Larry MacPhail

Leland Stanford "Larry" MacPhail, Sr. (February 3 1890 - October 1 1975) was an American executive and innovator in Major League Baseball.

Prior to World War I MacPhail was an executive of a department store in Nashville, Tennessee and during World War I, he served as an artillery captain in France and Belgium. He accompanied his commander, Colonel Luke Lea, on an unsanctioned mission to Amerongen in the Netherlands in January 1919 to attempt to arrest the exiled German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, and bring him to the Paris Peace Conference to be tried for war crimes.

During his baseball career he served as the chief executive of the Cincinnati Reds, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the New York Yankees. MacPhail's innovations include nighttime baseball, regular game televising and the flying of teams between games.

He was pivotal in the development of pioneering sportscaster Red Barber, who announced Reds and Dodgers games for MacPhail and whom he tried unsuccessfully to recruit to the Yanks when he became the Bronx team's co-owner in 1945. (Barber joined the Yankees crew in 1954, years after MacPhail sold his share in the club.)

MacPhail's career as a major-league owner ended after the Yankees clinched the 1947 World Series, when he got into confrontations at the team's post-game celebrations at Yankee Stadium and then in Manhattan. Though he had already quit as chief executive in the Yankee locker room, books by Roger Kahn and others indicate MacPhail's behavior at the victory parties led to co-owners Dan Topping and Del Webb buying out his share of the ballclub.

MacPhail was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978; his son Lee MacPhail was elected to the Hall in 1998, making them the only father and son inducteesFact|date=April 2007. His grandson, Andy MacPhail, is the former Chicago Cubs and Minnesota Twins general manager and currently serves as Chief Operating Officer for the Baltimore Orioles.

External links

* [http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/macphail_larry.htm Baseball Hall of Fame]
* [http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseballlibrary/ballplayers/M/MacPhail_Larry.stm Baseball Library] - biography and career highlights