What if Tom Yawkey had bought the A’s? (Part 1)

Among the most dramatic developments in major league baseball in the 1930s was the way two American League franchises were simultaneously and fundamentally re-worked, each in the opposite direction of the other.

In the space of about three and a half years, Connie Mack, the longtime owner/manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, found himself forced by Depression-induced financial hardship to sell off nearly all of his best players, and in the process the A’s were transformed from one of the league’s elite teams into a dreadful tail-ender.

And at precisely the same time, a high-living young multimillionaire named Tom Yawkey could think of nothing better to do with his money than to purchase the Boston Red Sox and spend freely on buying up big-name stars from other ball clubs, in the process transforming the Sawx from a dreadful tail-ender to—well, not one of the league’s elite teams just yet, but into a genuinely competitive outfit.

Unsurprisingly in this dynamic, several times the A’s and Red Sox hooked up as seller and buyer, with Yawkey relieving Mack of the services of superstars Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx, among others. But Mack engaged in similar deals with additional AL teams, and Yawkey didn’t limit his shopping spree to the goodies displayed on the Philadelphia roster.

This leads us to an intriguing game of “what if.”

Yawkey took legal control of his vast inheritance upon his 30th birthday, in February 1933. Just a few days later he completed the purchase of the Red Sox. But let’s imagine that it wasn’t the moribund Red Sox franchise that attracted Yawkey’s fancy—after all, he had no ties to Boston; Yawkey was originally from Detroit, and in fact his family had once owned the Tigers. Instead let’s pretend Yawkey decided to go for one of the league’s flagships, such as, say, the Athletics, nine-time pennant winners, including as recently as 1931.

Plunging attendance amid the dreadful economic environment of 1932 placed 70-year-old Connie Mack in dire financial straits. Rather than stave off bankruptcy by selling his most lucrative ballplaying assets, let’s say he was introduced to young Mr. Yawkey through Eddie Collins—who in actual fact was employed by Mack as a player and coach from 1927 through 1932, and who in actual fact was a friend of Yawkey’s, and indeed who in actual fact suggested that Yawkey buy the Red Sox—and let’s say Mack and Yawkey worked out a deal in which Yawkey assumed financial control of the A’s operation, while Mack and Collins stayed on to run the baseball side (in fact Yawkey hired Collins to be his general manager in Boston).

How might the Philadelphia Athletics have performed through the 1930s, had they (a) avoided selling off their many stars, and (b) had Tom Yawkey’s purchasing power at their disposal?

Let’s give it a whirl.

1932-1933

The first of Mack’s fire-sale transactions was this one:

Sept. 28, 1932: The Athletics sold outfielders Al Simmons and Mule Haas and infielder Jimmie Dykes to the Chicago White Sox for $100,000 cash.

This deal took place several months before Yawkey was able to get his hands on all that moolah and buy into baseball. But it’s plausible for us to imagine Mack and Yawkey well into their talks by late September of ’32; perhaps they would even have an agreement in principle by that point. At the very least it would make sense for Mack to hold off on pulling the pin on this grenade; if he was desperate for short-term operating cash, Yawkey, or somebody Yawkey knew, would no doubt be able to float him a loan.

So, Mack tells the Comiskey family to keep its 100 grand, and he hangs on to Simmons, Haas and Dykes.

Meanwhile, up Boston way, the first big Yawkey buy took place early in the 1933 season:

May 12, 1933: The Red Sox purchased pitcher George Pipgras and infielder Billy Werber from the New York Yankees for $100,000 cash.

The 33-year-old Pipgras was the familiar name here; he hadn’t consistently performed as a star, but had been a solid pitcher for the Yankees for several years. But the 25-year-old Werber was the real prize. He’d had only a couple of sips of major league coffee, but had hit .289 with 17 homers as an International League shortstop in 1932, and displayed exceptional speed.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

One can sensibly argue that although the Yankees were willing to make this deal with the doormat Red Sox, they wouldn’t have been nearly so willing to do so with the closely competitive Athletics, who’d finished second behind New York in ’32, and had beaten them out for the pennant in all three of the preceding seasons.

