We all know about the Ruth trade—perhaps too much has been written about it. But lost in the Bambino talk is that the trade was part of a series of Red Sox-Yankees transactions so notorious that it had a name—“The Rape of the Red Sox.”
The term came from Ed Barrow, the Sox manager from 1918-1920, and the transactions are hard to defend. Between 1919 and 1923 the following players moved from Fenway to The Bronx:
Pitchers: Ernie Shore, Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, Waite Hoyt, Joe Bush, Sam Jones, and Herb Pennock.
Infielders: Mike McNally, Everett Scott, and Joe Dugan.
Outfielders: Duffy Lewis, Babe Ruth, Harry Hooper.
Catcher: Wally Schang.
But of all the non-Ruth transactions, the one that stands out to me was the trade of Carl Mays.
Mays was sent from the Sox to the Yankees in the middle of the 1919 season, a few weeks after he’d left the team, reportedly unhappy with his teammates:
The SABR journal describes the trade this way:
The “something,” alas, wasn’t much. The 40k went toward Frazee’s many creditors. The two players, pitchers Bob McGraw and Allen Russell, didn’t pan out. McGraw had a career -3.0 WAR as a reliever, and Russell was a career .500 swingman whose best season was actually 1919—he won 15 games between the Yankees and Red Sox that year, and never won more than 10 after that.
The term came from Ed Barrow, the Sox manager from 1918-1920, and the transactions are hard to defend. Between 1919 and 1923 the following players moved from Fenway to The Bronx:
Pitchers: Ernie Shore, Dutch Leonard, Carl Mays, Waite Hoyt, Joe Bush, Sam Jones, and Herb Pennock.
Infielders: Mike McNally, Everett Scott, and Joe Dugan.
Outfielders: Duffy Lewis, Babe Ruth, Harry Hooper.
Catcher: Wally Schang.
But of all the non-Ruth transactions, the one that stands out to me was the trade of Carl Mays.
Mays was sent from the Sox to the Yankees in the middle of the 1919 season, a few weeks after he’d left the team, reportedly unhappy with his teammates:
Prior to 1919, Mays had been fantastic for Boston, a 20-game winner who contributed to championships in 1915, 1916, and 1918. In 1918, using a submarine delivery, he led the AL in complete games and threw eight shutouts before winning both his World Series starts.His temper boiled over on July 13 against the White Sox. Chicago scored four first inning runs on Red Sox fielding gaffes. At the end of the second inning, [Mays] walked off the mound and shouted that he was not going to pitch for the Red Sox again. He stomped into the clubhouse, tore off his uniform, stormed out, and hopped the next train to Boston. Upon his arrival, he announced to a reporter that he was going fishing. His record was 5-11. Mays’s vacation lasted seventeen days.
The SABR journal describes the trade this way:
So this trade wasn’t like the Ruth sale, in that it was one of the pure salary dumps that characterized the “Rape of the Red Sox.” Mays had left the team, and while Frazee was surely happy to shed some salary at any time, in this case he got something for a player who refused to take the field.Mays, one of the league’s top pitchers, jumped the Red Sox in July, and, as the other league owners began offering packages of players and money to acquire him, [Red Sox owner Harry] Frazee looked to cash in. [League President Ban] Johnson argued that an insubordinate player should not be able to force a trade and demanded the Red Sox suspend Mays. Frazee and the Yankee owners, Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston ignored Johnson’s edict: The Yankees bought Mays for $40,000 and two players. Johnson then ordered Mays suspended and decreed he could not play for New York. The Yankees owners defied Johnson and obtained a court injunction permitting Mays to play for them.
The “something,” alas, wasn’t much. The 40k went toward Frazee’s many creditors. The two players, pitchers Bob McGraw and Allen Russell, didn’t pan out. McGraw had a career -3.0 WAR as a reliever, and Russell was a career .500 swingman whose best season was actually 1919—he won 15 games between the Yankees and Red Sox that year, and never won more than 10 after that.
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