The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz
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The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz
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During the second half of the 1950s, folks derisively referred to the Kansas City A’s as a “farm team” of the New York Yankees. Trades between the two—often lopsided—were commonplace, and it seemed every time the Yankees needed that one final piece for yet another pennant run, the A’s filled the gap. While most knew that A’s owner Arnold Johnson was somewhat affiliated with Yankee owners Dan Topping and Del Webb through his joint ownership of Yankee Stadium, The Kansas City A’s and the Wrong Half of the Yankees digs into the deeper business entanglements among the three. In addition to the questionable trades and his earlier purchase of “The House that Ruth Built,” Johnson’s purchase of the then–Philadelphia A’s shows signs of Yankees clout. Through periodicals, letters, conversations with contemporary players and executives, and an analysis of player records, author Jeff Katz has compiled a chronological account of how, through the hands of a friend and business partner, the Yankees controlled two of the eight American League teams during the second half of the 1950s.
The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz - Amazon Sales Rank: #736038 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-09
- Released on: 2015-06-09
- Format: Kindle eBook
The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz About the Author Jeff Katz is a baseball writer and member of the Society for American Baseball Research. He has written baseball articles for such websites as The Baseball Page and contributed a short story to the baseball compilation Play It Again: Baseball Experts on What Might Have Been, edited by Jim Bresnahan. He lives in Cooperstown, New York.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
FOREWORD
For nearly 85 years, only one business enterprise in the United States has been exempt from federal antitrust regulations: Major League Baseball.
Unlike every other institution throughout the land, big-league baseball was granted immunity by the Supreme Court from the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts, which had been instituted to ensure monopolies didn't develop in interstate trade and commerce.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes basically declared baseball to be a single entity that was free to operate as it wished, despite the fact that the vast majority of games and transactions involved franchises located in different states. Threats to remove the exemption pop up in Congress from time to time, particularly when a legislator's hometown team has been wronged by the system, but each time, the efforts fade away due to the whining and warnings of sure collapse ... always from the baseball's rulers.
Given the authority to govern as they deem fit, Major League Baseball's commissioners have clung to their right to make any decision based on the "Best Interest Of Baseball" and wielded it like a scepter, prepared to invoke it - without being required to offer an explanation - whenever the "integrity" of the game is threatened.
Bowie Kuhn flexed his muscles and prevented Charlie Finley from selling off Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers in 1976. Bart Giamatti used it to orchestrate Pete Rose's banishment in 1989. Bud Selig invoked it to muzzle Marge Schott and remove her from power in Cincinnati in the 1990s. And several stood behind it to impose - or threaten to impose - lockouts that wouldn't stand a chance of being deemed legal by the courts in any other industry.
Of course, commissioners can be just as easily convinced to look the other way on crucial matters. The most egregious modern example of that is Selig sticking his head in the sand as baseball, with the help of anabolic steroids and banned performance enhancers, bulked up to comical proportions in the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the public reluctant to forgive baseball following the unpopular 1994-95 work stoppage, Major League Baseball turned a blind eye when it became clear that the pursuit of the sacred home run records would draw back the fans, unable to envision the vicious backlash that would be incurred only a few years later.
A scenario just as incredible took place in the 1950s, when commissioner Ford C. Frick permitted the New York Yankees to basically annex the Kansas City Athletics as a de facto farm team. American League opponents (such as the Tigers, Senators and White Sox) launched protests that either went unheard or were squashed. By doing nothing, Major League Baseball was in cahoots.
It's difficult to fathom something similar taking place these days. While covering the Boston Red Sox for the Boston Herald since 2000, I've witnessed first-hand the close scrutiny that the Sox now keep on their archrivals, and vice-versa. It was typified by embittered team president Larry Lucchino dubbing the Yankees the "Evil Empire" after his team lost out on the signing of Cuban ace Jose Contreras in December 2002 to New York's deep pockets. Lucchino had simply reached his breaking point after seeing the Yankees experience success after success in their bids to restrict players from heading to the Sox via free agency or trades. One can only imagine how he might have reacted had he been leading the Boston franchise in the 1950s!
As Jeff Katz details in the pages that follow, Yankees owners Del Webb and Dan Topping played an instrumental role in setting up their business partner, Arnold Johnson, as owner of the ballpark in Kansas City, which paved the way for him to acquire the team in an incredible tale of deceit. With the apparent aid of American League president Will Harridge, Johnson acquired the Philadelphia A's, despite equal and superior hometown bids. Everyone's worst fears took place.
Just as suspected, Johnson began funneling his top players to the Yankees, as the small-market A's became the subservient, Steinbeckian "Lennie" to the controlling, large-market "George" in the Bronx. The Yankees, for all intents and purposes, controlled two of the eight teams in the league. Some would argue that things have hardly changed, albeit not in such an obvious and blatant fashion.
Imagine how poorly the Yankees would have done had the likes of Clete Boyer, Bobby Shantz, Ralph Terry, Art Ditmar, Enos Slaughter, Ryne Duren and, of course, Roger Maris, had not make the well-worn trek from Kansas City to New York, all in exchange for has-beens and non-prospects. It is unlikely that the Yankees dynasty would have been sustained through the 1964 World Series without the duplicity orchestrated between the two teams.
It's hilarious to think how the likes of Messrs. Lucchino, Henry, Werner and Epstein would react if the Yankees set up such an arrangement these days with, say, the Kansas City Royals. You can bet that the Red Sox would take their fight all the way to Congress and the Supreme Court. While 29 other teams bemoan the bottomless pockets of the Yankees today, they should be thankful that they don't have to deal with the scenario that their ownership forefathers faced a half-century ago.