But it’s also worth recognizing what a staggering sum this was to purchase a good-but-declining pitcher and a good-but-not-elite prospect. Bear in mind that just half a year earlier the A’s had sold the package of the superstar Simmons, plus the solid regular center fielder Haas and the excellent supersub Dykes, to the White Sox for the same figure of $100K. It was an enormous amount of money in 1933, and the Yankees of owner Jacob Ruppert and GM Ed Barrow—as intelligent and fiscally shrewd a pair as ever ran any operation—might very well have concluded that they were getting the better of this transaction no matter which franchise was on the other end.

So, in the spirit of good fun, let’s assume that Pipgras and Werber would be donning Athletics uniforms in the spring of 1933.

1933-1934

Mack’s sell-off of Simmons and company allowed him to survive through 1933. But clearly it didn’t allow him to prosper, because following that season he undertook an even more dramatic bust-up of his roster, with three bombshells detonating on a single dark winter’s day:

Dec. 12, 1933: The Athletics traded pitchers Lefty Grove and Rube Walberg and second baseman Max Bishop to the Boston Red Sox for infielder Rabbit Warstler, pitcher Bob Kline and $125,000 cash.

Dec. 12, 1933: The Athletics traded catcher Mickey Cochrane to the Detroit Tigers for catcher Johnny Pasek and $100,000 cash.

Dec. 12, 1933: The Athletics traded pitcher George Earnshaw and catcher Johnny Pasek to the Chicago White Sox for catcher Charlie Berry and $20,000 cash.

These were “trades” only in the most technical sense, as the talent exchanges were laughably unequal. The money was obviously the entire issue.

We’ll cancel this terrible trio. And Yawkey will get the bonus of not having to shell out 125 grand for Grove and company.

The actual Yawkey undertook his second big purchase the following spring:

May 25, 1934: The Red Sox traded pitcher Bob Weiland, outfielder Bob Seeds and $25,000 cash to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Wes Ferrell and outfielder Dick Porter.

Weiland, Seeds and Porter were all unremarkable journeymen. The towering figure here was Ferrell, just 26 years old but already the proud owner of 102 big league wins, as well as the best bat ever swung by a full-career pitcher. At this point Ferrell was nursing a sore arm, the only reason his price tag was as affordable as this. Yawkey bet that he would quickly recover, and Yawkey bet correctly.

Obviously our A’s don’t have Weiland or Seeds to trade. So how about this: Seeds and Porter cancel each other out anyway, so let’s just eliminate them from the deal. And on our A’s roster we have a pitcher named Roy Mahaffey who was roughly equivalent to Weiland; if the Indians were less than thrilled with Mahaffey we could easily sweeten the cash portion beyond $25K.

So let’s say it was Mahaffey and a big bag of green going from Philadelphia to Cleveland in exchange for Ferrell.

1934-1935

That fall Yawkey really got the checkbook in gear:

Oct. 26, 1934: The Red Sox traded shortstop Lyn Lary and $225,000 cash to the Washington Senators for shortstop-manager Joe Cronin.

The huge size of this transactional price tag for an individual talent can scarcely be overstated. On a financial scale, in baseball history only the purchase of Babe Ruth by the Yankees in 1919 compares, and on strict cash terms this one was by far the larger (the Ruth deal involved “only” $125,000 in direct cash, but also $75,000 in various deferred payments, and a $300,000 loan).

But we’ve got Yawkey’s money working for the A’s now. We don’t have Lary, who was a good ballplayer, but scuffling with the bat at this point. But our A’s have a comparable shortstop, Eric McNair, who was a few years younger and almost certainly seen as a better player than Lary in 1934.

Let’s make it McNair and a fleet of Brinks trucks going from Philadelphia to Washington in exchange for Cronin.

Flush with his newfound liquidity, Senators owner Clark Griffith decided to spend some of it early in the 1935 season:

May 21, 1935: The Washington Senators purchased pitcher Bobo Newsom from the St. Louis Browns for $40,000 cash.

Hey, Athletics owner Tom Yawkey. Are you going to let stingy old Clark Griffith outbid you for this up-and-coming St. Louis standout? Didn’t think so.

Why don’t we imagine that it was the A’s plucking this prize away from the cash-starved Browns.

1935-1936

In 1933 and ’34, Mack’s team had been drifting downward in the standings, but he’d managed to avoid last place. That wasn’t the case in 1935, as the A’s landed in the basement, and Shibe Park attendance, at slightly over 3,000 per game, was its lowest in more than 15 years.

