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Harry Herbert Frazee (June 29, 1880 – June 4, 1929) was an American theatrical agent, producer and director, and owner of the Major League Baseball Boston Red Sox from 1916 to 1923. He is well known for selling Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees, and starting the Curse of the Bambino. == Life as owner of the Red Sox == Frazee bought the Red Sox from Joseph Lannin in 1916 for about $500,000. The Sox won a World Series title in 1918. The team finished in sixth in 1919, and after the 1919 season Frazee started selling players to the New York Yankees, most notoriously Babe Ruth. Then he left the Red Sox in bankruptcy while continuing to make theatre productions. After the sale of Ruth, the team crashed into the American League cellar and would not finish above .500 until 1934. The Red Sox would not win another pennant until , and would not win another World Series until 2004, the third longest drought in MLB history. Frazee backed a number of New York theatrical productions (before and after Ruth's sale), the best known of which is probably ''No, No, Nanette'', which was once claimed, and later debunked, as the specific play that Ruth's sale financed. He was the subject of an unflattering portrait in Fred Lieb's account of the Red Sox, which further insinuated that he had sold Ruth to finance a Broadway musical. This would become a central element in the Curse of the Bambino. The truth is somewhat more nuanced and has as much to do with a long-running dispute between Frazee and American League founder and president Ban Johnson as it does with Frazee's finances. Frazee had been the first American League owner who hadn't been essentially hand-picked by Johnson, and wasn't willing to simply do Johnson's bidding. Although they seemed to settle their differences when Frazee hired Ed Barrow, a friend of Johnson's, as manager, things heated up again when Frazee loudly criticized Johnson's handling of the issues brought about by the United States entering World War I. In response, Johnson began actively campaigning to yank the Red Sox from under Frazee.〔Levitt, Dan; Armour, Mark; Levitt, Matthew. (Harry Frazee and the Boston Red Sox ). Society for American Baseball Research, 2008.〕 The dispute finally boiled over in the summer of 1919 when pitcher Carl Mays jumped the team. Johnson ordered him suspended, but Frazee instead sold him to the then-moribund Yankees. Johnson had promised Yankee owners Jacob Ruppert and Cap Huston to get them better players, but never followed through. The Mays flap divided the American League into two factions—the Yankees, Red Sox and Chicago White Sox on one side and the other five clubs, known as the "Loyal Five," on the other.〔 Under the circumstances, when Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth (see below), his options were severely limited. Under pressure from Johnson, the Loyal Five rejected Frazee's overtures almost out of hand. In effect, Johnson limited Frazee to dealing with either the White Sox or the Yankees. The White Sox offered Joe Jackson and $60,000, but the Yankees offered an all-cash deal--$25,000 up front and three promissory notes of $25,000 each, plus a $300,000 loan to be secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park. With the note from Lannin that he'd used in part to finance his purchase of the Red Sox having come due in November 1919, Frazee had little choice but to take the Yankees' offer. Ruth became the property of the Yankees on January 5, 1920.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harry Frazee」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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