Wednesday, 04 December 2024

Larry MacPhail

Contest: The US Athletic Hall of Fame - Contributors 2024
Embed from Getty Images
Sport(s): Baseball Executive and Owner
Statistics: 1 World Series Championship (1947)
1 The Sporting News Executive of the Year Award (1939)
Member of the Baseball Hall of Fame
Larry MacPhail had a complicated and colorful career in Major League Baseball, but it was an impactful one, which earned him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Originally a lawyer, MacPhail purchased an interest in the Columbus Red Birds, a minor league affiliate of St. Louis. MacPhail envisioned a minor league playoff, which, while it came into existence, was not a success. Regardless, this was the type of outside-of-the-box thinking that served him well and gained him the attention of the Cincinnati Reds, who named him their general manager in 1933. The Reds improved, and they won the 1940 World Series after he left for the Brooklyn Dodgers, mostly because of the team he built.

MacPhail was the Dodgers president for three years, and he continued what he did in Cincinnati with player development. He left to serve in the United States military during World War II, accepting the rank of Colonel, but he returned to baseball not as a Dodger but as a co-owner, president, and general manager of the New York Yankees.

You can’t tell MacPhail’s story without discussing his alcoholism. When sober, he was already a bombastic figure, but when drunk, he was belligerent and bordered on lunacy. Hours after he finally won his first World Series (1947), he became aggressive with staff, drunkenly firing employees and making such a spectacle of himself that the two other co-owners, Dan Topping and Del Webb to buy him out immediately.

Despite the negatives around MacPhail, this was the man who introduced nighttime baseball to allow fans working during the day to attend games. He was also the first executive to initiate having his team fly to games, a massive relief for players, and MacPhail was also a large part of many early television broadcasts of baseball.

His son, Lee, would follow his footsteps into baseball as an executive and would also gain entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

We are proud to nominate Larry MacPhail for the United States Athletic Hall of Fame.

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