General Manager Ed Barrow
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The mass exodus of Boston Red Sox to greener pastures with the New York Yankees was not limited to players. In 1920, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow saw the writing on the wall in Boston and jumped at the Yankees’ offer to oversee all of their baseball affairs. For the next 24 years he served as the architect of the most consistently successful team in the history of baseball. Innovative, demanding, and as competitive as they come, Barrow was the man responsible for setting set the standard that all Yankee fans have now come to know and love.
Born shortly after the Civil War ended in Springfield, Illinois, Ed Barrow grew up in Iowa and took an interest in the fledgling game of baseball. A large, well-built man, his playing days were cut short due to injuries, but around the turn of the century he began a long and distinguished career in professional baseball.
The owner of many minor league teams across multiple leagues, Barrow became a savvy business manager. As sportswriter Richard J. Tofel once noted of him, “…Barrow was not just an innovator but a promoter. He staged a night game on July 4, 1896, nearly forty years before the first major league night contest. He used a female pitcher in a game just before the turn of the century, and he installed boxing champions…as umpires at baseball games.”
Barrow also displayed a high baseball IQ during this time as he was instrumental in starting Honus Wagner’s Hall of Fame career and served as the field manager for the Detroit Tigers in 1903 and 1904. Yet it wasn’t until 1918 that he would get another job in the major leagues, this time as manager of the Boston Red Sox.
There Barrow effectively tamed the wild Babe Ruth and won the World Series in his first year. Over the next two years the Red Sox were in financial peril and began selling their best players, including the infamous sale of Ruth to the Yankees. After the 1920 season, Barrow followed suit and was hired away by the Yankees to run their baseball operations. In modern parlance, he became the new general manager in The Bronx.
The ultracompetitive Barrow got right to work by imposing his will upon the Yankee organization. In his first few years on the job, he set the foundation for a scouting department that would become among baseball’s best and swung numerous deals for quality players that he was familiar with on the Red Sox. Sportswriter Harvey Frommer once wrote that his willingness to take risks with players also paid off, “Barrow took chances going after players that other teams shied away from. He was innovative in creating one of the top farm systems and scouting networks.”
Barrow also continued to successfully navigate the tumultuous career of Babe Ruth, served as the middle man in Yankee co-owner Jacob Ruppert’s buyout of disgruntled co-owner Cap Huston, and played a key role in getting Yankee Stadium built in 1923. After finishing off their third straight American League pennant with a World Series win that year, he kept the talent pipeline full and by 1925 young phenom Lou Gehrig was playing every day for the Yankees.
That season Barrow also kept the peace in Yankeeland by backing manager Miller Huggins in a public squabble with an out of shape and out of control Ruth. In 1927, his team rewarded him with one of the most dominant runs in baseball history and followed that up with another World Series win in 1928. In Barrow’s first eight years running the Yankees they secured six pennants and the first three World Series titles in franchise history.
Following Huggins’ sudden death in 1929, Barrow eventually landed on a worthy replacement in Joe McCarthy two years later. McCarthy, thanks to the strong stable of players that Barrow kept at his disposal, led the Yankees to another dominant World Series win in 1932. However, during Ruth’s waning years the Yankees played second fiddle in the American League as other teams took home the next three pennants.
During this time Barrow tirelessly worked to improve the team’s future. Seeing the need to create and develop a farm system to supply the Yankees with more talent, he acquired minor league teams and appointed a group of Yankee executives to run them in concert with the big league club. On the strength of his strong scouting staff and now growing minor league system, Barrow had found baseball’s next superstar in centerfielder Joe DiMaggio.
During DiMaggio’s rookie year in 1936 the Yankees kicked off the most successful stretch in franchise history to that point. They won four straight World Series and after a third place finish in 1940, they took home the next three American League pennants, adding two more World Series wins in 1941 and 1943. That last three-year stretch was especially remarkable when considering a rule change the American League made after the 1939 season.
The rule stated that the reigning league champion was not able to make non-waiver trades until they were un-seated from the top. The rule’s clear purpose was to prevent the Yankees from continuing their dynasty, but Barrow still found ways to put his team in a position to win.
By 1944, World War II had financially crippled the Yankees and a new ownership group purchased the team after the season. The new group technically “promoted” Barrow to chairman, but the move effectively ended his run as head of the Yankee operation.
During his time on the job, Barrow was resoundingly successful in transforming the Yankee culture into that of a winning organization. In a description of Barrow, Peter Golenbock noted, “Under general manager Ed Barrow the Yankees had always been a clannish, close-knit baseball family, an ultra-serious, conservative operation.” That mentality yielded an amazing 14 American League pennants and ten World Series wins over Barrow’s 24 seasons in charge of the Yankees.
Barrow's winning approach resonated throughout the organization for generations after he left and can still be felt under the Steinbrenner regime of today. In many ways, all of the Yankees’ success enjoyed over the past 100 years rests on a foundation built by Ed Barrow.
“Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known…the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow?” – Lou Gehrig
The mass exodus of Boston Red Sox to greener pastures with the New York Yankees was not limited to players. In 1920, Red Sox manager Ed Barrow saw the writing on the wall in Boston and jumped at the Yankees’ offer to oversee all of their baseball affairs. For the next 24 years he served as the architect of the most consistently successful team in the history of baseball. Innovative, demanding, and as competitive as they come, Barrow was the man responsible for setting set the standard that all Yankee fans have now come to know and love.
Born shortly after the Civil War ended in Springfield, Illinois, Ed Barrow grew up in Iowa and took an interest in the fledgling game of baseball. A large, well-built man, his playing days were cut short due to injuries, but around the turn of the century he began a long and distinguished career in professional baseball.
The owner of many minor league teams across multiple leagues, Barrow became a savvy business manager. As sportswriter Richard J. Tofel once noted of him, “…Barrow was not just an innovator but a promoter. He staged a night game on July 4, 1896, nearly forty years before the first major league night contest. He used a female pitcher in a game just before the turn of the century, and he installed boxing champions…as umpires at baseball games.”
Barrow also displayed a high baseball IQ during this time as he was instrumental in starting Honus Wagner’s Hall of Fame career and served as the field manager for the Detroit Tigers in 1903 and 1904. Yet it wasn’t until 1918 that he would get another job in the major leagues, this time as manager of the Boston Red Sox.
There Barrow effectively tamed the wild Babe Ruth and won the World Series in his first year. Over the next two years the Red Sox were in financial peril and began selling their best players, including the infamous sale of Ruth to the Yankees. After the 1920 season, Barrow followed suit and was hired away by the Yankees to run their baseball operations. In modern parlance, he became the new general manager in The Bronx.
The ultracompetitive Barrow got right to work by imposing his will upon the Yankee organization. In his first few years on the job, he set the foundation for a scouting department that would become among baseball’s best and swung numerous deals for quality players that he was familiar with on the Red Sox. Sportswriter Harvey Frommer once wrote that his willingness to take risks with players also paid off, “Barrow took chances going after players that other teams shied away from. He was innovative in creating one of the top farm systems and scouting networks.”
Barrow also continued to successfully navigate the tumultuous career of Babe Ruth, served as the middle man in Yankee co-owner Jacob Ruppert’s buyout of disgruntled co-owner Cap Huston, and played a key role in getting Yankee Stadium built in 1923. After finishing off their third straight American League pennant with a World Series win that year, he kept the talent pipeline full and by 1925 young phenom Lou Gehrig was playing every day for the Yankees.
That season Barrow also kept the peace in Yankeeland by backing manager Miller Huggins in a public squabble with an out of shape and out of control Ruth. In 1927, his team rewarded him with one of the most dominant runs in baseball history and followed that up with another World Series win in 1928. In Barrow’s first eight years running the Yankees they secured six pennants and the first three World Series titles in franchise history.
Ed Barrow's plaque in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
Penale52/Wikimedia Commons
Following Huggins’ sudden death in 1929, Barrow eventually landed on a worthy replacement in Joe McCarthy two years later. McCarthy, thanks to the strong stable of players that Barrow kept at his disposal, led the Yankees to another dominant World Series win in 1932. However, during Ruth’s waning years the Yankees played second fiddle in the American League as other teams took home the next three pennants.
During this time Barrow tirelessly worked to improve the team’s future. Seeing the need to create and develop a farm system to supply the Yankees with more talent, he acquired minor league teams and appointed a group of Yankee executives to run them in concert with the big league club. On the strength of his strong scouting staff and now growing minor league system, Barrow had found baseball’s next superstar in centerfielder Joe DiMaggio.
During DiMaggio’s rookie year in 1936 the Yankees kicked off the most successful stretch in franchise history to that point. They won four straight World Series and after a third place finish in 1940, they took home the next three American League pennants, adding two more World Series wins in 1941 and 1943. That last three-year stretch was especially remarkable when considering a rule change the American League made after the 1939 season.
The rule stated that the reigning league champion was not able to make non-waiver trades until they were un-seated from the top. The rule’s clear purpose was to prevent the Yankees from continuing their dynasty, but Barrow still found ways to put his team in a position to win.
By 1944, World War II had financially crippled the Yankees and a new ownership group purchased the team after the season. The new group technically “promoted” Barrow to chairman, but the move effectively ended his run as head of the Yankee operation.
During his time on the job, Barrow was resoundingly successful in transforming the Yankee culture into that of a winning organization. In a description of Barrow, Peter Golenbock noted, “Under general manager Ed Barrow the Yankees had always been a clannish, close-knit baseball family, an ultra-serious, conservative operation.” That mentality yielded an amazing 14 American League pennants and ten World Series wins over Barrow’s 24 seasons in charge of the Yankees.
Barrow's winning approach resonated throughout the organization for generations after he left and can still be felt under the Steinbrenner regime of today. In many ways, all of the Yankees’ success enjoyed over the past 100 years rests on a foundation built by Ed Barrow.
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