Mr. J. A. Robert Quinn was disconsolate. As he looked out of the windows of his Fenway Park office in Boston on a late August afternoon in 1932, an advertising sign across the street calmly thumbed it's nose at him. In bold letters, it leeringly proclaimed its product as the “World's Champion.”
That was the only champion Bob Quinn had seen around Fenway Park during the entire ten years that he had been there. From the very moment that his syndicate had purchased the Boston Red Sox franchise from Harry Frazee, Quinn's life had been blighted by the most chronic headache in baseball.
The baseball club which Frazee had turned over to him in 1923 was a shell so hollow that it echoed nothing but memories – memories of great days in Boston baseball history, days when the Red Sox were always either a pennant winner or a pennant contender, days when every position was held down by a star, days when championships were taken as a matter of course and the cellar was for the likes of the gremlins and Washington, by tradition first in war, first in peace and last in the American League.
This was the club that Frazee had wrecked so thoroughly that there was nothing left but the privilege of representing Boston in the American League, plus a ball park which was groaning and grunting under the weight of the years and, thread by thread, was falling apart at the seams.
Quinn, heading a syndicate from Columbus, Ohio, had come in with fresh money and high hopes for the resurrection of a great tradition. In ten years he had watched the money go stale and the tradition transformed into a legend.
The failure was not the fault of Bob Quinn. He went to Boston from the St. Louis Browns, where, as general manager, he had come within a half game of giving St. Louis its first modern American League pennant in 1922. He had faith in himself, a vast fund of baseball experience and an intense desire to bring back to Boston the glories of the past, glories which, perhaps, would never have slipped away, except for Frazee's willingness to present the New York Yankees with the great stars of the early 'twenties, including a powerful young man with the face of a pixie and the legs of a ballet dancer whose name was Babe Ruth.
All of Quinn's hopes, all of Quinn's faith and all of Quinn's experience could not put the Red Sox together again. As he stared moodily at the mocking sign across Jersey Street on that summer afternoon in 1932, his mind flashed back through the years that he had handled the fortunes of the team. Dolefully, he took a look at the record: eighth in 1923; seventh in 1924; eighth in 1925; eighth in 1926; eighth in 1927; eighth in 1928; eighth in 1929; eighth in 1930; sixth in 1931; deep in the cellar and certain to be eighth again in 1932.
It was enough to try the soul of any man. Bob Quinn did not want to quit. He still had his hope and his faith and he had added ten years of experience, tough, hopeless, heart-breaking years, years of frustration and aggravation and disappointment. Despite it all, Quinn was still fighting, and, despite it all, he would be fighting yet, except for one important factor.
The bulk of the money sunk into the fading Red Sox belonged to Palmer Winslow, a Columbus millionaire. In 1932, Winslow died. Quinn, with a ball club which had spent most of its time at the very bottom of the league and which was losing money every year, found himself working with $425,000 belonging to Winslow's widow.
As long as Winslow lived, Quinn knew that no one but Winslow would be badly hurt if anything happened to that $425,000. Winslow knew how risky a baseball franchise was. He knew Quinn's problems and was sympathetic to them. He was willing to take the chance of losing the money, for he had gone into the deal with his eyes open and was a sound enough business man to realize that the possibilities could be disastrous.
But Mrs. Winslow was a widow and dependent upon the Red Sox for a certain amount of financial assistance. Quinn was willing to risk Winslow's money. He was unwilling to take the chance of losing a fortune for Mrs. Winslow.
Unless he could get fresh money in heavy chunks, for the operation of a big league baseball club requires huge globs of cash, he knew he would have to sell the Red Sox.
He was tired of raising money and then, because of one bad break after another, watching it melt away. He was tired of batting his graying head against the stone wall of potential success, a wall which opened holes for some club-owners and capriciously hid them from others. He was tired of planning big days and then watching hopelessly as even the weather man failed him. It rained on so many holidays and Saturday afternoons when the Red Sox were in Boston that the term, “Quinn weather” became a by-word among Hub baseball fans.
Most of all, he wanted to present a check for $425,000 to Mrs. Winslow and say, in effect, “Madame, take this and put it into a safe place.” That desire become almost a phobia with him.
So, as he sat behind his desk on an off-day at the ball park, he made up his mind to get rid of the franchise – to sell it to the highest bidder, provided it would be for the interests of the ball club.
He knew that he would have no trouble finding a buyer. Boston was a magnificent baseball city. The fans were always starry-eyed and faithful. Year after year, they had lived in the same fool's paradise as had Quinn. They were always ready to flock to the ball park in the early stages of the season, always hopeful that, perhaps, this would be the year when the team might, somehow, pull itself up by the boot-straps.
The very name, “Red Sox”, was old and hallowed and saturated with an ivy of its own. In 1932, there were countless thousands of fans who could remember the halcyon days between 1910 and 1918 when the Red Sox were always either at or near the top of the American League, and who proudly pointed to the undeniable fact that never had a Red Sox team lost a World Series.
A new generation of potential fans was growing up, however, and that generation knew only of the greatness of the New York Yankees, the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics. It was resigned to failure in Boston, for, in ten years, the best the team had done was sixth place in 1931.
Boston, the cradle of liberty, had become the graveyard of baseball. Its head was hanging, bloody, almost bowed. The happy days when fans were booming out the strains of “Tessie”, the Boston victory song, were gone.
Quinn had not been able to bring them back, but, when he decided to sell the team, he made up his mind to sell it to someone who could. If he could only find a buyer, not with a limited supply of money, who had to scrape the price of the team together and then hope for the best, but who was wealthy enough to spend huge sums to rebuild the team, he would be satisfied.
He was looking for a Croesus to whom money meant nothing. He was seeking a hopelessly ardent baseball fan who cared everything for a winner, and nothing for the cost. In the worst depression year in American history, he wanted to find a multi-millionaire, and, in 1932, America was not exactly crawling with multi-millionaires.
Quinn told only his closet associates that the Red Sox were on the market. It would never do to let his decision come out until he had a proper buyer. He did not want hare-brained characters to swamp him with phony offers backed by half-empty pockets and inspired by the erroneous impression that all major league baseball teams make money.
Selling a ball club was not like selling a pair of shoes. You did not buy space in metropolitan newspapers and proclaim to the world at large that you had one (1) major league baseball franchise and one (1) down-at-the-heels ball park for sale. Instead, you whispered to friends that you might consider an offer, although you were by no means sure that anything would develop from one.
Bob Quinn did not let his desire to sell the Red Sox color the good judgment that nature had given him. He let a few people know what was on his mind, and then waited for a chance to go more deeply into the problem.
