But Curley is not the subject here, he deserves a separate story. Frazee concerns this article because he became owner of the Boston baseball team. He bought a new show—the Boston club, in the best baseball city of the American League. John J. Lannin, former owner, was a real baseball man, so much so indeed that the excitement of the games told on his health and it became necessary for him to relieve himself of the strain. Frazee was waiting to cut in, and whether Lannin feared that the proposal of Frazee’s name to the American League would result in disapproval, or whether Frazee himself, knowing it, contrived to make it worth while that the agreement between the American League owners should be ignored, remains an open question.
However that may be, the American League woke up one morning to find the little burlesque manager and promoter of a crooked prize fight in their midst. It was a sad shock to the dignity of “the cleanest sport.”
What could they do about it? Nothing. Frazee had bought and paid for what he held.
Baseball was about as much of a sport to Frazee as selling tickets to a merry-go-round would be. He wanted to put his team across as if they were May Watson’s girly girly burlesquers. Baseball was to be “promoted” as Jewish managers promote Coney Island.
The American League owners rebelled, but let them rebel! What could they do about it?
Frazee began his next inside work almost immediately. Ban Johnson was unalterably opposed to the Frazee idea of sport, and Frazee set out to “get” Johnson. A split occurred in the American League, with Frazee, Til Huston and Jake Ruppert of the New York Club, and Charles A. Comiskey and Grabiner, of the Chicago Club, on one side against Johnson, and the other American owners comprising the other party supporting Johnson.