Florida Real Estate Boom Explodes Money Dreams
Marquard and Doak Examples
By Westbrook Pegler Pittsburgh Daily Post
New York, March 27, 1927 Age: 36
A number of prominent financiers of the baseball business appear to have been left on base when the Florida real estate game was called on account of overcast skies. Strange as it may seem, there is no report that Babe Ruth, always regarded as a natural-born customer, was among them. The Babe’s escape may have been due to a chivalrous principle of the real estate dealers that it would not be sporting to take such easy money, or it may have been that the spring time usually found Ruth without any money worth taking.
Most of the thousand odd ballplayers of major and high-minor league ranking who trained in Florida in the two springs of the boom were invited, even pestered, to invest and hypothetical fortunes were being realized so easily that many did become customers. With such canny financiers as Colonel Jake Ruppert, John J. McGraw and Miller H. Huggins setting a reassuring example, it was no wonder that ball players bought real estate, too.
CAUGHT MANY SUCKERS.
The dotted line was as much a part of Florida life as the color line and some of the most illustrious names in the big league box scores were inscribed thereon. Certain players of the Washington team, with two world series purses idling in the, were among the investors. Freddie Lindstrom, the Giants’ young third baseman, bought some frontage. Jack Fournier became a landholder, pro tem and Bill Doak, then associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers, became so enthusiastic that he turned down a large raise in pay to retire from base ball and become, not a mere customer, but a realtor with customers of his own.
This spring Doak and Rube Marquard, another realtor, have been reported as applicants for re-employment in the baseball business. The Rube, in fact, was so eager that he walked in cold and flapped his ancient elbow for McGraw’s team in a game against the Senators in Tampa. And McGraw was so dubious about the pitchers he had that he encouraged Marquard to accompany the club to St. Augustine and give further demonstrations.
SCHACT “CLOWNS” THEM.
So many of the fortunes that were made in the real estate business were purely theoretical that it usually is inexact to say that so-and-so lost a lot of money. If he invested only $800 in the first place, ran it up to a paper profit of $150,000 and was wiped out in the end, you may say that he lost $150,000 but a crap shooter who starts with a dollar, runs it to $1,000 and tips over in the last pass, usually consoles himself by reflecting that he had lot of fun for a dollar.
One of the Washington players was telling the other day about the lots of his in one of the swanky developments on which a tax bill or installment or some such expensive payment had just fallen due. Someone had advised him to hang to his vision and his realty and he did. But Al Schact, the clown who works with Nick Altrock, saw the crash coming and persuaded the advertising manager of the same project to pay him a profit of 100 per cent in return for a testimonial letter. Sweet, indeed, were the uses of advertisement to Schacht, as he doubled his investment in the face of a tumbling market and his letter was published in a last minute display, purporting to show that all was well when all was otherwise.
MGRAW “HEAVY SUGAR”.
McGraw’s principal real estate interest was a development with boulevards winding through the dune and broom grass near Sarasota. Streets were hewn across the wilds as in a thousand other visionary communities and on the street signs dangled elegantly from ornamental standards were the names of illustrious ballplayers. There were some tortuous avenues in the plot but through some oversight none was named Hal Chase or Cozy Dolan, two alumni of McGraw’s team.
I have heard that Lindstrom, like Schacht, felt the first tremors of the market and hopped out from under with a profit. But I have heard that others, preoccupied with their baseball or hauled away from the seat of operations to journey around and around the league during the summer, were among the last holders of lots which had become mere poker chips in a game with relatively little intrinsic value.
Elsewhere in Sports, 3/27/1927 – Great golfer Bobby Jones winning championships