Mack had no choice but to sell off his few remaining big names, and of course he found an eager buyer up in Boston:

Dec. 10, 1935: The Athletics traded first baseman Jimmie Foxx and pitcher Johnny Marcum to the Boston Red Sox for pitcher Gordon Rhodes, catcher George Savino and $150,000 cash.

Jan. 4, 1936: The Athletics traded center fielder Doc Cramer and shortstop Eric McNair to the Boston Red Sox for pitcher Hank Johnson, infielder Al Niemiec and $75,000 cash.

None of the players going from Boston to Philadelphia was of significance; as in Mack’s 1933 divestiture, they were roster filler, dressing the deals up to masquerade as trades.

We don’t have to worry about any of that. Keep this $225,000 in your bank account, Mr. Yawkey. (Or, if you insist on spending it, go out and buy an island, or something.) And we’ll keep Foxx, Marcum and Cramer on the A’s.

Next time

We’ll dust off the old adding machine and do some refiguring of the numbers.


Steve Treder has been a co-author of every Hardball Times Annual publication since its inception in 2004. His work has also been featured in Nine, The National Pastime, and other publications. He has frequently been a presenter at baseball forums such as the SABR National Convention, the Nine Spring Training Conference, and the Cooperstown Symposium. When Steve grows up, he hopes to play center field for the San Francisco Giants.
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Jim G.
13 years ago

Steve, your premise brings up some other interesting questions.
If Yawkey doesn’t buy the Red Sox, and they stay perennial cellar dwellers, is it possible that they, and not the Braves, end up leaving Boston? Same if Yawkey bought the A’s. Who leaves Philly? I can’t imagine Yawkey moving a club to Kansas City. Finally, if Yawkey owns the A’s in to the 80s, as he did the Sox, what team does Charley O. Finley end up buying in the 60s?

gdc
13 years ago

Phillies move down the road to Baltimore.  Either Boston team moves to Milwaukee.  Finley get the St. Louis Browns in the tradition of Bill Veeck and moves them across the state to KC.

Steve Treder
13 years ago

“If Yawkey doesn’t buy the Red Sox, and they stay perennial cellar dwellers, is it possible that they, and not the Braves, end up leaving Boston?”

It’s certainly possible.  But on the other hand, Boston seems to have been more of a Red Sox town than a Braves town all along; except for a couple of exceptional years (such as 1948), the Braves almost always drew lousy in Boston, even when they weren’t a cellar-dweller.

But basically, of course:  almost nothing is inevitable in human history, and there’s every reason for us to assume that if something significant had happened differently at one point, then it might cause all kinds of subsequently different outcomes down the road.

Jim G.
13 years ago

gdc – it’s interesting you say that, because Milwaukee was expecting to get the Cardinals, but the Browns pulled a fast one and moved to Baltimore. With the “competition” gone the Cards stayed put. I know it doesn’t make sense that the Browns could have outlived the Cards in St. Louis, but it’s a true story.

“But basically, of course:  almost nothing is inevitable in human history, and there’s every reason for us to assume that if something significant had happened differently at one point, then it might cause all kinds of subsequently different outcomes down the road.”
Steve – true, but of course, that is also true of your entire series.

Tanner
13 years ago

If Yawkey had brought the A’s it would be intresting how the Intergration had gone. The Red Sox under Yawkey where the last American Team to intergrate. If the A’s had stayed dominant and faltered in the ‘50’s like the Red Sox did? Would the Phillies have felt the need to intergrate earlier and not fallen behind the rest of the National League as they did following the 1950 Series. If the Braves stayed in Boston would the city embraced Henry Aaron? If there where no Kansas City A’s who would have the Yankees in the 50’s been able to use as a Farm System? The Browns?

Cliff Blau
13 years ago

Ruth was sold to the Yankees for $100,000; $25,000 down and 3 installments of $25,000 plus interest.

Steve Treder
13 years ago

No, most sources I’ve seen describe the deal as far more elaborate than that.

For example, Wikipedia puts it this way:

“In exchange for Ruth, the Red Sox would get $125,000 ($1.36 million in current dollar terms) in cash and three $25,000 ($270,000 in current dollar terms) notes payable every year at 6 percent interest. Ruppert and Huston also loaned Frazee $300,000 ($3.26 million in current dollar terms), with the mortgage on Fenway Park as collateral.”