gambler of New
York City, we suppose. The business to which he owes his bad eminence,
and in
which he gains his living is carried out in violation of the law. His
gambling
places have enjoyed the protection of the law (because) he is an
intimate,
personal friend of MR. W.S. DEVERY, the Deputy Police Commissioner of
New
York.”
Suppressing
his
misgivings about Farrell and Devery, Ban Johnson, allowed the pair to
purchase
on January 9, 1903 the Baltimore
franchise for
$18,000. With
the sale, the new owners were
expected to move the team to New York City and build a new ball field
for it.
It was no wonder American League
President Ban Johnson chose to keep the twosome in the background when
and
while he could. It was crystal clear they were not the
types he sought
as owners. But something was better than
nothing, and Johnson had not been overwhelmed with ownership offers.
That’s how it all started . . .
Some of the material in this
article is excerpted from his latest The Ultimate Yankee Book,
available direct
from the author or at Amazon. http://www.frommerbooks.com/ultimate-yankees.html
