This article was originally written by Sam Bernsteing
researched and compiled by Carrie Birdson
In an issue published a few days after the grand opening
of Forbes Field, Sporting Life extolled Pittsburgh team owner Barney
Dreyfuss: “[he] had the mind to conceive and the courage to execute the plans
which have given the world the grandest and most costly baseball park in
existence, deserves the greatest credit, highest praise, and utmost good
fortune for his stupendous enterprise, which has ennobled the National League
and enriched the city of Pittsburg."[1]
Not bad press for a man who just twenty-four years before had arrived
from Freiburg, Germany with just a few dollars in his pocket, knowing very
little English, with an invitation to work in his cousins’ distillery in
Paducah, Kentucky.
Barney Dreyfuss was the embodiment of the American
dream. Immediately after his arrival,
Dreyfuss was motivated and focused. He
managed the books for his cousins Isaac W. Bernheim and Bernard Bernheim. The Bernheim brothers sailed to America
shortly after the Civil War beginning as peddlers but soon found themselves in
Kentucky selling distilled spirits.
Eventually, they began processing their own Kentucky Bourbon, I.W Harper,
and their business became a huge success.
The Bernheims created opportunities for family members, and they
recruited Barney, clerking for a bank in Karlsruhe, Germany[2].
The 19-year-old needed no incentive to leave his family and
board a ship to America in 1885. His
parents had a taste of the American dream when they developed a successful
mercantile business in Kentucky in 1849 but were forced to return to Germany at
the outbreak of the Civil War[3],
Dreyfuss was also encouraged to avoid conscription in the German Army,
which could be harsh for Jewish youth.
Barney would also be reuniting with his older sister Rosa who had
married Bernard Bernheim and lived in Paducah.
Always the workaholic, Dreyfuss toiled six long days at the
distillery and studied English at night.
When a physician told Dreyfuss that his schedule would affect his
health, Barney took his suggestion to develop a recreational pursuit. His business associates persuaded him that
running a baseball club would give him that opportunity[4]. Barney had begun an appreciation of baseball
almost since his arrival in Kentucky[5].
He began by organizing teams using distillery workers as players. As much as he enjoyed the game, Dreyfuss
found greater fulfillment in organizing and managing local amateur teams.
The success of the Bernheim Brothers distillery forced the
company to expand its operations and they moved to larger quarters in
Louisville in 1888. Dreyfuss was
convinced that baseball as a business enterprise had the potential of enormous
profit. He also convinced his cousins and with their backing, Dreyfuss joined with some other local distillers and
invested in the Louisville Colonels of the American Association. Mordecai Davidson owned the team, but
he surrendered the club to the league in 1889, following a disastrous
season[6]. In 1892, as Dreyfuss
increased his investment, Louisville was admitted into the National League
after a merger with the American Association[7]. By 1899, Dreyfuss was the sole owner of the
club.
Barney Dreyfuss was aware that major changes were being
proposed to restructure the National League.
Some owners wanted to restrict ownership of teams while others wanted to
create a syndication of clubs run by one group that would distribute equity
shares to club owners for absolute control.
After much discussion, the magnates of the National League addressed
this issue by contracting to an eight-team league and folding the Louisville,
Cleveland, Washington, and Baltimore franchises. Anticipating that Louisville was headed
towards extinction, Dreyfuss brokered a deal that allowed him to buy a half
interest in the Pittsburgh Pirates and, by taking a smaller settlement from the
National League ($10,000), he negotiated the transfer of the best players from
Louisville to Pittsburgh. These players
included Fred Clarke, Charles “Deacon” Phillippe, Tommy Leach, Rube Waddell,
and the great Honus Wagner. Such
shrewd transactions quickly earned Dreyfuss recognition as “one of the greatest
me connected with the game,” whose passion was “dope” [e.g., player
information] as he kept his offices “filled with volume after volume of
statistics and records.”[8]
Within a year, and again borrowing from his cousins,
Dreyfuss bought out his partners and operated the Pirates as sole owner for the
next 32 years. On the horizon, however,
was a competing major league led by Bancroft Johnson, who organized and
transformed the minor Western League to challenge the supremacy of the National
League. Skillfully, Dreyfuss kept the
American League out of Pittsburgh and lost only two players to the raiding Americans. He was also in the middle of the 1903
agreement that ended the war between the leagues. It was Dreyfuss who cemented the peace when
he challenged the Boston Americans to a best-of-nine series between the pennant
winners in October 1903, the first modern World Series.
When Barney Dreyfuss arrived in Pittsburgh in 19033, the
Pirates played their home games at Exposition Park built in 1882, Exposition
Park, “so-named because circuses and other big tent shows camped there when in
town, occupied ground lest then 50 yards from the Allegheny River”[9] near the
former site of Three Rivers Stadium.
Dreyfuss remarked, “The game was growing up, and patrons were no longer
willing to put up with nineteenth-century conditions.”[10]
