Big Deal

Ever since the death of Owner Jacob Ruppert six years ago, the New York Yankees had been on the auction block. Many a would-be buyer (Jim Farley was the most notable), had nibbled halfheartedly, but none ever made a solid bid. Last week it finally happened: the Yankees changed hands--and personality.

The new Yankee bosses brimmed with dollars and ideas. Supplying a heavy piece of change was slender, soft-spoken Del Webb, ex-minor-league pitcher who 16 years ago moved to Phoenix, Ariz., parlayed a saw and hammer into a million-dollar construction business. The other big moneyman was Marine Corps Captain Dan Topping, heir to a tin-plate fortune and owner of the Brooklyn Football Tigers.* The man with the ideas was baseball's brilliant screwball, redheaded Colonel Leland Stanford ("Larry") MacPhail --who aging ex-Boss Ed Barrow once said would buy the Yankees "over my dead body."

For approximately $3,000,000 they got a bargain: Yankee Stadium (original cost: $3,000,000) the Yankee ball club and four minor league ball clubs, 350 baseball players. For himself, MacPhail got a juicy ten-year contract as president and general manager. The once conservative Yankees will never be the same with him around.

As boss of the Cincinnati Reds a decade ago, Larry the Red painted the park orange, introduced usherettes and night baseball. Attendance figures doubled. He founded a farm system that brought Cincinnati two pennants, one world championship. Then MacPhail took over the seventh-place Brooklyn Dodgers, who were in hock to the Brooklyn Trust Co. for a half-million dollars. He talked the banking gentlemen out of another $300,000, peeled off dizzy amounts for new players, promoted crowd-drawing grudge fights with every club in the National League. When he quit Flatbush for the Army three years ago (the colonel's discharge is in the offing), he had won a pennant and paid off a million dollars in debts.

Now for the first time Larry MacPhail takes over a baseball business that is making money. But he sees plenty of opportunity for his club-building talents. He makes no exceptions when he says that big-league teams will have to start from scratch after the war.

One big question mark looms in the Yankee setup: how will quiet, efficient Manager Joe McCarthy hit it off with turbulent Larry MacPhail? MacPhail insists that he will limit his fire and energy to digging up ballplayers and keeping the stadium's 70,000 seats well-filled. Said McCarthy last week: "Everything will run all right."

* Now that he has one of the nation's choicest football parks, Topping plans to take his time about whether to switch his National Football League franchise to New York or join one of the three proposed new pro leagues.

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