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Never at any time has a sports transaction been so reasonable, yet aged so poorly
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00:22Hi everybody, I'm Brian Kenney, and welcome to ESPN Classics' Top 5 Reasons You Can't
00:27Blame, a series that takes a fresh look at sports personalities who are remembered largely
00:32for their mistakes, controversial moments, or questionable decisions. Our mission, to
00:37challenge the long-accepted theories and summaries of history. You'll see new evidence and hear
00:42new testimony. We ask you to come in with an open mind. In this show, one of the all-time
00:47leaders on the Blame leaderboard. We'll count down the reasons why you can't blame Red Sox
00:52owner Harry Frazee for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees. First, a look at the Bambinos
00:57career and the evidence against Frazee.
01:05One of the things you have to remember about Boston at that time is that they won five of
01:08the first 15 World Series. They thought they were the indisputable capital of baseball.
01:13They were the original American League franchise. It was a great baseball town.
01:19Long before the Patriots, the Celtics, even the Bruins, Boston had the Red Sox, who ruled
01:25the American League with such stars as Cy Young, Tris Speaker, and Harry Hooper. One of those stars was
01:32Babe Ruth, a young pitcher with the stuff of greatness.
01:37He would beat Walter Johnson 1-0 over and over and over again when Walter Johnson was considered
01:43the best pitcher in baseball.
01:45When you look at the games he pitched in big money games, World Series games, 14 innings
01:49to beat the Dodgers in one of the great games of all time in postseason history, beating the Cubs 1
01:55-0 in the first game of the
01:562018 World Series.
01:58He was so proud of that 29 and two-thirds scoreless innings in World Series play.
02:07That record of consecutive scoreless innings survived for 43 seasons. In three years, Ruth won 65 games, leading the
02:16American League with a 1.75 ERA in 1916, and in complete games with 35 the next season. But in
02:241918, he did more than pitch.
02:27He tied the league lead in home runs with 11. When the pennant race was really in earnest, he won
02:35five straight games in the month of August.
02:38Just an incredible sustained time of hitting and pitching, which allowed Boston to win the pennant and go on to
02:45the World Series.
02:47In 1919, Ruth hit 29 home runs, which was a phenomenon at that time.
02:56When Ruth demanded to renegotiate his contract after the 1919 season, Red Sox owner and Broadway producer Harry Frazee made
03:05one of the most
03:06regrettable decisions in the history of the game. He sold Ruth to the Yankees for a record $100,000,
03:13plus a $300,000 mortgage on Fenway Park.
03:17Frazee's problem was he had bought the Red Sox from Joe Lannan. Frazee wasn't making any money in the theater,
03:22and he was in terrible debt, and he owed Lannan money, and Lannan wanted it.
03:26And he decided one of the ways he might redeem his pocketbook was to sell the babe.
03:30Somebody said if the old president of the Red Sox could have been squeezed into a tea bag,
03:37he would have been dropped into Boston Harbor.
03:46With the Yankees, Ruth was relieved of his pitching duties and put in the outfield.
03:50He hit 54 home runs that first season in New York.
03:54How many home runs are going to make this year, Ruth?
03:56I don't know, sir. We'll try and do the best we can.
03:59I hope he beat last year's record.
04:00Babe Ruth completely altered baseball.
04:03They livened the ball, they brought fences in, and he started hitting home runs in numbers that no one ever
04:09dreamed was possible.
04:11Along comes this gargantuan hitter, the Babe, the Bambino, sultan of swat, hitting those home runs.
04:17He was a worldwide celebrity, an international star, the likes of which baseball has never seen since.
04:24The Yankees hadn't won anything until then, and suddenly Babe Ruth became a household name,
04:30and everybody's attention shifted to the Yankees.
04:37In 1921, Ruth's second season, the Yankees won their first pennant.
04:42Since 1923, they have amassed 26 world championships.
04:47The Red Sox, meanwhile, did not taste ultimate victory again until 2004.
04:53Throughout the drought in Beantown, the name of Harry Frazee was seldom mentioned with affection.
04:59Harry Frazee is definitely to blame for selling Babe Ruth.
05:03It all has to do with Babe Ruth becoming the greatest home run hitter, biggest name in baseball.
05:10Even if you didn't see that Ruth would become the game's greatest slugger,
05:14he was the American League's best left-handed pitcher.
05:17How in the hell do you sell this guy?
05:20I blame Harry Frazee.
05:22He should never be off the hook, not then, not now.
