It was fitting that the ultimate tribute to Ford Frick was his election to the Hall
of Fame. He was president of the
National League when the shrine was proposed, and
he gave the idea his fullest support.
Frick began his career as a midwestern sports
writer and moved to New York with the Hearst papers. He pioneered the nightly radio
sports report, giving scores and news. In 1934 he became NL public relations director
and succeeded the ailing William Heydler as NL president the next year. In 1951 he
replaced Happy Chandler as Commissioner as the owners sought a less stubbornly independent
figure at the helm than Chandler or the untameable Judge Landis. Much-derided for
his controversial decision to attach an asterisk to Roger Maris's
record 61 HR in
the new 162-game season in 1961 (Frick had been Babe Ruth's ghostwriter), he saw
his resourceful administration and gentle guidance of the owners away from their
instinct for self-destruction overshadowed by the asterisk issue. In Frick's wake
have come General Eckert, Bowie Kuhn, and Peter Ueberroth, and a trend toward baseball
as a billion-dollar business perhaps too willing to shed its old values, values the
traditionalist Frick revered.
(JK)
Ford Frick
