Ford Christopher Frick was an American sportswriter and baseball executive.
38 Facts About Ford Frick
2.
Ford Frick was the third Commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1951 to 1965.
3.
Ford Frick extinguished threats of a player strike in response to the racial integration of the major leagues.
4.
Ford Frick was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1970.
5.
Ford Frick was born on a farm in Wawaka, Indiana, and went to high school in Rome City, Indiana.
6.
Ford Frick took classes at International Business College in Fort Wayne, then worked for a company that made engines for windmills.
7.
Ford Frick attended DePauw University, where he played first base for the DePauw baseball team and ran track.
8.
Ford Frick had been a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
9.
Ford Frick went to Colorado to play semipro baseball in Walsenburg.
10.
Ford Frick taught English at Colorado Springs High School and at Colorado College.
11.
Frick moonlighted for The Gazette, covering sports and news until he left to work for the War Department near the conclusion of World War I When the war was over, Frick worked in Denver for the Rocky Mountain News.
12.
Ford Frick returned to Colorado Springs to take a job with the Evening Telegraph, which later merged with The Gazette.
13.
Ford Frick had a pilot fly him there, but instead of landing they circled low over the city while Ford Frick took notes and photographs.
14.
Ford Frick was able to file his story a day earlier than other reporters.
15.
The recognition from the flood helped Ford Frick get a position with the New York American in 1922.
16.
Ford Frick appeared in the All-Star Game, but he sustained a toe injury in the game.
17.
Ford Frick said that there was no rule discriminating against players on the basis of race.
18.
Ford Frick said that professional baseball required ability, good habits and strong character.
19.
Ford Frick gathered a team of representatives from the major news wire services, including Davis Walsh of the International News Service, Alan J Gould of the Associated Press, and Henry L Farrell of United Press International.
20.
When several members of the St Louis Cardinals planned to protest Jackie Robinson's breaking of baseball's color barrier, Ford Frick threatened any players involved with suspension.
21.
Ford Frick was president of the school's alumni association, helping to create the DePauw Alumni Fund.
22.
Ford Frick agreed to a seven-year contract worth $65,000 each year.
23.
When he assumed the office, Ford Frick said that he was surprised to be elected even though he knew he was a candidate for the position.
24.
Ford Frick decided to relocate the office from Cincinnati to New York.
25.
In 1957, Ford Frick addressed an organized campaign of ballot stuffing for that year's All-Star Game in which most of the ballots originated from Cincinnati and had stacked the NL team with Reds.
26.
Ford Frick then took the vote away from the fans and kept it that way for the remainder of his tenure.
27.
Ford Frick presided over the expansion of the American and National Leagues from eight to ten teams.
28.
Ford Frick called a press conference to issue a ruling that a player must hit more than 60 home runs in his first 154 games in order to be considered the record holder, giving birth to a misunderstanding that an asterisk was placed next to Maris' record when Maris did so in a newly expanded 162-game season.
29.
In 1960, Ford Frick said that he would probably retire when his contract expired in 1965.
30.
Ford Frick said that his remaining goals for his term as commissioner were to complete the expansion process and to convince Congress to allow each baseball league to set its own television policies.
31.
Ford Frick maintained involvement with the Baseball Hall of Fame, serving as chairman of the board in 1966 and serving on the Veterans Committee from 1966 to 1969.
32.
Ford Frick himself was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1970.
33.
Ford Frick was said to have chastised Hall of Fame voters at a meeting of the Baseball Writers' Association of America after they elected no major league candidates in the 1971 Hall of Fame balloting.
34.
Ford Frick was posthumously inducted into the DePauw University Athletic Hall of Fame.
35.
Ford Frick's son Fred attended Fordham Preparatory School with future baseball executive Buzzie Bavasi.
36.
Bavasi was planning to attend law school, but Ford Frick introduced him to Larry MacPhail of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Bavasi was given a job in minor league baseball, where he began to work his way up the organization.
37.
Ford Frick died on April 8,1978, at age 83, at a hospital in Bronxville, New York.
38.
Ford Frick had suffered a series of strokes in his later years.