Bill Veeck by Paul Dickson

Author:Paul Dickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 2012-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Many people agreed with Veeck’s opinion that the American League was in especially bad shape. Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune called it “sickly,” stemming in part from the unchallenged dominance of the New York Yankees. Smith believed that what the league needed most was a challenger to the Yankees and a spark to “the bile-green depths where the Senators lie feebly twitching.”36

As 1958 drew to a close, Dorothy Comiskey Rigney, who was granddaughter of the original Charles Comiskey and who was married to former White Sox pitcher John Rigney, grew tired of a protracted legal battle with her brother, Charles, over control of the Chicago White Sox and decided to sell her 54 percent interest in the club, which she had inherited from their mother, Grace. Charles fought bitterly to gain control of the team, which he felt should have belonged to him.37

Veeck let it be known that he was putting together an offer for her shares and thereby a controlling interest in the club, which would, in the words of Red Smith in his Christmas column, be the brightest holiday news the American League had had in years. “It might be like a crackling log on to the whole dreamy organization. They don’t deserve to have him back in the lodge, probably don’t want him, and will be shot with luck if they get him.”38

Veeck moved quickly with seven backers and snapped up her stock for $2.7 million. Veeck’s associates included both Arthur C. Allyn Sr. and Arthur C. Allyn Jr., Newton Frye, Abe Saperstein, and Hank Greenberg, who had sold his stock in the Cleveland Indians the previous November and was eager to get back into baseball, especially with Veeck as a partner. The team had been in the Comiskey family since 1901, and as a concession to its heritage, Veeck allowed minority stockholder and part owner Charles Comiskey to retain his luxurious, memorabilia-festooned president’s office. Veeck was content to run the team from an open area just behind the team’s switchboard.39

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