Ed Barrow

Late December 1919. A bar at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Boston. Harry Frazee, the Red Sox owner, tells his manager he's about to sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Ed Barrow doesn't argue for long -- he knows Frazee's mind is made up, and he knows the debt Frazee is carrying. He just looks at him and says it plainly: "You ought to know you're making a mistake." Frazee sold Ruth anyway. Within a year, Barrow had followed him to New York -- not as a rival, but as the man who'd run the operation that made the trade look like theft.

The Man Who Never Played

Edward Grant Barrow was born May 10, 1868, in Springfield, Illinois, the oldest of four boys in a family that tried homesteading in Nebraska, failed at it, and settled near Des Moines, Iowa, instead. He never went to college. He started as a mailing clerk for a Des Moines newspaper, got promoted to circulation manager, and spent his twenties bouncing between jobs that had nothing to do with baseball's front office -- boxing promoter, carpet-cleaning salesman, hotel operator. He also owned a minor league team in Paterson, New Jersey, where attendance was bad enough that he brought in heavyweight boxers John L. Sullivan and James J. Jeffries to umpire games as a publicity stunt.

That Paterson club is also where Barrow found Honus Wagner in 1896, signed him to his first professional contract, and sold him to Louisville a year later for $2,100 (walk-away money for a player who became an inner-circle Hall of Famer). It's a strange footnote for a man who'd go on to run baseball's most famous organization: the first great talent he ever discovered wasn't even his to keep. He'd watch that exact scenario play out again from the other side of the ledger, twenty-three years later, when Frazee sold him Ruth.

Barrow managed the Detroit Tigers in 1903 and 1904 (a combined 97-117, nothing special), ran the International League as its president from 1911 to 1917 (unglamorous administrative work that taught him exactly how a front office functions, years before he'd need to know), and then took over the Boston Red Sox in 1918. He won the World Series that year, his first season managing in the majors -- beating the Cubs four games to two. No manager before or since has won a title without ever playing organized baseball at any level. Barrow is still the only one.

Building It From the Other Side

That same year in Boston, on outfielder Harry Hooper's suggestion, Barrow made the call that mattered most: he took his best left-handed pitcher, a kid named George Herman Ruth, and turned him into a full-time outfielder. Ruth's bat was too good to waste four days out of five on the mound. It's the kind of decision that looks obvious in hindsight and wasn't remotely obvious at the time.

Frazee sold that same Ruth to the Yankees a year later, and Barrow spent the winter after watching a team he'd built get stripped for parts to cover a Broadway producer's debts. So when Yankees business manager Harry Sparrow died during the 1920 season and Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Til Huston needed someone to run the front office, Barrow took the job. He crossed enemy lines in October 1920 and never looked back.

He knew exactly where to find talent, because he'd built most of it himself. Ruth was already in pinstripes by the time Barrow arrived, but the pitching staff that anchored the 1928 championship -- Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, George Pipgras -- came out of the Red Sox system Barrow knew better than anyone alive. Boston sold him Hoyt in December 1920. Boston sold him Pennock in January 1923. Barrow just kept calling.

The Kid From Columbia

On April 26, 1923, Yankees scout Paul Krichell watched a Columbia first baseman hit two home runs against Rutgers and phoned Barrow that afternoon, certain he'd found "another Babe Ruth." Barrow met the kid the next morning, offered him a $1,500 bonus and $400 a month, and Lou Gehrig signed on April 29, 1923. Barrow didn't always get it right on the first try -- but when a scout called with real conviction, he moved fast and he moved himself.

The 1923 championship -- the franchise's first -- came that same fall, with Miller Huggins managing the roster Barrow assembled. Four more pennants followed through the 1928 sweep of St. Louis, and when Huggins died in 1929, Barrow didn't blink at the obvious replacement everyone in New York was demanding. Ruth wanted to manage. Barrow and Ruppert weren't handing him the job -- not after years spent managing Ruth's own discipline as a player -- and they passed him over for Bob Shawkey, then for Joe McCarthy a year later. It was a cold, calculated call, and it worked. McCarthy won seven titles in the Bronx.

