Tom Yawkey, Wunderkind

Quinn knew the name Yawkey. In the days before the first world war, a William H. Yawkey had, for a time, been part owner of the Detroit Tigers, but Quinn neither knew, nor had he ever heard of Tom Yawkey.

Collins promised to arrange a meeting between the Red Sox president and young Yawkey. The first of a series of conclaves took place a few weeks after the 1932 World Series in New York. Yawkey, his lawyer, Frederick F. DeFore, President Will Harridge of the American League and one or two others were among those present.

The more Quinn investigated the situation, the better he liked the idea of selling his club to Tom Yawkey. In the first place, Yawkey was interested in buying the team in its entirety. He had enough money to go into the proposition by himself and he had no desire to form a syndicate that would involve anyone else.

In the second place, Yawkey was a hopeless baseball fan. He loved the game, and all his life, he had sneaked off to the ball park every time he could. He was very young, very enthusiastic and very wealthy.

How wealthy Tom Yawkey was and is has never been anyone's concern except his own. His fortune has been variously quoted as anywhere between ten and forty million dollars. All that interested Quinn was the fact that he had the cash, wanted the ball club, was willing to pay a good price for it and, having done that, would still have enough left to begin the long job of rebuilding the wreck left by Frazee.

Yawkey was the nephew and adopted son of the William H. Yawkey who had been interested in the Tigers. He was a Yale graduate and, at the time Collins introduced him to Quinn, he was not quite 30 years old. For Quinn's purposes, the setup was perfect.

Yawkey was a close friend and great admirer of Collins, so close and so great that, from the very beginning of the negotiations with Quinn, he insisted that he would not close the deal unless Collins would go in with him as vice-president and general manager of the club. Up to that time, Collins had never considered the idea of leaving Connie Mack, but Yawkey flatly refused to do business unless Eddie would head his organization.

When Collins approached Mack, the old gentleman grinned and said, “You'd better take the job. If you don't, I'll fire you anyhow.”

That was all there was to it. From then on, it was just a matter of ironing out the details. On February 25th, 1933, Quinn threw a party for the Boston newspapermen at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, and the purpose of the party was to introduce the new owner of the Red Sox.

For the franchise otherwise known as the privilege of representing the American League in baseball in Boston, and for the rapidly deteriorating derelict that was Fenway Park at the time, Tom Yawkey turned more than a million dollars over to Bob Quinn and Quinn's associates. On top of that, he asked Quinn to stay with the organization, but, as far as Bob was concerned, enough was enough. Once had had sold the team, he wanted to forget, as rapidly as possible, the fact that he had ever heard of the Boston Red Sox. Furthermore, he felt that he could not give Yawkey any concrete assistance even if he did stay, and he did not want his successor to feel under any obligation to him.

The Copley Plaza introduction took place exactly four days after Yawkey had observed his 30th birthday. Far and away the youngest club owner in the major leagues, Yawkey almost shocked the delighted scribes with his extreme youth. These men, who for years had been suffering chamber-of-horror pangs with both the Red Sox and the Braves, who had also spent one season after another batting their brains out against the roof of the cellar, looked at the kid in front of them and dreamed roseate dreams of Boston pennants to come.

The New York Yankees had bought pennants with little green pieces of paper, the same kind of paper that seemed to be coming out of Yawkey's ears. The twin colonels of the Yanks, Jake Ruppert and T.H. Huston, had dug deeply into their ancient jeans and came up with the most powerful ball club in baseball history. If they could do it, why couldn't Yawkey?

At no time, either at that first meeting or at subsequent public sessions, did Yawkey ever announce in so many words that he intended to buy a pennant for Boston. He simply said, somewhat casually, that he had the money and he was willing to spend it.

Scores of baseball owners down through the years have been willing to spend money to get themselves a pennant winner. Very few have had it to spend. That, of course, had been Quinn's trouble. He had to be cautious about money, because, in the first place, the money was not his, although he had control of it, and, in the second, it did not come cascading through the doors of his office in unlimited rivers.

Quinn had his faith, his hope and his experience, but not enough cash. Yawkey had plenty of faith and hope, no experience whatsoever, and plenty of cash. To make up for his own lack of experience, he had Eddie Collins, who, to this day, has been the central figure of an undercurrent of criticism which, from time to time, has erupted into the open.

But, on that February day in 1933, there was no criticism of anyone, and the only eruption was born of ecstasy. Everything was just ducky around Boston that afternoon. Yawkey was a prince of good fellows. Collins was one of nature's noblemen. Quinn was one of baseball's grand old gentlemen, graciously stepping down to turn over the reins to younger hands.

An angel had come to Boston to put it into baseball's heaven. A black-haired Timon was about to make Boston the baseball Athens of America again.

Good fellowship and excellent liquid refreshment that challenged a law that was virtually defunct by early 1933 blended happily. The future glowed in prospect. Not next year, perhaps not even the year after, but certainly by 1936, a pennant would be flying from a freshly painted flagpole in a new Fenway Park. Newspapermen and fans alike conjured glorious visions of pockets heavy with coin transforming the city from baseball's morgue to baseball's capital. Surely the day would come soon when Yawkey could sit in Quinn's old office – remodelled, of course – and thumb his nose right back at the impudent sign on the other side of Jersey Street. - Al Hirshberg's The Red Sox, The Bean and The Cod.