Baseball Did You Know

Gerry Nugent at far right with other Philadelphia pro sports owners Connie Mack and Eddie Gottlieb

Phillies Owner William Cox
William Cox

Robert Carpenter Jr., Phillies Owner
Robert Carpenter, Jr.

William Veeck, Jr.
Bill Veeck

Phillies Renamed Blue Jays

In 1944, one of baseball's worst franchises, the Philadelphia Phillies, attempted to excite the dwindling fan base by announcing a contest to rename the team.

Mrs. Elizabeth Crooks, who was given a $100 war bond and a season ticket, submitted the winning entry of "Blue Jays."
Her entry, which would later end up on another team's uniform, was chosen over a number of monikers ranging from the Daisies to the Stinkers.
The new name was used as the unofficial team title for 1944-45 but abandoned in 1946, though the team was still referred to in newspaper accounts as the "Blue Jays" occasionally through 1949.

How bad does a team have to be to consider changing its nickname? Well, consider these statistics.

Year	Record	Finish
1933	60-92	7th
1934	56-93	7th
1935	64-189	7th
1936	54-100	8th
1937	61-92	7th
1938	45-105	8th
1939	45-106	8th
1940	50-103	8th
1941	43-111	8th
1942	42-109	8th
1943	64-90	7th

As you can see, the Phillies never finished higher than 7th from 1933-1943.
Did the new name make a difference? Yes, but the wrong way. The '44 Blue Jays sank back into the cellar and stayed there in '45 as well.

1933 was the year that Gerry Nugent bought the team.

Great Depression + pitiful teams = financial disaster. So Nugent was in constant financial need and sold off or traded, in deals that included cash, most of his promising players.
In 1943, the National League took the club away from Nugent and sold it to William Cox, who didn't last a year before being barred from baseball for betting on the Phils.
The new owner, Robert Carpenter, Jr., conducted the renaming contest. He would finally make the Phils competitive again as evidenced by their 1950 NL pennant.

In his 1962 autobiography, Veeck - As in Wreck, William Veeck Jr. gave another reason why the NL took over the Phillies.

I had tried to buy the Philadelphia Phillies and stock it with Negro players ... Let me make it plain that my Philadelphia adventure was no idle dream. I had made my offer to Gerry Nugent, the president of the fast-sinking club, and he had expressed a willingness to accept it. As far as I knew I was the only bidder. The playes were going to be assembled for me by Abe Saperstein [owner of the Harlem Globetrotters] and Doc Young, the sports editor of the Chicago Defender, two of the most knowledgeable men in the country on the subject on Negro baseball. With Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Luke Easter, Monte Irvin, and countless others in action and available, I had not the slightest doubt that in 1944, a war year, the Phils would have leaped from seventh place to the pennant.

I made one bad mistake. Out of my long respect for Judge Landis [the Commissioner of Baseball] I felt he was entitled to prior notification of what I intended to do. I was aware of the risk I was taking although, to be honest, I could not see how he could stop me. The color line was a "gentleman's agreement" only. The only way the Commissioner could bar me from using Negroes would be to rule, officially and publicly, that they were "detrimental to baseball." With Negroes fighting in the war, such a ruling was unthinkable.

Judge Landis wasn't exactly shocked but he wasn't exactyly overjoyed either. His first reaction, in fact, was that I was kidding him. The next thing I knew I was informed that Nugent, being in bankruptcy, had turned the team back to the league and that I would therefore have to deal with the National League president, Ford Frick. Frick promptly informed me that the club had already been sold to Willliam Cox, a lumber dealer, and that my agreement with Nugent was worthless. The Phillies were sold to Cox by Frick for about half what I had been willing to play. Word reached me soon enough that Frick was bragging all over the baseball world - strictly off the record, of course - about how he had stopped me contaminating the league.

Veeck's story sounds plausible given the known antipathy of Landis and the baseball establishment toward Negro players. However, David M. Jordan, Larry R. Gerlach, and John P. Rossi of the Society for American Baseball Research have written an article disputing Veeck's story.

The three men researched press coverage of the 1942-3 off-season and could find no mention of any attempt by Veeck to purchase the Phillies and sign black players.
Nor could they find any corroboration by any other party of the claims he made in is autobiography. When the story was repeated countless times following the publication of Veeck - As in Wreck, the source was always the autobiography or an interview with Veeck himself.
This SABR member's search of newspaper files for November 1942 uncovered these references.

November 12, INS article: Latest rumor had Bill Veeck, Jr., president of the Chicago Cubs' Milwaukee American Association league club, interested in purchasing the Phils.
November 18, John Lardner: There are said to be several syndicates appraising the Phils with an eye to purchase, including one headed by Mr. Bill Veeck, the former Chicago officeholder now operating out of Milwaukee. The National League is a skeptical tong [a secret society] and will believe in this possibility only when it sees the color of somebody's money.
One telling article in November 1942 quoted Nugent about the supposed offer from Veeck as follows: During the past year it was published that Bill Veeck, head of the Milwaukee club, had, or would make an offer for the Phils. Veeck stopped in to see me on his way to the World's Series and did not mention buying or even being intrested in the club. When he got back home I saw a clipping from a Milwaukee paper which quoted Veeck as saying he had stopped in to see me because he had read that he was interested in buying the club and he wanted to see what it was all about.
Instead, the researchers found ample evidence that the league had been concerned about the Phils' plight since at least 1942 and had lost patience with Nugent's ability to stabilize his team.
Particularly telling was the fact that the black papers of the day, including the Philadelphia Tribune, made no mention of Veeck's plan, which surely could not have been kept a secret within the black community.

My conclusion: Veeck may have concocted a plan in his own mind to buy the Phillies and stock it with black players, but he never got the plan off the ground. Twenty years later when he wrote his autobiography, he embellished the story to embarrass the baseball establishment he had battled throughout his life.

World Series Leadoff Homers

Players who have led off a World Series game with a home run

Date

Player, Team

Opponent

Oct. 25, 2007

Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox

Colorado

Oct. 27, 2004

Johnny Damon, Boston Red Sox

Cardinals

Oct. 25, 2000