Slightly condensed from an article in the March 1949 American Legion Magazine by Paul Gardner (my dad, whose folder of yellowed clippings I’ve been looking through.)
In mid-summer of 1946 Bill Veeck limped into Cleveland to head up a syndicate which had bought out the 6th place Cleveland Indians. Two-and-a-half tempestuous years later he had engineered a miracle of baseball money-making, attracting the greatest crowd ever to see one game, 86,288 and the largest season home attendance for any club, 2,640,000. Meanwhile the team under manager Lou Boudreau swept to the world championship.
How has he been able to cut loose from the curse of dignity and self-importance? Most club presidents have remained aloof from the throng, acting more like distant financiers or captains of industry than showmen. Why has Bill Veeck not set up the barriers between himself and the fans which other club presidents elect?
His father, William Veeck, Sr., was president of the Chicago Cubs of the National League, and young Bill who was himself treasurer of the Cubs, knows his way around a big-league front office blindfolded. But in spirit he is a perennial sophomore… and would be whether it was a good business or not. He is the emotional twin of the most exuberant baseball fan –delirious in victory, inconsolable in defeat, blindly loyal.
I watched him on the evening following the fourth game of the World Series last fall, a game in which Cleveland went ahead of Boston, three games to one. The president was not in the counting house counting his money, he was dancing wildly on his artificial leg in the assembly room of the Hotel Hollenden in Cleveland. His right leg, injured by the recoil of an artillery piece when Veeck served with the Marines on Bouganville in the Solomon Islands, had been whittled away many times to stabilize the improperly healed wound. His doctor had warned him to lie on his back for a year in a warm climate, but on this night he danced madly, risking his health to express the joy he felt in common with the people of Cleveland. He outlasted every able-bodied fellow on the floor as he stomped about with one partner after another.
For two years Veeck had attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is recalled as a prankster –but not by everybody. One college chum recalls that Veeck impressed him as “a serious guy who didn't want you to know he was a serious guy.” A fraternity brother would not have been surprised “if Veeck turned out to be a circus clown or a banker.” This was an able prophecy, since he has managed to be a little of both as a baseball executive. Jack Stickney told me that the college legend that Veeck leaped out of a fast-moving car one night while riding in a rumble seat with a blind date is absolutely true. I then checked this yarn with Veeck, and he nodded.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I didn't like the doll.”
The original family name had been Vander Veeck, of Dutch origin. William Veeck, Sr., been a reporter on the Louisville Courier-Journal, then shifted to a sportswriter's job on the Chicago American. His constructive criticism of the Chicago Cubs baseball team so impressed owner William Wrigley that he finally asked Veeck, Sr. to head the Cubs organization. It was a wise move. In 1929 and 1932 the Cubs won the National League pennant.
The elder Veeck died in 1933 when Bill was a sophomore at Kenyon. He had never shown the slightest interest in professional baseball while his father lived, but when his father died he dropped out of college and joined the Cubs organization at age 19. He was treasurer of the club at the age of 26. In 1940 he borrowed $130,000 and purchased the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. There he busted loose with the kind of showmanship and baseball manipulation which he later displayed in Cleveland. By 1942 Milwaukee was making money and winning pennants. In 1945, while he was in the Marines, Veeck sold the Brewers at a nice profit.
Veeck settled briefly in Tucson, but he was too restless to follow doctor's orders. He moved to Cleveland while still on the mend and put together a syndicate in which Bob Hope was a major –and an excellent source of free publicity.
Veeck says his happiness peaked not in the moment the Indians won the World Series but afterwards, riding with the team down Euclid Avenue. “A third of the population of the city came out to see us,” be recalls, “all grinning all laughing.”
Captions of pix accompanying the American Legion Magazine story inform us that “To introduce more ladies to baseball, Veeck gave away 20,000 orchids” on one occasion and 500 pairs of nylons on another. And he arranged for a day-care center to be installed at Municipal Stadium!
Afterthought:
The photo didn’t go with the American Legion piece. Eddie Gaedel didn’t draw a walk until 1951. My dad was very fond of Veeck, but I can’t find any more pieces he wrote about him. He had read in the Kodak booklet that came with your Brownie that a good picture had to involve an action. Which is probably why he was taking notes.
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