Turn back the clock … 1943: owner William Cox, the last man banned before Pete Rose

Baseball Digest, August, 2004 by Jerome Holtzman

PETE ROSE WASN'T THE FIRST TO admit he had bet on baseball. More than a half-century ago, in 1943, William D. Cox, then the rookie owner of the Philadelphia Phillies, also came clean and acknowledged he had been betting on his team.

Bucky Harris, the Phillies field manager, blew the whistle. Impetuous and impatient, Cox fired Harris on May 28, without first telling him he had been dismissed. Instead, he announced his decision at a press conference in Philadelphia. Harris was then with the club in St. Louis.

The Philadelphia players, indignant, threatened to strike. Led by veteran pitcher Schoolboy Rowe, they decided, with near unanimity, they would not play until Harris was restored. When the time came for the players to take the field for practice before a night game in Sportsman's Park, they remained in their clubhouse.

Harris entered and said, "Better take the field fellows. This won't help. Do it for my sake."

Harris returned to Philadelphia the next day and summoned several Philadelphia baseball writers to his suite at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel. He called Cox an All-American jerk, or words to that effect, and then as the newspapermen were about to leave, he dropped his bombshell.

"He's a fine guy to fire me," Harris revealed. "when he gambles on games his club plays."

A sportswriter said, "If Judge Landis hears of this, he will be finished."

According to a 1953 history of the Phillies, co-authored by Fred Lieb and Start Baumgartner, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis heard of it through a letter written to him by the sports editor of a Philadelphia newspaper. Landis began a lengthy investigation. Cox was suspended for life on November 23, ending his nine-month ownership.

After he had acquitted Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker in 1927 on betting accusations, Landis had the club owners enact a strict code that called for permanent banishment for anyone betting on a game, whether he be club owner, manager, player, umpire or bat boy. And it made no difference if the offender bet for or against his team.

Cox, who ran track at Yale and was also on the Yale baseball squad, fancied himseLf as an outstanding athlete. He suited up during workouts and often invaded the clubhouse before and after games. He also gave some of the players instruction, usually in conflict with Harris. At 33, he was in excellent shape and then the youngest major league president and owner.

Gerry Nugent, the previous caretaker, for 10 years, had been sinking into bankruptcy. The National League took control of the club for less than 850,000, an incredibly low price. Ford Frick, the N.L. president, put the club up for sale.

After three months of negotiations, Cox outbid John 15. Kelly Sr., a former Olympic oarsman and a popular Philadelphia sportsman. Cox took over on March 3. His 30-man purchase group agreed to assume the club's debt and bought 90 percent of the Phillies' stock, 4,800 shares for $10 a share.

A native New Yorker, Cox had been a lumber broker and supplied the pilings used to reinforce the Panama Canal during World War II. He was accustomed to a long workday and like the latter-day Charlie Finley, he wanted a manager he could reach, night or day. Harris objected. Highly respected, he had been around the block and knew it was not necessary for him to curtsy at an owners' every whim.

He had been a big league manager for 19 years and had handled three American League teams--Washington, Detroit and Boston. His Washington clubs won two pennants. He didn't brood over losses. After the game was over and he had submitted to newspaper interviews, he usually wasn't available until two hours before the next game.

Prior to Harris' arrival, the Phillies were constantly at the bottom. They had finished last five years in a row. The club improved under his direction, for 93 games. When he was dismissed, the Phillies had won 22 more games, only two fewer than in the entire previous season. They finished seventh and had their largest gate since 1916.

The breach widened when Cox hired Harold Bruce, a track coach, as the team's trainer and director of physical fitness. According to one newspaper account, Bruce had been Cox's high school coach. Cox didn't run fast but had endurance and was on the cross-country team.

Harris resented the intrusion and the new emphasis on calisthenics. Bruce's favorite dietary item were oranges cut in quarters which were spread on the bench. One day the trainer fell asleep in the midst of his sliced oranges. Outraged, Harris tried to fire him.

According to Philadelphia historian Rich Westcott, Cox was "a glib and convincing non-stop talker with the promotional instincts of a circus barker." From the beginning, he was an irritant, not merely to Frick and his fellow moguls but to his board of directors.

Cox conceded he had made "sentimental" bets on his team but insisted he was unaware it was in violation of the rules. He said it was a business associate, a front-office employee, who had placed approximately 15 or 20 bets, on his own, ranging from $25 to $100 a game for the Phillies to win.