Dan Topping

January 25, 1945. A tin-plate fortune, a construction magnate's checkbook, and one baseball executive with a reputation for chaos walked into the Ruppert estate's offices and walked out owning the New York Yankees. Dan Topping and Del Webb put up the bulk of the $2.8 million between them. Larry MacPhail put up almost nothing, and Topping and Webb loaned him his third anyway. Twenty years, 15 pennants, and 10 championships later, Topping and Webb sold the club to CBS -- though it took two more years, and a last-place finish, before Topping actually walked away.

The Tinplate Heir

Daniel Reid Topping was born June 11, 1912, in Greenwich, Connecticut, into money that came from two directions at once. His mother, Rhea Reid, was the daughter of Daniel G. Reid, a tin industrialist wealthy enough that people just called him the Tinplate King. His father, Henry Junkins Topping, was the son of John A. Topping, president of Republic Iron and Steel. Between the two grandfathers, there wasn't much Dan Topping needed to build for himself. He went to the Hun School, then the University of Pennsylvania, and became a genuinely good amateur golfer along the way -- the kind of résumé that gets a young man into rooms, not the kind that gets him taken seriously once he's in them.

He got taken seriously anyway, mostly by spending money on sports teams other rich men wouldn't touch. By the mid-1930s he owned the NFL's Brooklyn Dodgers outright. When the league wouldn't let him move the football team into the bigger, better Yankee Stadium, Topping didn't argue. He just took his players and joined the brand-new All-America Football Conference instead, rebranding the club the New York Yankees for the 1946 season (a second New York team called the Yankees, playing in the same building as the first -- nobody seemed to mind the redundancy). That team lost the AAFC championship game two years running -- 14-9 to Cleveland in 1946, 14-3 to the same Browns in 1947. Losing didn't seem to bother Topping much. He already had a bigger problem to solve in the Bronx.

Buying an Orphan Dynasty

Jacob Ruppert's estate had run the Yankees on autopilot since his death in January 1939, and by late 1944 it was ready to sell. Topping, Webb, and MacPhail closed on 96.88 percent of the club on January 25, 1945, for $2.8 million, then mopped up the final 3.12 percent that March. Topping and Webb supplied the real money -- enough that they effectively fronted MacPhail his own share just to keep the partnership at three equal thirds. MacPhail got the title anyway. The partnership handed him the club presidency and full authority over baseball operations, while Topping and Webb settled for vice president and watched him work.

That didn't last. MacPhail's most famous stunt in 1945 -- selling ace Hank Borowy to the Cubs in the middle of a pennant race -- was a preview of a temperament that couldn't survive success. He got into it at the Biltmore Hotel during the celebration of the 1947 World Series title and announced his own resignation on the spot. Topping and Webb bought out his stake for roughly $2 million the next day, becoming equal partners in full ownership of a club they'd only nominally run for less than three years. (Not a bad trade for either of them, in hindsight. MacPhail got his money. Topping and Webb got the whole operation.)

Running the Bronx

The partnership worked because the two men barely competed for the same job. Webb ran his Arizona construction empire and handled the Yankees' business side and league affairs from a distance. Topping planted himself in New York and ran the baseball operation day to day -- the visible owner, the one who signed off on the moves and stood in front of the microphones when something needed announcing. It was an odd match on paper. Topping was prep school and inherited money; Webb built his own fortune pouring concrete (the kind of guy who'd later build entire retirement cities out of the Arizona desert). Somehow it held together for two decades without either man trying to run the other's half.

Topping wasn't the baseball mind in the building -- that job belonged to George Weiss, who took over as GM in October 1947 and built the roster that made everyone else's decisions look good. But Weiss still needed Topping's signature. When Weiss wanted a Pacific Coast League retread named Casey Stengel to manage the Yankees in 1948, Topping wasn't sold. Stengel's reputation as a clown had outrun anything he'd done as a manager, and neither Topping nor Webb was eager to hand the sport's flagship franchise to a punchline. Weiss talked them into it. Stengel won the pennant that October, and four more after that.

Quit, fired, whatever you please, I don't care.

