Jazz Age Giant: Charles A. Stoneham and New York City Baseball in the Roaring Twenties

In the early 1920s, when the New York Yankees’ first dynasty was taking shape, they were outplayed by their local rival, the New York Giants. Led by manager John McGraw the Giants won four consecutive National League pennants and two World Series, both against the rival Yankees. Remarkably, the Giants succeeded despite a dysfunctional and unmanageable front office. And at the center of the turmoil was one of baseball’s more improbable figures: club president Charles A. Stoneham, who had purchased the Giants for ＄1 million in 1919, the largest amount ever paid for an American sports team.

Short, stout, and jowly, Charlie Stoneham embodied a Jazz Age stereotype--a business and sporting man by day, he led another life by night. He threw lavish parties, lived extravagantly, and was often chronicled in the city tabloids. Little is known about how he came to be one of the most successful investment brokers in what were known as ＂bucket shops,＂ a highly speculative and controversial branch of Wall Street. One thing about Stoneham is clear, however: at the close of World War I he was a wealthy man, with a net worth of more than ＄10 million. This wealth made it possible for him to purchase majority control of the Giants, one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Stoneham, an owner of racehorses, a friend to local politicians and Tammany Hall, a socialite and a man well placed in New York business and political circles, was also implicated in a number of business scandals and criminal activities. The Giants’ principal owner had to contend with federal indictments, civil lawsuits, hostile fellow magnates, and troubles with booze, gambling, and women. But during his sixteen-year tenure as club president, the Giants achieved more success than the club had seen under any prior regime.

In Jazz Age Giant Robert Garratt brings to life Stoneham’s defining years leading the Giants in the Roaring Twenties. With its layers of mystery and notoriety, Stoneham’s life epitomizes the high life and the changing mores of American culture during the 1920s, and the importance of sport, especially baseball, during the pivotal decade.

Robert F. Garratt is an emeritus professor of English and humanities at the University of Puget Sound. He is the author of Home Team: The Turbulent History of the San Francisco Giants (Nebraska, 2017).