Editing Harry Frazee (section)

== Owner of the Red Sox ==

Frazee bought the [[Boston Red Sox]] baseball team from [[Joseph Lannin]] for a reported $675,000 after their victory in the [[1916 World Series]]. The Sox won another [[World Series]] title in [[1918 World Series|1918]]. The team finished sixth in 1919, and after that season Frazee started selling players to the [[New York Yankees]], most notoriously [[Babe Ruth]]. He then left the Red Sox in bankruptcy while continuing to produce theatre shows. After the sale of Ruth, the team crashed into the American League cellar and did not finish above .500 until 1934. The Red Sox did not win another pennant until 1946, and did not win another World Series until [[2004 World Series|2004]]. The 86-year World Series drought is the third-longest in MLB history, trailing only the Chicago Cubs (108 years from 1908 to 2016) and Chicago White Sox (88 years from 1917 to 2005).

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 (it was actually what paid off the Fenway Park mortgage that the Ruth sale included). 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 became a central element in the [[Curse of the Bambino]].

The truth is 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 was the first American League owner who Johnson had not essentially hand-picked, and was unwilling 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, their relationship worsened again when Frazee loudly criticized Johnson's handling of the issues brought about by the [[American entry into World War I|United States entering World War I]]. For his part, Johnson was angered by the open presence of gamblers and bookies at Fenway Park. These factors led Johnson to actively seek to push Frazee out.<ref name=SABR>Levitt, Dan; Armour, Mark; Levitt, Matthew. [http://sabr.org/bioproj/harry-frazee-and-the-red-sox Harry Frazee and the Boston Red Sox]. [[Society for American Baseball Research]], 2008.</ref>

Additionally, Frazee's theater ventures didn't generate even a fraction of the capital needed to meet the Red Sox' expenses. He often found himself having to borrow from the Red Sox to meet his other commitments.<ref name=SABR/>

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 [[Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston|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 [[Chicago White Sox]] on one side and the other five clubs, known as the "Loyal Five", on the other.<ref name=Stout/>

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 [[Shoeless Joe Jackson|Joe Jackson]] and $60,000, but the Yankees offered an all-cash deal: $25,000 up front and three [[promissory note]]s 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 had 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 officially became the property of the Yankees on January 5, 1920.<ref name=SABR/><ref name=Stout/>