After 26 World Series titles and thirty-nine American League pennants, it’s understandable if Yankees fans believe that their team’s success was bestowed by Divine Right.
It wasn’t, of course, but author Dan Levitt presents the next best thing: Ed Barrow. An amateur ballplayer, a boxing promoter, an electric-car entrepreneur, a would-be hotel mogul, a theatrical producer and a fair-to-middling baseball manager, Barrow was the unlikely architect behind the most successful sports franchise in American history.
Popular lore has it that the Yankees transformed from sad sacks to champions when they bought Babe Ruth from the Red Sox before the 1920 season, but simply having the Bambino in the fold was no guarantee for long-term success. That guarantee came with the acquisition of Barrow – then the Red Sox’ manager – the next year. As the legendary New York World-Telegram sportswriter Joe Williams once put it, the Barrow hiring “was the best deal the Yankees ever made.” As Levitt adds, “The Ruth purchase placed America’s best baseball player and biggest sports celebrity in its largest city. The Barrow acquisition a year later ensured that the short-term boost from Ruth would be solidified and prolonged into one of the great sports dynasties of the 20th century.”
It was with the Yankees where Barrow would realize his full potential after years of kicking around from venture to venture, city to city, and team to team. “Barrow prided himself on both his organizational abilities and his player evaluation skills,” Levitt writes, and “the Yankees offered him the opportunity to employ both.” At a time where the business and baseball sides of Major League teams were separate and distinct, Ed Barrow brought them together, essentially inventing the modern-day position of general manager. Armed with the then unprecedented combination of decision making power and baseball savvy, Barrow wasted no time turning the Yankees into a juggernaut.
How did he do it? Every way he could. He raided his old club, spending over $400,000 acquiring some of the Red Sox’ best players. Meanwhile, “one of Barrow’s most significant and lasting influences was the emphasis and resources he put into scouting,” Levitt observes. “Barrow and his scouts spent lavishly by the standards of the era to land top Minor League baseball talent.”
Finally, while Barrow himself initially resisted the newly-created farm system, Yankees’ owner Jacob Ruppert felt differently. But “once Ruppert directed the new approach, Barrow moved quickly.” Within a few short years the Yankees had a farm system that served as the model for the rest of the league, and with the talent pipeline in place, Barrow would preside over a franchise that won 14 pennants and 10 World Championships before he retired.
For those baseball fans that obsess on the business side of the game, Levitt details financial statements, player salaries, profits, payrolls and attendance from the 1890s to the 1940s. Modern team owners who frequently plead poverty when they want local governments to build them shiny new stadiums, would do well to look at the balance sheet for Barrow’s 1901 Toronto Maple Leafs, whose cash on hand is listed as $1.70.
Ed Barrow
The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty
by Daniel R. Levitt
University of Nebraska Press