When American League President Ban Johnson nixed the effort to place Mays in Yankee pinstripes, the team sued and won. Intensely surly yet very proficient, Mays stormed off the field during a game in 1919, vowing never to pitch again for a Red Sox team he felt gave him no backbone. Landis’ name had first come to the forefront thanks to another Red Sock-turned-Yankee: Pitcher Carl Mays. Though the so-called “Rape of the Red Sox” by the Yankees was far from over, it had just suffered its most serious molestation. That wasn’t all the Yankees gave cash-strapped Red Sox owner Harry Frazee a $350,000 loan with Fenway Park as collateral. Ruth had already become the center of attention throughout the sporting world well before the new season approached the New York Yankees bought him from the Boston Red Sox for $125,000-doubling the previous record purchase price for a ballplayer. They had both made earlier contributions to baseball in ways few people realize: Ruth as a star pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, Landis as a judge whose 1915 ruling on the Federal League helped lay the roots for the game’s antitrust exemption.Īnd it would be these two men who, starting in 1920, would essentially define the game of baseball for generations to come. And there was Landis, the frail-looking, crusty disciplinarian of a judge.īoth had flamboyant, if not self-serving, personalities, never afraid to flaunt their traits. There was Ruth, the big, fun-loving troublemaker who lived life to the fullest-and then some. George Herman Ruth and Kenesaw Mountain Landis will never be accused of being separated at birth.
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