05:25He must live in infamy forever.
05:36Perhaps it's too late to combat the lure of legendary stories, but we march on.
05:40We'll get to our top five reasons later in the show, but first, here are a few that just missed
05:44the cut.
05:45We call them the best of the rest.
05:50Prohibition.
05:50Yankees owner Colonel Jacob Rupert had made his fortune running the family brewery, but with the ratification in January 1919
05:58of a constitutional amendment outlawing the sale of liquor, he applied his considerable business acumen to his second business.
06:07Money wasn't coming in once the spigots were turned off.
06:10The Yankees became his brewery.
06:13He's bringing in the best gate attraction in baseball, perhaps in the history of baseball.
06:19So all of this is going to help increase profits.
06:23Alcohol might have driven Ruth out of Boston.
06:27It drove him into New York.
06:31Another best of the rest is the stork.
06:34It was the birth of a baby that may have caused Ruth to look beyond Boston.
06:38As the manager of back-to-back World Series champions and chief caretaker of the Babe, Bill Kerrigan stepped down
06:45after the 1916 season.
06:49Kerrigan left because his wife was pregnant and he promised her he'd go home.
06:53I know Ruth looked at Kerrigan as kind of a father figure.
06:58There was a void there once Kerrigan left that I don't think was ever filled.
07:02Kerrigan was credited with knowing how to handle Babe to keep him in line.
07:08He would have been able to keep him under control, and there may have been definitely a different outcome to
07:14this whole situation.
07:19Let's begin our countdown with reason number five, World War I.
07:24Due to World War I, rosters were depleted.
07:27A lot of Major League Baseball players either went into the military or went into the war industries.
07:33World War I was the biggest thing probably that made Babe Ruth Babe Ruth because Ruth might never have gotten
07:37a chance to play every day.
07:39In 1918, the Red Sox roster was so thin that Ruth did double duty as a pitcher and in the
07:45outfield.
07:48In 317 at-bats, he hit 300 and tied for the league lead with 11 home runs.
07:53He was the first to realize that baseball was a stage and everybody was an audience.
07:59This was Broadway, this was the theater, this was drama.
08:03When he hit a ball 400 feet and the whole crowd rises and everybody cheers, that's a form of adulation
08:11that Ruth had not received before.
08:15Babe really was just more interested in hitting home runs.
08:19That's what brought him the most attention, which brought him the most money.
08:27When the war ended and the ranks of the Red Sox were restored, Ruth was sent back to the mound
08:32a month into the season.
08:35The manager of the Red Sox at the time, Ed Barrow, resisted making him a hitter because he said they'll
08:41string me up alive if I take the greatest pitcher in the American League and make him an outfielder.
08:46Ruth got into it a little at the time with his manager, Ed Barrow, and he said that he'd like
08:51to play the outfield more.
08:51The Red Sox needed his valuable left arm, so in the end it may not have been the best thing
08:58for the team.
08:59Pitching part-time, Ruth's record dropped from 13-7 in 1918 to 9-5 in 1919, when the world champion
09:07Red Sox finished in sixth place.
09:09But the Babe's major league record of 29 homers was the talk of the game.
09:15You can blame World War One for the sale of Ruth because who's got a chance to hit?
09:20And that's when he became Babe Ruth, the legend that we know today.
09:24He really became almost intolerable in the locker room because he became far bigger than the Red Sox, and he
09:30wrote his ticket out of town because he did.
09:35Did that reason grab you? If not, we've got four more to go. Here's reason number four.
09:43American League president Ban Johnson. As the league's founder at the turn of the century, Johnson assured his control by
09:50designating the ownership of all teams.
09:53In 1916, Red Sox owner Joseph Lannan sold the franchise to Frazee.
10:00He didn't certainly like a theatrical producer in this realm of his baseball because he ruled the American League like
10:08a czar.
10:10Johnson liked having owners on his side so his agenda could be furthered.
10:15And Frazee was a very independent, intelligent businessman, and Johnson wanted to find ways to force Frazee out.
10:22Johnson fired the first shot in the winter of 1917 when Philadelphia Athletics owner Connie Mack, fearing that baseball would
10:31lose money during the war, sought to sell three players.
10:34Johnson knew the perfect trading partner.
10:37Ban Johnson, kind of moving the chess pieces from above, trying to stick Harry Frazee.
10:44This guy will pay you for him. Send your guys over to Boston.
10:49At the time, that was the richest deal in baseball.
