[Ads-l] pitchers=?utf-8?Q?=E2=80=99_?=duel (UNCLASSIFIED)

[James A. Landau]

On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 21:26:48 Zone-0400 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
Subject: 

> Sportsman’s Park
>Owned by the Browns, rented by the Cardinals. When the Browns played 
>there, nothing special. When the Cardinals, then owned by Arab-American Fred
>Saigh, played there, rigid segregation, with blacks confined to the
>bleachers.
>
>I still don't get it.

Fred Saigh owned the Cardinals from 1948 to 1952.  Bill Veeck owned the Browns from 1951 to 1953.

Veeck, when he owned the Cleveland Indians in 1947, made Larry Doby the first African-American player in the American League, and second (after Jackie Robinson) in major-league baseball.  According to Doby, Veeck fired three players who refused to shake hands with him.

Saigh was a prominent tax and corporation lawyer in St. Louis.  His minority partner in buying the Cardinals was long-time Democratic party leader Robert Hannegan, also of St. Louis.  Was Missouri at that time a one-party (Democratic) state?  And was the Missouri Democratic party old-school, i.e. Segregationist, Southern?  That is a possible explanation of why the Cardinals practiced rigid segregation in Sportsman's Park. 

Veeck, on the other hand didn't give a damn for the Democratic party---didn't give a damn for anything except running a profitable baseball team.

Does this answer your question?

- Jim Landau


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