Background
George Martin Weiss was born on June 23, 1894 in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Conrad Weiss, a dealer in meats and fancy groceries, and Anna Kapitzke.
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George Martin Weiss
Edit ProfileEducation
Weiss, who entertained thoughts of becoming a journalist, entered Yale after his graduation from New Haven High School (later renamed Hillhouse High School) in 1912. However, he gave up his studies to run the family business after his father's death in 1915.
Career
Baseball, however, had already exerted a powerful hold on Weiss. Short and stout, he was never able to play baseball professionally, but as a senior in high school was appointed business manager for the varsity baseball team. Weiss had learned enough about business matters while working at his father's store to handle the team's finances. After most of the players on the outstanding teams of 1911 and 1912 had graduated, Weiss suggested they stay together to play semiprofessional baseball during the summer as the Colonials. Weiss's idea was a success, and the Colonials played a second summer, using as their home a field at Lighthouse Point, an amusement park outside New Haven. Weiss, who handled business and promotional matters, began to view the Colonials as more than a job between school terms. New Haven and the nearby major league cities of New York and Boston all had laws that forbade playing baseball on Sundays. At Light-house Point the Colonials were under no such restrictions. Weiss recruited Yale stars and other good players from the New Haven area, and even invited such major league stars as Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson to play for the Colonials in Lighthouse Point on Sundays when their major league teams were in Boston or New York, but were idle because of local blue laws. So many fans turned out to see the major league greats that Weiss was able to pay a player like Cobb several hundred dollars for an appearance with the Colonials. After the 1915 World Series, Weiss even got the new world champions, the Boston Red Sox, to play the Colonials. On another occasion the Colonials played the Yankees in New York. With the legalization of Sunday sports in New Haven looming in 1919, Weiss acquired the bankrupt professional New Haven team in the Eastern League, the Profs, and turned it into a competitive and highly successful franchise. In 1929, he left the Profs to become general manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the International League. Three years later Weiss moved to New York to organize and direct a farm system for the Yankees. The farm system was then a recent development in baseball, credited to Branch Rickey, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. Prior to the development of the farm system, major league teams often bought players from independently owned minor league teams or from the poorer major league franchises. The Yankees had assembled their first great teams of the 1920's by buying players, Babe Ruth among them, from troubled franchises. However, a team could also make costly mistakes, because the purchase of a top minor league player could cost $50, 000 or more. Although a farm system involved many expenses, players could be signed directly from amateur leagues at little cost and be paid minimal salaries as they worked their way up to the major leagues. Most players, of course, never made it that far, but the major league franchises began to see merit in establishing their own farm systems, which varied in size from a handful of teams to hundreds of minor league players belonging to one of the more prosperous clubs. Weiss soon assembled one of baseball's largest and most successful farm systems. By the end of the 1930's, it included twenty-one teams, capped by the Newark Bears, often considered the greatest of all minor league teams, and the Kansas City Blues, whose 1940 infield quartet was rated the best ever to play in the minor leagues. Between 1936 and 1943, the Yankees won seven American League pennants and six World Series, a record that outdid the accomplishments of Babe Ruth's Yankees. Joining the club in these years were such legends as Charlie Keller, Joe Gordon, Phil Rizzuto, and Joe DiMaggio. With the exception of DiMaggio, these stars all came from the Yankee organization. Players who had major league ability but were not good enough to crack the Yankee lineup were sold to other major league teams. As farm director, Weiss reported to the general manager and the owner, who still acquired players by purchase and trade from sources outside their farm system. DiMaggio, for example, was bought from the minor league San Francisco Seals. However, Weiss's farm system played a major role in the acquisition of DiMaggio, for in addition to $25, 000 cash, the price for the future Yankee great included five of Weiss's farm players considered good enough to help San Francisco. Weiss had to convince top management that DiMaggio was worth the cost. Weiss became the Yankees' general manager after the 1947 season. With DiMaggio and other prewar stars aging, the Yankees' future seemed doubtful. However, Weiss acted decisively when he hired Casey Stengel as manager after the 1948 campaign. His signing of Stengel was at first ridiculed, for Stengel had already managed two National League clubs without success. However, those teams had lacked talent, and Weiss supplied Stengel with an abundance of it, including Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle, all of whom emerged from the Yankee farm system between 1947 and 1951. During the 1950's the Yankees won every American League pennant but two, and on each occasion they lost, Weiss engineered deals that brought fresh talent to the team. The acquisition of Roger Maris after a third-place season finish in 1959 was one of his last successful moves with the Yankees. The owners dismissed Weiss after the 1960 season. He soon became president of a new National League franchise, the New York Mets. In fact his duties were those of general manager. For the five years he ran the Mets the team was unsuccessful on the field but a winner at the box office. Weiss retired in 1966, retaining stock ownership in the Mets. The job he had done in hiring astute baseball personnel and acquiring a nucleus of competent players was not fully appreciated until 1969, when the Mets, featuring such young pitchers as Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, became the first of baseball's expansion franchises to appear in a World Series. In 1971 Weiss was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Weiss had his critics, however. Some blamed him for the Yankees' slowness in signing black talent in the 1950's, and he was certainly difficult when negotiating contracts with his players. Weiss died in a Greenwich, Connecticut, nursing home.
Achievements
Personality
Many regarded him as aloof, a coldly efficient assembler of teams that won with boring regularity. If the Yankees won too often, it was in part because other teams could not match Weiss's front-office management. Those who knew him well knew that he was merely shy, not aloof, and that he genuinely loved baseball, as the contents of his two-hundred-year-old home in Greenwich, Connecticut, attested. He had made it into a virtual museum of baseball memorabilia dating back to the early 1900's.
Connections
He married Hazel Wood in 1937. Although they had no children together, she had one son from a previous marriage.
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Born
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Died
August 13, 1972 (aged 78) -
Nationality
American