10:54Ban Johnson thought it would break Frazee, and he would be out of baseball if he had to pay that
11:00much for these players.
11:02The strategy backfired. Not only did the three players, Wally Shang, Joe Bush, and Amos Strunk, help bring the Red
11:09Sox their fifth World Series in 1918,
11:12but Johnson also alienated one of his most powerful allies.
11:17When Jake Rupert had bought the Yankees, this had been done with a tacit agreement from Ban Johnson that I'll
11:24steer some players your way.
11:26Well, the Yankees look at the Red Sox getting the guts of Connie Mack's team, and they go, wait a
11:34minute, what happened?
11:35End result, that starts to forge an alliance, oddly enough, between the Yankees and the Red Sox.
11:42When Frazee traded disgruntled pitcher Carl Mays to New York in July of 1919, Johnson overruled the transaction,
11:51claiming Mays should be suspended, not traded.
11:54The Yankees and the Red Sox took their case to court and won.
11:58But the incident split the American League owners into two camps, the Insurrectos and the Loyal Five.
12:08It ended up being the Red Sox, the White Sox, and the Yankees against the other five teams and Ban
12:14Johnson.
12:14Harry was limited to who he could trade with because Ban had poisoned the water with so many of the
12:23other owners.
12:25That might be, Carl Mays killed Ray Chapman with a pitch.
12:35Had this trade never happened, maybe he would have lived.
12:44In 2018, when Ruth threatened to retire if his contract demands weren't met, Frazee had only two teams where he
12:51could sell the Babe, New York and Chicago.
12:55The other deal on the table for Babe Ruth in that offseason was Joe Jackson.
12:59And this was a few months before he would be exposed as a fixer and be banned from baseball for
13:03life.
13:04Amazingly, Frazee really made the best of the two deals that were on the table for him.
13:07Ban Johnson is the person most responsible for that deal having been made because Frazee's hand was forced.
13:16Here's reason number three, Babe Ruth's antics.
13:20You can blame it on Babe Ruth himself.
13:23Frazee is a man who doesn't like people who rebel.
13:27And he's got a hot-headed troublemaker named Babe Ruth.
13:31He was just so wild.
13:33It seemed like he just wanted to come down the buffet line of life and take five of everything.
13:40He visited many prostitutes. He did lots of carousing and drinking.
13:43He's running into trolley cars with his automobile, with women. He was out every night.
13:48The team became so disgusted with the fact that they were finding him in back alleys every day, usually drunk,
13:57and would have to drag him to the ballpark,
13:58that they paid him daily just to make sure that he wouldn't blow all of his pay the first day
14:04that he got it.
14:04I could see where a manager or a management would say, we've had enough of this guy. He's incorrigible.
14:13By 1918, Ruth had become uncontrollable.
14:19This is a man who, during a game, punched out umpire Brick Owen.
14:23In 1918, he quit the Red Sox around 4th of July because he didn't want to pitch anymore.
14:29He proceeded to go down to Pennsylvania, to the Bethlehem Steel Mills, where he spoke about playing.
14:38He found out they wanted him to pitch too, so he said, forget that, and he comes back.
14:43One of the last straws for Red Sox management was Ruth blowing off the team's last game of the 1919
14:50season.
14:52Which was not looked upon favorably by many of his teammates, as well as the owner.
14:58Frazee's point of view was that there was no way that the Red Sox would continue to be the capital
15:02of baseball if they had this guy on the team because he was too much of a distraction.
15:05There was really no big outcry from any of his teammates after the sale occurred.
15:11They thought he was more out for himself.
15:15You can blame Babe Ruth's behavior for the sale because his antics undercut his performance on the field.
15:26That brings us to reason number two, Ed Barrow.
15:30He was Harry Frazee's baseball brain.
15:33Frazee certainly trusted Barrow's baseball savvy.
15:37Barrow was kind of doubling as both a manager in the dugout and a general manager with Boston.
15:44Barrow, as a manager, understood more than anybody how much of a distraction he was in the locker room, on
15:49the trains, everywhere else.
15:51So if he had gone to Frazee and he had said, we can't lose this guy, the deal probably never
15:56would have gotten consummated.
15:57When the Yankees expressed interest in Ruth in the winter of 1919,
16:02Frazee asked Barrow which Yankee players he coveted.
16:06Ed Barrow, for reasons still unknown, says there's not a player on the team that I want.
16:11It is curious that Barrow would say that. It really doesn't make any sense.