That's what Stengel gave the press the moment Topping told him he was done -- delivered right back across the same podium. Twelve years and seven championships after the gamble Topping almost didn't take, he was the one ending it.

The Copacabana and the Long Goodbye

Topping's fingerprints show up clearest in the moments where discipline was on the line. When six Yankees got tangled in a brawl at the Copacabana nightclub during Billy Martin's birthday party in May 1957, it was Topping who announced the fines on June 3 -- $1,000 apiece for Hank Bauer, Berra, Ford, Mantle, and Martin. The Yankees traded Martin to Kansas City 12 days later. Everyone else kept their locker. Topping didn't run the clubhouse, but he decided who paid for what happened in it.

Three years later, he ran the same math on the men in charge of the whole operation. Five days after Bill Mazeroski's home run beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, Topping called a press conference and told Stengel, age 70, that he wouldn't be back. He insisted the decision had nothing to do with the Series loss -- that it would've happened regardless. Two days after that, the Yankees named Ralph Houk the new manager. Sixteen days after that, the club announced Weiss's own retirement under the same mandatory-age-65 policy that had just pushed out Stengel. Weiss was 66. Multiple accounts of that stretch describe Topping using the new rule as convenient cover to clean house on his own terms, not just the club's. Two of the men most responsible for a decade of championships were gone inside three weeks, and the age policy did a lot of the talking Topping didn't have to.

Selling the House

By 1964, Topping and Webb were ready to cash out. CBS agreed to terms that August and closed on 80 percent of the Yankees for $11.2 million that November -- four times what the original 1945 group had paid for the whole franchise. Topping stayed on as CEO, with a handshake understanding that he'd run the club for at least five more years under the network's ownership.

He lasted less than two. The 1966 Yankees collapsed to last place in the American League for the first time since 1912, and on September 19 of that year, Topping sold his remaining 10 percent stake to CBS and resigned as club president. CBS executive Michael Burke took over the next day. Whatever Topping said publicly about personal reasons, the timing did most of the explaining -- a network that had just bought a crumbling club had no obvious use for the man who'd sold it to them.

Topping died May 18, 1974, in Miami Beach, Florida, of complications from emphysema. He was 61. By then, CBS had already grown tired of the whole experiment -- George Steinbrenner's group bought the Yankees from the network on January 3, 1973, for $10 million, a discount off what Topping and Webb had gotten for the club a decade earlier.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Dan Topping?

Dan Topping was co-owner and club president of the Yankees from 1945 to 1966, buying the team with Del Webb and Larry MacPhail for $2.8 million and selling out to CBS two decades later. His tenure covered the entire Casey Stengel-Ralph Houk championship run -- 15 AL pennants and 10 World Series titles.

When did Dan Topping buy the Yankees?

Topping, Del Webb, and Larry MacPhail closed on 96.88% of the Yankees on January 25, 1945, paying $2.8 million to the estate of Jacob Ruppert. They acquired the remaining 3.12% that March, giving the trio full ownership.

Did Dan Topping fire Casey Stengel?

Yes. Topping announced Stengel's dismissal on October 18, 1960, five days after the Yankees lost the World Series to Pittsburgh, citing Stengel's age (70). Stengel's response -- "Quit, fired, whatever you please, I don't care" -- became one of the most quoted lines in Yankees history.

Why did the Yankees sell to CBS?

Topping and Webb agreed to terms with CBS in August 1964 and closed on the sale of 80% of the franchise for $11.2 million that November -- four times the 1945 purchase price. Topping stayed on as CEO before selling his remaining 10% stake and resigning in September 1966.

Who was Dan Topping married to?

Topping married six times, five of the marriages ending in divorce. The best known was to Olympic figure skater Sonja Henie, from 1940 to 1946.

Twenty-one years is a long time to own anything, let alone a baseball team that spent most of that stretch as the best in the sport. Topping didn't build the farm system or manage a single game. He signed off on the men who did, cashed the checks when the value quadrupled, and got out before the wheels came off entirely. The Yankees he sold to CBS in 1964 had just won the pennant. The Yankees he walked away from in 1966 finished in last place. He'd seen both versions up close, and he knew exactly when to leave.