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After the 1919 World Series, an event happened that nearly shook baseball to its core and which forced some major changes in the way the game was set up.
I'm talking about the Insurrectos (The Black Sox didn't come to light until 1920). I had never heard of it before this (well, one passing reference) and find it fascinating.
It all started with Ban Johnson. The founder of the American League thought it was his baby, and wanted to approve any owner who was part of the league. And he didn't like it when Harry Frazee bought the Red Sox. Frazee made his money in the theater, which was too disreputable for Johnson. Some sources said antisemitism played a part (Frazee wasn't Jewish, but some people thought he was because he was from NY and worked in the theater).
In 1918. the government wanted to shut down baseball as nonessential. Johnson had no luck convincing them otherwise, but Frazee manage to convince officials that it was important for morale. Johnson didn't like being shown up.
It became an outright war in 1919. The Red Sox, though they won the World Series the year before, were struggling. Pitcher Carl Mays (best know today for throwing the pitch that killed Ray Chapman) jumped the team and was suspended. Frazee didn't want the bother, and traded Mays to the Yankees for cash. Johnson forbid it. The Yankees took him to court and won. This didn't make Johnson happy and you only got on his bad side at your own risk. The two teams were joined by the White Sox. Charles Comiskey's friendship with Johnson had deteriorated over the years and they didn't like each other very much. Johnson got angry that Comiskey said he should be looking into allegations that the Sox had thrown the 1919 series.
The three teams were dubbed the Insurrectos, probably named after the independence movement in the Philippines. Johnson had an edict: none of the other teams (dubbed "The Loyal Five") could have anything to do with them.
Frazee, meanwhile, decided to trade away Babe Ruth. It sounds boneheaded now, but the reasons were not that crazy at the time. Ruth had just set the record for 29 home runs. But no one was sure he could duplicate it (It's as as if someone expected Roger Maris to hit 61 home runs again in 1962). Further, Ruth was willful and hard to control and threatened to go barnstorming if he didn't get a big raise. Frazee grew tired of the antics and he needed the money (no, not to finance No, No Nanette -- that opened three years later).
The Loyal Five were not going to trade for Ruth. The White Sox offered Shoeless Joe Jackson and cash, but the rumors of the Black Sox were now beginning to come to light, so the Red Sox were wary. The Yankees offered more cash. Red Sox GM Ed Barrow told Frazee that the Yankees didn't have anything to offer, anyway, so Frazee went with the deal. (Barrow later became GM of the Yankees, but that was unlikely to be a factor in his thinking).
Things came to a head the next year. With the Black Sox scandal in full bore, the National League wanted new governance of the sport. Johnson opposed it. So the Insurrectos agreed to join the NL and were preparing to switch to the National League. The NL said they'd accept the first additional AL team that wanted to join them, but, barring that, they'd put an expansion team in Detroit (the largest US city that only had a single team) and play as a 12-team league. Detroit owner Frank Navin managed to get the Insurrectos to the negotiating table, making sure Ban Johnson was not at the meeting. The AL agreed to go along with the commissioner system, since the jump of 3-4 teams could have doomed the league.
It didn't end there. Frazee only leased Fenway Park, and the park ownership was friendly toward Johnson. There was a very real possibility that they would kick him out, so he bought Fenway. But that left him strapped for cash so he arranged a mortgage with the Yankees.
Why did the Yankees do it? Because they leased the Polo Grounds from the Giants. And at the time of the loan, they were outdrawing the Giants. Owner Charles Stoneman didn't like that, so Johnson persuaded him to not renew the Yankees lease. Without a ballpark, Johnson could kick them out of the league. (Yankee Stadium was still in the planning stages).
By holding the mortgage on Fenway, the Yankees could set up as the Boston Yankees and continue on (Stoneman changed his mind, afraid of the backlash if he drove Ruth out of town).
And in the early 20s, the Red Sox were forced to trade with the Yankees. None of the Loyal Five would trade with them, and the White Sox were too tarnished to have anything to offer. Frazee was cash strapped -- attendance was down and he now had the Fenway Park mortgage to pay -- but he also was trying to improve the team. Many of the deals were perfectly reasonable at the time, but the players flourished with the Yankees (Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock, for instance, were only average pitchers with Boston; they became Hall of Famers once they had the Yankee offense behind them), while those the Red Sox got did worse than expected.
Though Johnson was reduced in power (he didn't like being told what to do by the Commissioner), he still harassed Frazee (especially after the anti-semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent called him one of the Jews who were ruining baseball) until Frazee finally decided to sell the team, which he did for a profit. Frazee did fine in his theatrical enterprises in the 20s, mostly because he owned the Longacre Theater, which was rarely empty throughout the decade. Despite myths to the contrary, he was a millionaire when he died (it was subsequent management that was even more cash strapped until Tom Yawkey came along).
Frazee was blamed for the various trades, but he really had little choice. (BTW, the "Curse of the Bambino" was not mentioned anywhere until after their 1986 World Series loss).
It's interesting to speculate how baseball could have been different if the Insurrectos had joined the NL.
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