Harry Frazee - Life As Owner of The Red Sox

Life As Owner of The Red Sox

Frazee bought the Red Sox from Joseph Lannin in 1916 for about $500,000. The Sox won a World Series title in 1918. The team finished in sixth in 1919, and after the 1919 season Frazee started selling players to the New York Yankees, most notoriously Babe Ruth. Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert was a personal friend, as well as the only owner Frazee could deal with after the Black Sox Scandal left the White Sox tarnished. Then he left the Red Sox in bankruptcy while continuing to make theatre productions. After the sale of Ruth, the team crashed into the American League cellar and would not finish above .500 until 1934. The Red Sox would not win another pennant until 1946, and would not win another World Series until 2004, the third longest drought in MLB history.

Frazee backed a number of New York theatrical productions (before and after Ruth's sale), the best known of which is probably No, No, Nanette, which was once claimed, and later (questionably) debunked, as the specific play that Ruth's sale financed. He was the subject of an unflattering portrait in Fred Lieb's account of the Red Sox, which further insinuated that he had sold Ruth to finance a Broadway musical. This would become a central element in the Curse of the Bambino.

The truth is somewhat more nuanced and dates to a long-running dispute between Frazee and American League founder and president Ban Johnson. Frazee had been the first American League owner who hadn't been essentially hand-picked by Johnson, and wasn't willing to simply do Johnson's bidding. This didn't sit well with Johnson, and he tried almost from the time Frazee closed on his purchase of the Red Sox to yank the team out from under him.

The dispute finally boiled over in the summer of 1919 when pitcher Carl Mays jumped the team. Johnson ordered him suspended, but Frazee instead sold him to the then-moribund Yankees. Johnson had promised Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Cap Huston to get them better players, but never followed through. The Mays flap divided the American League into two factions--the Yankees, Red Sox and White Sox on one side and the other five clubs, known as the "Loyal Five," on the other.

Under the circumstances, when Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth (see below), his options were severely limited. Under pressure from Johnson, the Loyal Five rejected Frazee's overtures almost out of hand. In effect, Johnson limited Frazee to dealing with either the White Sox or the Yankees. The White Sox offered Joe Jackson and $60,000, but the Yankees offered an all-cash deal--$125,000. Frazee, Ruppert and Huston quickly cut a deal, and Ruth became the property of the Yankees on December 26, 1919.