Harry Frazee

Harry Herbert Frazee (June 29, 1880–June 4, 1929) was an American theatrical agent, producer and director, and former owner of theMajor League Baseball Boston Red Sox from 1916 to 1923. He is well known for selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, and starting the Curse of the Bambino.

Life as owner of the Red Sox Frazee bought the Red Sox from Joseph Lannin in 1916 for about $500,000. The Sox won a World Series title in 1918. The team finished in sixth in 1919, and after the 1919 season Frazee started selling players to the New York Yankees, most notoriously Babe Ruth. Then he left the Red Sox in bankruptcy while continuing to make theatre productions. After the sale of Ruth, the team crashed into the American League cellar and would not finish above .500 until 1934. The Red Sox would not win another pennant until 1946, and would not win another World Series until 2004, the third longest drought in MLB history. Frazee backed a number of New York theatrical productions (before and after Ruth's sale), the best known of which is probably No, No, Nanette, which was once claimed, and later debunked, as the specific play that Ruth's sale financed. He was the subject of an unflattering portrait in Fred Lieb's account of the Red Sox, which further insinuated that he had sold Ruth to finance a Broadway musical. This would become a central element in the Curse of the Bambino. The truth is somewhat more nuanced and has as much to do with a long-running dispute between Frazee and American League founder and president Ban Johnson as it does with Frazee's finances. Frazee had been the first American League owner who hadn't been essentially hand-picked by Johnson, and wasn't willing to simply do Johnson's bidding. Although they seemed to settle their differences when Frazee hired Ed Barrow, a friend of Johnson's, as manager, things heated up again when Frazee loudly criticized Johnson's handling of the issues brought about by the United States entering World War I. In response, Johnson began actively campaigning to yank the Red Sox from under Frazee. The dispute finally boiled over in the summer of 1919 when pitcher Carl Mays jumped the team. Johnson ordered him suspended, but Frazee instead sold him to the then-moribund Yankees. Johnson had promised Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Cap Huston to get them better players, but never followed through. The Mays flap divided the American League into two factions—the Yankees, Red Sox and White Sox on one side and the other five clubs, known as the "Loyal Five," on the other. Under the circumstances, when Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth (see below), his options were severely limited. Under pressure from Johnson, the Loyal Five rejected Frazee's overtures almost out of hand. In effect, Johnson limited Frazee to dealing with either the White Sox or the Yankees. The White Sox offered Joe Jackson and $60,000, but the Yankees offered an all-cash deal--$25,000 up front and three promissory notes of $25,000 each, plus a $300,000 loan to be secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. With the note from Lannin that he'd used in part to finance his purchase of the Red Sox having come due in November 1919, Frazee had little choice but to take the Yankees' offer. Ruth became the property of the Yankees on January 5, 1920. Post-Ownership The 1925 play, No, No, Nanette had originated as a non-musical stage play called My Lady Friends, which opened on Broadway in December 1919. According to author Leigh Montville, that play was financed as a direct result of the Ruth sale to the Yankees, suggesting that Frazee had sold Ruth to pay for it after all. However, he ignored the fact that, according to the Internet Broadway Database, after the production of My Lady Friends and long before No, No, Nanette went into production in 1925, Frazee produced two other very successful plays, Dulcy (1921-1922) and Her Temporary Husband, facts that call Montville's conclusion into question. Fenway Park The Ruth sale cemented the Red Sox-Yankees alliance, which was ironic given their historically bitter rivalry. A few months later, the two teams drew even closer together in a dispute over Fenway Park. When Frazee bought the Red Sox, Fenway Park was not part of the deal. Instead, he rented it for $30,000 per year from the Fenway Realty Trust. A majority of the trust's stock was controlled by the Taylor family, publishers of the Boston Globe. The Taylor family had owned the Red Sox from 1904 to 1911 and actually built Fenway in the first place. They still held a small ownership interest. This put Frazee in a very difficult spot. If Johnson ever revoked the franchise, it would be relatively easy for a new owner to get a lease for the park. In August 1919, Frazee began negotiations to buy out the shares in the trust held by Lannin and the Taylors. In this way, if Johnson ever yanked the franchise out from under Frazee, any prospective owner of a Boston American League team risked being left without a place to play. However, Fr