Without any doubt whatsoever the greatest who ever lived.

That quote says something about how Barrow watched the game -- he'd been evaluating first basemen since before Ruth ever picked up a bat, and he never stopped trusting his own eye. In 1932, he brought in George Weiss to run a real farm system, built around the newly purchased Newark club, because scouting alone couldn't keep producing Gehrigs forever. Weiss would go on to build an entire second Yankees dynasty in the 1950s using the operation Barrow told him to build.

DiMaggio and the Last Great Buy

Barrow's last big swing came in December 1934, when he purchased Joe DiMaggio's contract from the San Francisco Seals for a reported $25,000 (some accounts put the figure as high as $50,000) and five players -- a steep price for a 19-year-old with a bad knee, softened by a condition that DiMaggio stay on the coast for one more year to prove the knee had healed. It had. DiMaggio hit .398 for the Seals in 1935 and arrived in the Bronx the following spring. DiMaggio spent the next two decades making Barrow look like a genius for the gamble.

The Ouster

Jacob Ruppert died in January 1939, and his will named Barrow team president, giving him full authority over an organization he'd already run for nearly two decades. He held the wartime Yankees together through thin rosters and one more championship in 1943. But an estate isn't an owner, and by January 1945 the Ruppert trust was ready to sell. Dan Topping, Del Webb, and Larry MacPhail bought the club for $2.8 million, installed MacPhail as club president, and pushed Barrow aside after 25 years running the franchise. He kept a nominal chairman's title and a small ownership stake for another year or so, but the job he'd actually built -- the one that mattered -- was over the moment MacPhail walked in.

Barrow spent his final years out of the daily grind. On September 28, 1953, the first-ever Committee on Baseball Veterans met and elected six men to the Hall of Fame: Barrow, Chief Bender, Tommy Connolly, Bill Klem, Bobby Wallace, and Harry Wright. Barrow died December 15, 1953, at 85, before he ever got to stand on the stage in Cooperstown. Cooperstown inducted him posthumously the following summer.

Key Moments

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Ed Barrow do for the Yankees?

Barrow ran the Yankees' baseball operations from October 1920 to January 1945, first as business manager and then as team president. He built the front office that produced 14 American League pennants and 10 World Series titles, signed Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, raided his former team in Boston for pitching talent, hired George Weiss to build the farm system, and passed over Babe Ruth for the managerial job in favor of Bob Shawkey and then Joe McCarthy.

Did Ed Barrow oppose selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees?

Yes. Barrow was managing the Red Sox when owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to New York in January 1920, and he argued against the deal, reportedly telling Frazee he was making a mistake. Less than a year later, Barrow himself left Boston to run the Yankees' front office -- the same organization that had just acquired the player he'd tried to keep.

How many championships did the Yankees win under Ed Barrow?

The Yankees won 10 World Series titles and 14 American League pennants during Barrow's 25 years running the front office (1921 through 1943, counting from his first full season). The championships came in 1923, 1927, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1941, and 1943.

When was Ed Barrow inducted into the Hall of Fame, and did he ever play in the majors?

The first Committee on Baseball Veterans elected Barrow to the Baseball Hall of Fame on September 28, 1953, alongside Chief Bender, Tommy Connolly, Bill Klem, Bobby Wallace, and Harry Wright. He died that December, before the 1954 induction ceremony, and Cooperstown inducted him posthumously. Barrow never played organized baseball at any level -- he's still the only manager in history to win a World Series without a professional playing background, a title he earned managing the 1918 Red Sox.

He never swung a bat in a big-league box score, never took the field in a big-league uniform, and he still built the organization every Yankees dynasty since has measured itself against. Barrow found Wagner, converted Ruth, signed Gehrig, bought DiMaggio, and left the job the moment someone else's name went on the door. The plaque in Cooperstown came two months too late for him to see it. The dynasty he built is still standing.