Damon Runyon
Salt Lake Tribune/April 8, 1917
FOR the largest salary ever paid a man in the history of baseball, John J. McGraw has signed a five-year contract as manager of the New York Giants.
It is understood that he will receive $50,000 a year with an arrangement by which he is to get a percentage of the profits of the club, which is the biggest money-getter in baseball.
Furthermore, it is believed that the manager is also to be permitted to purchase a block of the Giant stock. McGraw himself says: “Under my new contract I am practically a partner in the business.”
McGraw ‘s old contract expires this year. There has been considerable speculation in the baseball world as to his future, and it is known that he had received a number of very attractive offers to take charge of other clubs.
It has been rumored for some time that Charles Comiskey, president of the Chicago White Sox in the American league, wanted him to handle that club in an executive capacity, and it is no particular secret that several rich men who are anxious to buy into baseball were trying to interest him with them.
Announcement of the new contract was made at a dinner given at the St. Anthony Hotel by McGraw to the newspaper men traveling with the Giants, although at the time he made the arrangements for the dinner the Giants’ leader had no idea that it would be the occasion for such an announcement.
Harry N. Hempstead, president of the Giants, had meantime come on to San Antonio to join the club, and opened and closed the negotiations with McGraw. There was very little dealing in the matter. Hempstead made his proposition and McGraw accepted it.
Couldn’t Refuse Offer
“I ADMIT I had other plans,” said McGraw, “and was not fully prepared to listen to any offers to continue with the Giants, but the proposition was so good that I simply could not get away from it.”
McGraw himself made the announcement. Besides the newspaper writers, he had as guests at his dinner: Hempstead, John B. Foster, secretary of the club; Judge Francis X. McQuade, a New York city magistrate; Eddie Robbins, a member of the Lambs’ club, who has been following the club this spring; “Germany” Schaefer, the old ball player; Bill Brennan, the umpire, and several others.
Foster made an address outlining McGraw’s history as manager of the Giants, and there were talks by the others present, including Sam Crane of the New York Evening Journal, dean of the American baseball writers.
As Foster pointed out, McGraw went to New York in the fall of 1902 to take charge of a tail-end team. He had no chance to better the position of the club that year, but in 1903 he finished second.
In 1904 he won the National League pennant, but did not play for the world’s championship. In 1905 he won the pennant and the series with the Athletics for the world’s title.
In 1906 his supposedly invincible club was shot to pieces by accident, and he had to rebuild. In 1911, 1912 and 1913 he won the National league pennant with the team that has only comparatively recently been dismantled and dispersed, but he was beaten each year in the world’s’ series.
Once an Oriole
AGAIN he had to rebuild, and he starts the present season with the club that hung up a new major league record last year with twenty-six straight victories. It was last season, too, but not with the same club, that McGraw hung up the record of seventeen straight victories away from home, which is in itselt a new mark for baseball.
He is one of the few managers who have won five pennants. In 1908 he finished in a tie with Chicago, on account of the memorable Merkle incident, but lost the playoff game.
McGraw will be 44 years old on April 7. He entered the big league about 1893 with the famous Baltimore Orioles, and was a great player in his day. For many a year he was the stormy petrel of the big leagues, but the past few years have seen a vast change in his temperament.
He is not the fire-eater of old. He has grown gray and tolerant or at least more tolerant. He has been working the past five years under a contract which called for $30,000 a year. Before that he got around $18,000 a year. At the expiration of his new contract he will probably have served longer as manager of one club than any other man ever in the game.
The success of McGraw and his teams at the Polo Grounds brought a fortune to the late John T. Brush and to Brush’s heirs. It made possible the big plant on the Harlem meadow and much of the development of the game throughout the land.
Some of his success McGraw owed to Brush himself, because of the free hand the magnate gave the manager in handling the club. It was Brush policy never to interfere in anything McGraw did.
The Archive 