Former Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick '15, Who Died Saturday, is Remembered

April 10, 1978

April 10, 1978, Greencastle, Ind. - Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn is remembering Ford C. Frick, the former baseball commissioner and 1915 graduate of DePauw University, as a man who "brought the game integrity, dedication and a happy tranquility far removed from the turbulence of today."

Frick, who died April 8 at age 83, was president of the National League from 1934 until 1951, when he became baseball commissioner. He retired in 1965 and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which he conceived, in 1970.

"It was my good fortune to have worked with him for many of those years," Kuhn is quoted in a United Press International story. "I know how much he cherished baseball and his membership in the Hall of Fame. He belonged there."

"He rose from a sportswriter and a broadcaster to National League publicity director and eventually to the post of National League president and commissioner," UPI reports.

As president of the National League in 1947, he stepped in when the St. Louis Cardinals threatened to strike rather than play the Brooklyn Dodgers and their new player, Jackie Robinson. "If you do this," he warned the team, "you are through, and I don't care if it wrecks the league for 10 years.  You cannot do this because this is America."

The Cardinals did not strike.

Frick, who began his career as a sportswriter and broadcaster, "was credited with saving the National League after taking over as president in 1934.  He saved five NL teams from financial chaos in the depression years and instituted a number of innovations."

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