16:16When you look at the Yankee roster at the time, they had Wally Pipp at first base, one of the
16:21best offensive players in the American League at the time.
16:23Their second baseman, Del Pratt, was one of the top two or three offensive second basemen in baseball at the
16:29time.
16:29Bob Shockey was one of the best starters in baseball.
16:34Barrow definitely should take some play. He should have been able to get three or four young players in return
16:40for Ruth.
16:41Supposedly he ended up telling Harry, take a bunch of money and we can go out and get other players.
16:47Frazee's theatre activities were going great guns. This was a guy who was never poor, who was never out of
16:53money.
16:53Harry Frazee did not make the determination that we're going to get cash only.
16:58You need to replace that blame on Ed Barrow's shoulders.
17:03Ten months after the Ruth sale, Barrow left Boston to become the business manager of the Yankees.
17:11History has written Barrow down, at least from a Boston standpoint, as a conspirator.
17:16People have viewed Ed Barrow as the power behind Frazee's sale of Ruth because he shows up where? In New
17:24York.
17:25Over the next three years, Barrow made a series of trades with the Red Sox that gave the Yankees the
17:30nucleus of their first championship team.
17:34He knew where all the talent was, and he was basically hand-picking. It was like a Whitman sampler.
17:40There's no evidence that indicates that Barrow is in fact setting himself up to run the Yankees, but it's a
17:45curious set of coincidences.
17:47In a lot more cynical time like we have today, that connection will be made right away.
17:52That's number one.
17:56Babe Ruth's holdout. The Babe's holdout after the 1919 season painted Harry Frazee into a corner.
18:05You can blame Ruth's holdout because that clearly identified Ruth as a player who was looking out for himself in
18:13the eyes of Harry Frazee.
18:14Back at that time, contracts were pretty sacred. Players didn't go around renegotiating just because they felt like it.
18:22This is another tradition that he started where you're under contract, you're getting paid very well, and it's not enough.
18:29I want more.
18:33Ruth held out during spring training of 1919, demanding a new three-year contract for $30,000.
18:40Frazee accommodated his star, but after the season, Ruth wanted more.
18:45He wanted $20,000 a year, more than any other player in the game.
18:50He just took. He was probably the biggest taker that came along.
18:56Ruth does shoulder some of the blame, but that's been true of athletes forever.
19:01Babe Ruth was just Terrell Owens before his time.
19:03If he was the happy, content ball player who played the game like everyone else in terms of negotiations, probably
19:11none of this would have happened.
19:13During Ruth's holdouts, he explored financial opportunities outside of baseball.
19:19He said that, you know, hey, I'm going to become a boxer if you don't pay me what I want.
19:24He was threatening to go to California and become an actor.
19:28It seemed like every other week there was some other career that Ruth was going to take up.
19:33My granddad got to the point where he was just exasperated. He just couldn't handle it any longer.
19:40Much of Frazee's frustration stemmed from the fact that he had gone out of his way to honor Ruth's contract
19:45demands.
19:46In 1918, and again in 1919, he had given Ruth bonuses.
19:53When Babe demanded that he play in the outfield rather than pitch, he wouldn't have been able to earn that
19:59extra $5,000.
20:01But Harry did pay them a check for $5,000.
20:05Frazee had even given Ruth a $5,000 bonus for breaking the home run record in 1919.
20:13I think that Harry was square with him, but Babe didn't return the favor.
20:21Finally, Frazee decided there was no way to keep his star.
20:25So after consulting with Barrow, he sold his problem to New York on December 26th, 1919.
20:33In the paper, certainly, it was by no means an open and shut case that the Red Sox management was
20:39making this appalling mistake selling Dave Ruth to the Yankees.
20:43There were many columns that sympathized with Harry Frazee and felt that he did what he had to do.
20:51It just made no sense for Frazee to pay $20,000 to a player like Ruth who had already shown
20:57that he put himself first, that he would jump the club at a moment's notice, and that a contract meant
21:02nothing to him.
21:03The only thing I think you can blame Frazee for is for not having ESP.
21:08From a baseball standpoint, it seemed like a reasonable transaction at the time.
21:12But nobody could anticipate that Ruth would revolutionize the game.
21:19There you have it, the top five reasons you can't blame Harry Frazee for selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
21:25Decades of frustration understandably made him a founding father of the so-called curse.
21:30Hopefully now you think about the deal in a different light.
21:32I'm Brian Kenney, thanks for joining us.
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