Philly Front Office

Phillies fans are familiar with the name MacPhail as the aptly named Andy was the team’s President from 2015-2020. Despite some good signings, these were not years of fond memories. I didn’t think anything of the guy until I kept seeing his last name pop up in various baseball books. It wasn’t Andy though. Rather, it was his father Lee MacPhail and even more so his grandfather Larry, both of whom are in the Baseball Hall of Fame. For Father’s Day, let’s take a look up the MacPhail family tree, shall we?

THE Calendar

Larry

Larry MacPhail was known as a drunk lunatic, but he was a drunk lunatic who knew how to sell baseball. Not only did he understand how to build a ball club,¹ but he was the first of the class of baseball man that understood that the game was supposed to be entertaining. If you aren’t winning, you still need people to show up. This manifested immediately with his first baseball franchise, the Columbus Red Birds, an affiliate of the Cardinals. MacPhail was so good at promoting the team that they actually outdrew their big league counterpart in 1932. This type of business acumen led him to an ownership stake and GM of failing Cincinnati Reds (upon a recommendation from Branch Rickey). He had a bright idea for drawing fans…LIGHTS! Now MacPhail obviously didn’t invent the lightbulb and he wasn’t even the first to have a night baseball game, but he was the first one daring enough to bring the concepts together in the Big Leagues. The first MLB night game was held on May 24th, 1935 against the Phillies with MacPhail and President Franklin Roosevelt doing the honors of switching the lights on for the first time.

As would become a recurring theme, MacPhail’s drinking led him out of Cincinnati and eventually to the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was responsible for hiring legendary baseball voice Red Barber who he had broadcast outside Ebbet’s Field on game days in order to lure in ticket purchasers. It worked. Attendance in 1941 beat the cross town rivals of the Yankees and Giants for the first time. Further helping drum up interest in the team was bringing lights to the stadium and broadcasting games on TV, no one had ever done that before. He had discounts for ladies season ticket purchases and even tried out a yellow ball (that didn’t last long). The players he put on the field helped too including Pee Wee Reese and others who led the Dodgers to their first NL Pennant in 21 years.

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MacPhail had fought in WW1 and now his country was calling again for WW2 and he left the Dodgers to serve. Post war, he was part of an ownership group that would buy the New York Yankees. He brought the team to the World Series in 1947 where he would face his old team, the Dodgers now run by his former mentor Branch Rickey. After the win, MacPhail attempted to meet with Rickey on the field. Instead of congratulations, Rickey laid into MacPhail and chastised his entire way of life and told him he never wanted to speak to him again. This led to a morose MacPhail to enter a celebratory clubhouse where he punched a writer, hurled insults, and quit the team. His baseball career ended that night.

Lee

Just as his father was leaving the Yankees, Lee MacPhail was just getting started with them. In 1946 he was named the GM of their AAA team in Kansas City and eventually promoted to lead the Yankees’ entire farm system. This lasted for almost a decade and resulted in 7 World Series titles. This led him to run the Baltimore Orioles and a dramatic uptick in the fortunes of the franchise. Oddly enough, it was MacPhail’s personnel moves that led the team to the 1966 World Series, a year after he left to be the second in command to the new MLB Commissioner, William Eckert. A similar situation occurred with his next job. In 1967, he became the top decision maker for the Yankees and was responsible for bringing in several future stars including Thurman Munson and Bobby Mercer. They didn’t start going to the World Series again until after MacPhail had moved on to be President of the American League.

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Andy

During Lee’s tenure as AL President, his son Andy was not handed some cushy job with an MLB team. Instead, he slummed it with a rookie ball team for the Cubs. He climbed the ranks in Chicago before getting a job in scouting with the Houston Astros in 1981 and then in player development with the Twins in 1984. By 1985, MacPhail was promoted to GM in Minnesota and it went about as well as possible with World Series championships in 1987 and 1991. Over the next 30 years, he would spend time in charge of the Cubs, Phillies, and his father’s team in Baltimore, the Orioles but never again reached anywhere close to the top of the mountain.

Drew

But wait, there’s more! As Andy hopes the Hall of Fame will remember his time with the Twins, there’s another MacPhail in the baseball pipeline and he works for his father’s old team. Drew MacPhail currently works in player development in Minnesota. He started out of college as an intern with his great grandfather’s team the Reds and then was hired by Larry’s other old team the Dodgers. The position in LA was rather silly in retrospect, future Phillies pariah Gabe Kapler put Drew in charge of improving nutrition choices for Dodgers’ minor league players while on the road. He succeeded. While the Twins aren’t exactly playing great on the field, they have been churning out talent for trades. It would not be surprising to see a 4th generation of MacPhails running a team in the future.

Happy Father’s Day everyone!

Sources: SABR, The Athletic, and Lords of the Realm

Photo: Heritage Auctions²

1. That is for the time at least. While his mentor Branch Rickey brought in Jackie Robinson, Larry famously said that the Yankees had no intention of integrating while he was there. ↩︎
2. I looked for like an hour and this was the only father and son picture I could find of any generation of MacPhails. WTF? ↩︎