Story turned into a bestseller

Sale of Ruth supported by Frazee's descendants

By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist, 9/5/2003

Frazee. The name is mud in Boston.

Come to think of it, Frazee made Boston Mudville -- the place where there has been no joy at the end of every baseball season since 1918.

Many New England schoolchildren can recite the sins of former Sox owner Harry Frazee. It's a tale told as often as the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. In the winter after the 1919 Red Sox season, Frazee -- a New Yorker who loved Broadway more than baseball -- sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000 and a mortgage on Fenway Park. Since that date, the Yanks lead the Sox in world championships by a score of 26-0.

It should surprise no one that none of the Frazees ever settled around Boston.

The Sox owner, "Big Harry" as he is known in family lore, sold the ball club to J.A. Robert Quinn in 1923 for $1,250,000. He left Boston for New York and never returned. This was the man who always said that the best thing about Boston was the train to New York. Big Harry died at the age of 49 in 1929. Gotham mayor Jimmy Walker was at Frazee's bedside when he died.

Harry Jr. was a broker and also worked in the broadcast industry in New York City. His son, Harry III, is the oldest living descendant of the Sox owner. Harry III is a retired newspaperman who lives near Seattle. Before settling in the Pacific Northwest, he was automotive editor and an advertising executive for the San Diego Union. He's also a Mariners fan. In the spirit of Sox stars Manny Ramirez and Pedro Martinez, Harry III refused an interview request with the Globe. Harry III remains bitter about what he considers mistreatment of the family name in Greater Boston.

Harry III has two sons: James, a 49-year-old film distributor who lives in Oslo, and Max, 48, a construction supervisor and conceptual artist who lives in Battery Park City in New York. James has two daughters. Max is a bachelor. Max is also a Yankees fan.

When the Red Sox went to the World Series in 1986, Jim Frazee wrote a defense of his great granddad for the Tacoma News-Tribune, stating, "Despite what has often been called the worst deal in the history of baseball, Harry never lost his ambition. He made his fortune on his own skills just as Ruth was able to do . . . More often than not, Harry and [general manager Ed] Barrow had to lock Ruth in his room so he wouldn't go on all-night drinking, fighting, and womanizing sessions right up until the next game . . . I know and my family knows that Harry didn't bail on the team . . ." Jim Frazee termed the Ruth sale, "the most misunderstood deal of the century."

It is Max Frazee, great-grandson of Big Harry, who is most articulate and available when it comes to discussing the family name and Red Sox folklore. It was Max who represented the Frazee family at Fenway Park in September 1993 when descendants of the 1918 Red Sox World Champions were given commemorative pins. He mingled with Sox officials and fans and chatted with Julia Ruth Stevens, daughter of the Babe. He heard the late, longtime Sox announcer Ken Coleman proclaim, "The Curse of the Bambino is officially over."

That was 10 years ago, and Max hasn't been to Fenway since.

"I'm a Yankee fan, but I still enjoy watching Boston play," he said. "Especially this Sox team. I hope they can hold on. I root for the Yankees, but if the Sox were in the playoffs and the Yankees weren't, I'd root for the Sox.

"I hear something about Big Harry selling the Babe at least three times a week. Sometimes I get irritated enough to ask them what they actually know, then debunk what they said. Not too many people have really done the research."

All the Frazee men feel vindicated by the research of the estimable Glenn Stout. A former librarian at the Boston Public Library, Stout is an author/baseball historian who has concluded Harry Frazee has been unfairly demonized. Stout's research shows that the Sox owner was engaged in a battle with American League president Ban Johnson -- a battle Johnson waged by prohibiting other American League ball clubs to deal with the Red Sox.

"What I've done is find out a little bit more about who Harry Frazee was and what he actually did and how baseball treated him," said Stout, coauthor of the brilliant "Red Sox Century."

"The Ruth deal was a lot more complicated than anyone thought. There's elements, particularly the element of the war that Frazee was having with Johnson regarding the future of the American League.

"It gets Harry off the hook to the extent that it recognized that there were a number of influences that resulted in him not only selling Ruth but making other trades. Other teams were prevented from trading with Harry because of their alliance with Ban Johnson. If Harry was going to do anything to improve the team, he basically had one option, and that was to deal with the Yankees."

And deal he did. When the Yankees won their first World Series in 1923, 11 of the New York players had come from the Red Sox. That was the same year Frazee finally sold the Sox, and even Stout admitted, "At that point, he decided to leave the cupboard bare."

Living in New York, Max Frazee hears about it more than his brother in Norway or his father in Seattle.

"The rhetoric has quite an intensity, and it's starting to balloon a little more," said Max. "You've got two brain-dead fan groups. The Boston fans and the Yankee fans. They hear our name, and they start saying the same things. It's like a broken record. It's funny how it has panned out over 10 years. It has expanded tremendously."

Max's art used to be devoted to serial killers. These days, he's dealing in large-scale drawings regarding the World Trade Center. He's got a show in Frankfurt this month but hopes to be back for the end of the pennant race. He'd be happy to return to Boston for a playoff game. He enjoys the reaction his name gets in the Hub.

"At that time, I think what Big Harry did was the right thing," said Max. "The Babe was a cantankerous ballplayer at that time. He'd shown no signs of becoming the Babe Ruth he would become. I don't know if he would have helped Boston anyway, to tell you the truth. With the Red Sox, it's always spring forward, fall back. The periodic message is that the leaves start falling early in Massachusetts."

He chuckled as he said those words. It was a chuckle of self-satisfaction. Like all those around him, Max Frazee, great-grandson of the man who sold Babe Ruth, is a confident Yankees fan.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.