In the early 1920s, when the New York Yankees' first dynasty was
taking shape, they were outplayed by their local rival, the New
York Giants. Led by manager John McGraw the Giants won four
...consecutive National League pennants and two World Series, both
against the rival Yankees. Remarkably, the Giants succeeded despite
a dysfunctional and unmanageable front office. And at the center of
the turmoil was one of baseball's more improbable figures: club
president Charles A. Stoneham, who had purchased the Giants for $1
million in 1919, the largest amount ever paid for an American
sports team. Short, stout, and jowly, Charlie Stoneham embodied a
Jazz Age stereotype-a business and sporting man by day, he led
another life by night. He threw lavish parties, lived
extravagantly, and was often chronicled in the city tabloids.
Little is known about how he came to be one of the most successful
investment brokers in what were known as "bucket shops," a highly
speculative and controversial branch of Wall Street. One thing
about Stoneham is clear, however: at the close of World War I he
was a wealthy man, with a net worth of more than $10 million. This
wealth made it possible for him to purchase majority control of the
Giants, one of the most successful franchises in Major League
Baseball. Stoneham, an owner of racehorses, a friend to local
politicians and Tammany Hall, a socialite and a man well placed in
New York business and political circles, was also implicated in a
number of business scandals and criminal activities. The Giants'
principal owner had to contend with federal indictments, civil
lawsuits, hostile fellow magnates, and troubles with booze,
gambling, and women. But during his sixteen-year tenure as club
president, the Giants achieved more success than the club had seen
under any prior regime. In Jazz Age Giant Robert Garratt
brings to life Stoneham's defining years leading the Giants in the
Roaring Twenties. With its layers of mystery and notoriety,
Stoneham's life epitomizes the high life and the changing mores of
American culture during the 1920s, and the importance of sport,
especially baseball, during the pivotal decade.
Endgames Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
The funeral of Charles A. Stoneham took place on a wintry morning, January 9, 1936, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the city of his birth. The location to mark his passing was the imposing neo-Gothic All ...Saints Roman Catholic Church, a deliberate choice to underscore a literal cradle-to-grave story; Stoneham had been baptized in Jersey City fifty-eight years earlier and brought up in the Catholic community there.¹ A high requiem funeral mass followed quickly on the heels of an agonizing death on January 6 at a Hot Springs, Arkansas, resort where Stoneham had gone a month earlier for treatment for
Aside from the frosty reception he endured from his fellow baseball lords, Jazz Age baseball began smoothly and beautifully for Charley Stoneham. His New York Giants, who finished second in 1920, ...would win it all the next year and then go on to capture three more consecutive National League pennants, giving them four World Series appearances halfway through the decade. This successful run not only put Stoneham at the top of baseball’s world in the Jazz Age capital; it also provided a good New York story to counter the recent Black Sox scandal that was threatening baseball’s popularity with the
The Last Drop Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
For Charley Stoneham 1934 was his last year as himself. A confirmed Manhattanite, drawn to the city’s restaurants and nightlife, a baseball owner proud of his Giants’ recent World Series championship ...as they regained their lofty place in National League prominence, Stoneham lived this year fully and, one would have to say, stubbornly, driven by a conviction that his life was his own and that he could live it on his terms. His stubbornness was made obvious during his midyear physical examination, when his doctor warned him to stop drinking. “Go on the water-wagon, or you will not live very
Crash Time Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
The end of the great American Jazz Age came not with a whimper but a bang. It was hastened by a collapsing stock market and punctuated by dramatic plunges on two days that economists and historians ...designated as “Black.” On the first, Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, a record 12.9 million shares were sold on the New York Stock Exchange, sending shock waves throughout the financial institutions in New York City and then the nation. The second occurred five days later, on Black Tuesday, October 29, with an unprecedented sale of 16.4 million shares. At the end of the day,
Go East, Young Man Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
In the fall of 1918, stately, plump, and wealthy Charles A. Stoneham sensed the time was right to make a change in his business pursuits. For almost two decades Stoneham had profited spectacularly as ...an investment broker, starting as a specialist in copper mining stocks before moving on to general securities, bonds, and portfolio funds. His success allowed him to cultivate an interest in horse racing—he played the horses regularly at most of the New York tracks—and become an owner-trainer, establishing his own racing stables. He now had an itch to leave the investment world behind and become
See You in Court Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
Long before Charley Stoneham jumped feetfirst into baseball’s politics as a member of the House of Lords ownership group, he was actively pursuing the swanky life of a sportsman in the horse racing ...world. The draw of the sporting world became stronger with the purchase of the Giants in January 1919. There is every evidence to suggest that Stoneham was both happy and optimistic about the decision to reinvent himself as a true sportsman with baseball ownership and connections to the horse racing world. This new identity prompted his transition from the volatile investment world of the Consolidated Exchange in
Götterdämmerung Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
When Frank McQuade burst into Charley Stoneham’s office in 1923 with a profanity-laced demand for a higher salary for his role as the National Exhibition Company’s treasurer, Stoneham took it in ...stride as another of McQuade’s rants. McQuade had an aggressive way about him and could be pushy and rude in his manner. But this latest outburst carried a bit more heat and signaled to Stoneham that McQuade was becoming a problem in the Giants front office. Even John McGraw, who normally attended to players and game strategy rather than intraoffice politics, was complaining about McQuade’s antics and advised Stoneham
The Last Hurrah Garratt, Robert F
Jazz Age Giant,
04/2023
Book Chapter
For many Americans, 1933 was a dismal year, what one American historian called “unprecedented in its magnitude, the worst thing to happen to the American people since the calamitous Civil War.”¹ ...Economists would write later that 1933 was the trough of the Great Depression, the nadir of the struggling economy, when unemployment was rampant, manufacturing was down, banks were folding, and the stock market languished.² In early March, Franklin D. Roosevelt had just taken up residence in the White House, promising a “new deal,” something that most Americans were hoping for, but in the spring of 1933, things were gloomy
By the late autumn of 1926 and in his eighth year as owner of the New York Giants, Charley Stoneham sensed that his baseball team was entering difficult and, up to this moment in its history, ...unfamiliar territory. Although he had ceded almost all of the baseball operations to John McGraw and despite his legal distractions over the past four years, he followed the progress of the club closely. And what he sensed about the Giants and the New York market disturbed him. Over the past few years, he had witnessed firsthand the steady surge of affection among the city’s
