Not How You Start - Yankee Beginnings
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.
On the twelfth day of March 1903,
Johnson presided over a press conference announcing that New York City would
have a new team in his American League. Owners Frank J. Farrell and William S.
Devery were not identified as the new owners; surprisingly, they were not even
present.
In Albany, a few days later, incorporation of the team took place. Again Frank J. Farrell and William S. Devery were not part
of the program.
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 . . .
About
Harvey
Frommer
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
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