The Wrong Half of the Yankees will show you that long before "Star Wars" and before Lucchino's generation was old enough to realize it, a propeller-driven "Evil Empire" was already controlling the baseball universe. Dig in and let Jeff Katz be your guide.
JEFF HORRIGAN
Boston, August 2006
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Most helpful customer reviews
50 of 50 people found the following review helpful. great story By Michael R. Chernick I grew up as a Yankee fan in the 1950s and it was obvious that this was going on. Kansas City never had a good ball club but whenever they got talent they traded the player to the Yankees for very little in return. Sometimes it was just cash. The biggest gain was when KC got Roger Maris from Cleveland and after one strong year with KC he was tradedf to the Yankees where he hit 39 home runs in 1960 and 61 in 1961. The As were essentially a farm system of the Yankees but instead of being sent down to the minors a Yankee who needed seasoning was traded to KC where he could face major leaguers including the Yankees. When the Yankees thought the player was ready they brought him back. Here are some of the Yankees that went back and forth: Norm Siebern, Bob Cerv, Irv Noren Marv Throneberry, Hector Lopez. The Yankees got Bud Daley and Bobby Shantz in addition to Maris from the KC As. Billy Martin was traded to KC but only because the Yankees thought he was a bad influence on Mantle. They didn't plan to ever bring Martin back.Of course the Commissioner ignored the obvious as he let the iwners do whatever they wanted. I never could understand why Kansas City wuld do this. This book explains it all as the KC owner seemed to share outside business interests with Topping and Webb, the Yankee owners.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful. And You Thought the Steinbrenner Yankees Were an Evil Empire? By BluesDuke If even half this well-researched, well-written, and well-argued volume is true, then-Commissioner Ford ("It's a league matter") Frick, who seemed to spend more time jerryrigging the obstruction of any attempts to break Babe Ruth's records than he did shepherding baseball, was derelict in his duties as the steward of the game. And, an awful lot of baseball fans---in New York, Philadelphia, and Kansas City alike---were had.The incestuous relationship between Arnold Johnson and Del Webb should have been one of baseball's most grotesque scandals, enough to make the dubious manner in which the eventual Yankee sale to CBS went down (reference Bill Veeck, "The Hustler's Handbook") resemble a gentleman's agreement. Baseball government's apparent silence/inaction during the height of that relationship (although, to his rare credit, then-Cleveland Indians general manager Frank Lane did harrumph to anyone who'd listen---unlikely, considering Lane's own dubious ways of running the Tribe in those years---that, if he'd known his prime young right fielder Roger Maris would end up a Yankee, he wouldn't have swapped Maris to the A's himself) should be considered at least as much a stain on the great and glorious game as were such affairs as the gambling scandals of the 1910s-1920s, the Pete Rose contretemps, and today's contretemps over actual or alleged performance-enhancing drugs.Yankee haters won't like this, but the shameful story of the 1950s Yankee administration viz the Kansas City Athletics makes the worst excercises of the Steinbrenner era seem tame aberrations. I'd thought for a long time that a good book needed to be written about that story, and here it is.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful. Paging an Editor! By Mcgivern Owen L "The Wrong Half of the Yankees" is about the bizarre relationship between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Athletics in the years 1955-1960. The principal characters are A's owner Arnold Johnson and Yankees co-owners Del Webb and Dan Topping. The 3 had deep interests in the Automatic Canteen Company and Topping/Webb sold Yankee Stadium to Johnson. The Yanks main farm team was in KC. Del and Dan just happened to include in the Stadium deal the sale of the Kansas City ballpark to Johnson as well! Moreover, Del and Dan then strong-armed the American League to rubber stamp Johnson's purchase of the moribund Philadelphia A's and to approve the franchise shift from Philly to KC. This, despite the fact that higher offers were on the table, with at least one from interests that might have kept the A's in Philly. Once Johnson was safely ensconced in KC, the teams engaged in some 20 trades, nearly all favoring the Yankees. The fodder for a fine baseball story is all here but author Katz takes far too pages to tell it. Included in the text are a history of the Philly franchise and infighting twixt various members of the Mack family, who had controlled the A's for decades. The result is an almost deadening load of information which might have been fascinating had it only been served in smaller portions. WHY is one of those works which cry out for that proverbial stern editor with a sharp blue pencil to trim down the text. Not until Chapter 11 does Katz cover the good stuff: those trades. These encompass the period when this reviewer was just a kid- and a Yankee fan. Even a boy could smell a rat at some of these transactions. Most may cavil at the lopsided deal for Roger Maris but this observer recalls the round trip trades for pitcher Ralph Terry. A young RT plainly needed seasoning and wasn't going to get it in the Bronx bull pen, so he was farmed to the A's in 1957 (the Billy Martin trade). In 1959, the by then seasoned Terry was back in pinstripes! Even a 12 year old Yankees fan smelled something fishy. A nice inclusion is the images of 78 trading cards for many players. Included are 4 of Harry "Suitcase" Simpson and the '57 card of pitcher Art Ditmar listed as a Yankee -but plainly in an A's uniform! The back of that card actually acknowledged the misprint The bottom line: Insufficient space is given to the trades, far too much to kvetching about franchise shifts, stadium deals and Mack family squabbling. One suspects that some of the text qualifies as mere filler. A scaled down WHY would be excellent as a feature article in a magazine. As a full length, 200 page book it falls short.
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The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz
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The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz
The Kansas City A's and the Wrong Half of the Yankees: How the Yankees Controlled Two of the Eight American League Franchises During the 1950s, by Jeff Katz
