Bill Veeck

Bill Veeck was professional baseball's first promotional genius. As owner of the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Browns, and two minor league teams, he was a showman without peer. He understood that in the 1930s and 1940s, a country coming out of the depression and war years needed something more than the game on the field in order to spend precious dollars. They needed entertainment and excitement, and he was certainly committed to enterprise.

His greatest strength was his ability to determine what the fans wanted and were willing to pay for. He constantly mingled with spectators in his ballparks, prompting his son Mike to comment, "I think people looked at it as quaint, Dad sitting in the stands. It was just his way of doing market research."

Veeck learned, for example, that many people in Chicago worked afternoons and nights in the factories and stockyards. So he scheduled a number of 8:30 a.m. starting times for games, attracting national attention when he personally served coffee and cornflakes to the early risers.

A visit to his ballpark offered constant surprises, including live music and dancers, giveaways of everything from lobsters to boxes of nails that he bartered from others, and the first "exploding scoreboard" where a home run by the home team ignited fireworks over the outfield fence. He planted the ivy on the outfield wall of

Wrigley Field in Chicago, which even today is a nationally recognized landmark of that facility.

But perhaps his most famous (or notorious, depending on your perspective) stunt occurred during his ownership of the Cleveland Indians. With much fanfare, he hired a midget to join the Indians. Eddie Gaedel stood 3 feet, 7 inches and weighed all of 65 pounds. When he was sent up to bat to draw a walk during a critical part of the game, the crowd went wild. The perplexed pitcher couldn't find the tiny strike zone and walked Gaedel on four pitches. Veeck claimed that this wasn't a stunt, but a "practical idea," which he would not hesitate to use again.

The president of the American League was not amused and barred Gaedel from playing again. But this unique marketing ploy certainly fulfilled the criteria of being memorable. Fifty years later, it is still an event that is memorialized by sports fans everywhere.

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