The Colonel and Hug: The Partnership That Transformed the Yankees by Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz (review)

With this book, the dynamic duo of Steve Steinberg and Lyle Spatz has made another extraordinary contribution to baseball scholarship. Their research is impeccable, meticulous, and thorough; their writing is lucid and completely engaging; their story is refreshing, enlightening, and captivating from beginning to end. Quite simply, The Colonel and Hug is a monumental achievement and one of the finest monographs on baseball history that this reviewer has ever had the pleasure to read.

Steinberg and Spatz argue convincingly that Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the New York Yankees from 1915 to 1939, and Miller Huggins, the team’s manager from 1918 to 1929, overcame enormous differences in personality to combine their unique talents into a synergistic bond based on mutual respect that transformed the Yankees from perennial also-rans into the most successful sports franchise of the twentieth century. Ruppert was a wealthy brewery owner and real estate mogul, a businessman and socialite who belonged to New York’s social and economic elite. He participated in and enjoyed aristocratic pastimes like racing and raising thoroughbred horses, breeding dogs, and collecting first-edition books. He had also served four undistinguished terms as a US congressman. Huggins, on the other hand, was introspective, taciturn, and colorless. He was frail, sickly, nervous, and suffered from frequent emotional distress. He enjoyed the solitary pleasures of smoking his pipe, fishing, and eventually golf. Baseball was his life. To this seemingly unlikely partnership, Ruppert brought money and business acumen. Huggins provided a keen judgment of players; excellent managerial and leadership skills; patience—an almost paternalistic, nurturing attitude—with young, unpolished players of potential; an awareness that New York fans and sportswriters required a different style of play than elsewhere, and a prescience that baseball was changing from the scientific play of the deadball era to the slugging and power hitting of the big bang 1920s. He encouraged Ruppert to purchase Babe Ruth, whatever the cost, for the Yankees. The two men did have something in common: a fanatical devotion to winning, to being the best in baseball, and to doing whatever it took to remain champions. They also gave each other unconditional support and loyalty.

Huggins needed it. Ruppert’s co-owner from 1915 to 1923, Til Huston, never wanted Huggins as manager in the first place; Huston preferred his pal Wilbert Robinson, the manager of the Brooklyn club. New York fans and sportswriters constantly criticized Huggins for lacking managerial and leadership ability and called for his dismissal. His players, often led by Babe Ruth, were openly hostile to him, ignoring his decisions and challenging his authority. With Ruppert’s unwavering support and confidence, Huggins weathered it all. After the Yankees lost the 1922 World Series in four games to the Giants, Ruppert gave Huggins the unlimited power to fine, discipline, and suspend his players, including Ruth. In January 1923, Ruppert bought out Huston, securing Huggins’s position as team manager. After the final game of the 1923 regular season, Ruppert rewarded Huggins with a contract for 1924, not even waiting until the conclusion of World Series rematch with the Giants. The new contract called for a substantial pay raise. Behind Huggins’s leadership and Ruth’s home runs, the Yankees won their first championship. The new contract along with the triumph in the World Series meant vindication for Huggins; he finally gained the respect of many New York fans and sportswriters. Another turning point in the Ruppert-Huggins partnership came in 1925 when Huggins fined Babe Ruth five thousand dollars and suspended him indefinitely. Ruth was the game’s biggest star and Ruppert’s main attraction at the gate. In open defiance of his manager, the Babe stuck out his chest and huffed and puffed—until Ruppert blew him down. Ruppert’s unflinching support for his manager showed Ruth and several other disgruntled players that Huggins was in charge of the...