“In saying good-by to baseball forever . . . I leave it to the public and to my friends to decide whether I was wrong or the rule was wrong. . . . Good luck and good-by to everyone. . . .”
Whether or not they were affected by this affecting farewell, the public and William Drought Cox’s few friends in baseball were virtually unanimous: the ex-owner of the Phillies was wrong; the rule was right; organized baseball was harsh but just in barring him from the game forever. Cox’s crime: he had made “a few small and sentimental bets on my team to win.”
The Reason. Kicking Owner Cox out of baseball was the most drastic step aging (77) Kenesaw Mountain Landis had had to take in his 23 years as autocrat of baseball. He declared Cox “permanently ineligible” to hold any office in the major or minor leagues. The lank-haired, obtrusively autocratic old Federal Judge had been put in his job to squash just that kind of thing. Gambling had nearly ruined baseball when the Chicago White (“Black”) Sox threw the 1919 World Series for gamblers’ bribes: it was a jarring blow to the public’s confidence in baseball as a sport.
The 9½-month big-league career that ended last week with the fall of the stick had started like a rocket (TIME, July 5).
Young (33), wealthy (Manhattan lumber companies and marriage) and blatantly self-confident, Bill Cox had bought the Phillies after they had finished last or next to last for ten years, were all but bankrupt and the joke of the National League.
Fatal Firing. With a handful of mediocre ballplayers, one or two stalwarts and ex-Boy Wonder Bucky Harris as manager, he tub-thumped his team until he got the nickname “Rah Rah” Cox. For no apparent reason, the Phillies won some games ; until the end of May they were in the first division and the gate boomed.
Suddenly Cox fired Harris — newspapers were notified 24 hours before Harris was.
Cox publicly caterwauled with National League President Ford Frick over two protested games, quadrupled his own salary to $20,000, and hired “Fat Freddy” Fitzsimmons, spunky, good-natured ex-Dodger pitcher, to manage the Phillies. They ended the season in seventh place, where Bucky Harris had said they belonged all the time.
Despite the Phillies’ best season in ten years, with attendance double 1942’s, the record showed many errors for Bill Cox.
He alienated fans, players and press. But the error that benched him was firing Bucky Harris.
Bucky had stumbled on Cox’s secretary phoning a bookie; she volunteered the explanation that her boss was making almost daily bets. A week after Harris was sacked, his friends were telling Landis all they knew about the gambling.
The Witnesses. Landis listened to Cox’s ready denial, but went on with his investigation. Harris’ friends joyfully cooperated; some hinted that the bets were not all small and not all on the Phillies. One tried to woo from Cox’s secretary a little black book of her boss’s betting records.
New York Daily News sportswriter Dick McCann volunteered to Landis his knowledge of Cox’s gambling, most of which he got from Harris himself.
Early last month Cox confessed. He said he had made 15 to 20 bets, $25 to $100 apiece. All were before mid-May — when, so he said, he first learned of the rule prohibiting such wagers. When Landis demanded a fuller accounting of such goings-on Bill Cox 1) refused, 2) sold his Phillies’ stock to a Du Pont vice president.
White Hope. The new president of the Phillies last week turned out to be the new owner’s son, Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter Jr. Bob Carpenter, 28, knows some baseball from having been president of the Class B Wilmington (Del.) Blue Rocks and from his father’s longtime friendship with Connie Mack. As welcome in the Phillies’ office as a 4-F infield, he promised to try to build a real team, to set up a farm system and to hire a general manager (out standing candidate: Herb Pennock, ex-Yankee pitcher and present Boston Red Sox farm director).
Bob Carpenter also promised to work fast. He expects to be drafted in January.
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