Sport: Sox Deal

When Harry Frazee, Manhattan theatreman, bought the Boston Red Sox in 1917, they were a highly respectable big-league baseball team. They had won the World Series in 1912, 1915, 1916. After they won one more, Frazee enriched himself by selling all his best players including Babe Ruth. In 1924 he sold the team to Robert Quinn for $1,200,000. Since then the Red Sox have finished last in the American League every year except 1924 when they were seventh, 1931 when they were sixth. Last week Owner Quinn gloomily announced that he had sold his team, for an unspecified price estimated at $1,000,000, to Thomas Austin Yawkey, Manhattan sportsman. Said Quinn: “I have been carrying for many years a load that would make most men jump out of a 14th story window. I tried and spent plenty of money to build up the Red Sox. I failed and I apologize. …”

Foster son of William Hoover Yawkey, Detroit lumberman and onetime owner of the Detroit Tigers, Thomas Austin Yawkey inherited $4,000,000 from his mother, who died when he was 15. Last month, on his 30th birthday, he got almost as much from the estate of his foster father who died in 1919. To help him run his team as vice president and general manager, Owner Yawkey chose Eddie Collins, famed second baseman and coach of the Philadelphia Athletics. They planned to retain Marty McManus who managed the Red Sox ably for the last half of the 1932 season, buy up enough players to put Boston—one of the most enthusiastic baseball towns in the U. S.—”back on its rightful heights.”