Jacob Ruppert was an American brewer and sportsman. He served as U. S. Congressman for four terms representing New York from 1899 to 1907.
Background
Jacob Ruppert was born in New York City's Yorkville section, the eldest of six children--three boys and three girls--of Jacob and Anna (Gillig) Ruppert. His paternal grandfather, Franz, as an immigrant brought to New York from Bavaria the brewer's skill on which the family fortune was built. His father founded the Jacob Ruppert Brewery on Third Avenue in New York in 1867 and was able to rear his children in an atmosphere of comfort and opportunity.
Education
Young Jacob was educated at the Columbia Grammar School and passed the entrance examinations of the Columbia College School of Mines, which, however, he never attended.
Career
Weak in his studies, Ruppert was already finding sports, particularly baseball, worthier of his time and energy. His economic future was never in doubt. At about the age of nineteen he began his apprenticeship in his father's brewery, and in 1890 he became its general superintendent. Six years later he became the active head of the firm and, at his father's death in 1915, its president.
Under his expert leadership the business grew steadily until the Prohibition Amendment went into effect in 1920. In the years that followed, he made "near beer" and malt extract as an expedient until the repeal of prohibition in 1933 allowed him to resume traditional brewing. A leader in the industry, he served repeatedly as president of the United States Brewers Association and in 1937 became the first chairman of the United Brewers Industrial Foundation. Ruppert early developed interests outside the family business.
As a member of the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard, which he joined in 1886, he was aide-de-camp with the rank of colonel on Gov. David B. Hill's staff (1889 - 92) and senior aide (1892 - 95) on that of Gov. Roswell P. Flower. In 1897 he declined a nomination to serve on the Council of Greater New York, but in the following year he was elected to the House of Representatives from the 15th congressional district--Yorkville, where his name was a household word--as a Democrat in a traditionally solid Republican section. He remained for four consecutive terms, until in 1906 he announced that he would not stand again for reelection.
Though he served in an exciting period, his own contributions were unexciting, but he earned his party's appreciation for his loyal regularity. An unsuccessful bid for the office of vice-mayor of New York City, later abolished, ended his active career in politics.
Ruppert's reputation as a sportsman was already established. As a yachtsman, his vessels were familiar and welcome in every port on Long Island Sound. He raced and bred fine trotting horses--as his father had done before him--as well as prize-winning Boston terriers and Saint Bernard dogs. He sold his stable after Gov. Charles Evans Hughes closed the race tracks in 1910. Upset over a judge's decision at a national horse show, he lost interest in horse breeding too. His passionate interest in baseball, however, never diminished.
A staunch rooter for the New York Giants, he had nevertheless turned down an opportunity to purchase them at the turn of the century. Through his friend John J. McGraw, the Giants' manager, Ruppert subsequently met the wealthy engineer and soldier Capt. Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston. When Ruppert and Huston, together, now attempted to purchase the Giants, they were rebuffed by McGraw. Determined to own a baseball club, they bought the New York Yankees late in 1914 for $450, 000, and Ruppert became president.
The club they took over had been consistently a loser and financially unprofitable. By the time of Ruppert's death it had become the most valuable single franchise in the history of organized sports. Always a lover of quality--in beer or horses or dogs--and willing to pay well for it, Ruppert set about making the Yankees a winning team. The acquisition of Miller Huggins as manager in 1918 was one step toward his goal. But the most important came in the winter of 1919-20 when he persuaded Harry Frazee, owner of the Boston Red Sox, to sell George Herman ("Babe") Ruth to the Yankees for $100, 000 plus a personal loan by Ruppert of $350, 000. Ruth was already revolutionizing the game by his concentration on home-run hitting.
His arrival in New York heralded a new era, for overnight the Yankees became a greater attraction for fans than the Giants. When, late in 1920, the Yankees hired a general manager of great experience, Edward G. Barrow, the team's success was only a matter of time. In May 1923 Ruppert bought Huston's share of the club for $1, 200, 000 as a climax to a series of squabbles between the partners. In the same year the $2, 500, 000 Yankee Stadium was opened--the most modern and capacious ballpark in the big leagues. A determined competitor and a hard loser, Ruppert reveled in the ten league pennants and seven world's championships his teams won.
Ruppert's investments, during the depression years, in New York real estate, principally large office buildings, were extensive. He served on the boards of directors of a variety of corporate enterprises. A shy man, Ruppert had a protective wall of reserve that was often taken for coldness. A dilettante, he collected jades, Chinese porcelains, Indian relics, and first editions and maintained a private zoo at Garrison, N. Y. , where his 135-acre country estate, Eagle's Rest, was located. Always impeccably dressed, with the assistance of a valet, Ruppert had thick eyebrows, deep-set and unusually cold clear blue eyes, and a carefully cut and trimmed mustache. He was always addressed as "Colonel. " In April 1938 he became ill of phlebitis, and his condition gradually worsened. He died in the following January at his Fifth Avenue apartment in New York. His last visitor had been Babe Ruth. He was interred in the family mausoleum in Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County.
Ruppert was a devout Roman Catholic and a confirmed bachelor. At his death his fortune was estimated to be between forty and forty-five million dollars, of which one third was bequeathed to Helen Winthrope Weyant, a friend and former actress.