The Crooner and Detroit

On January 10, 1957, 51 years ago today, MLB Commissioner Ford Frick came out with one of his lesser-known rulings. He decreed that Bing Crosby could keep his 5.5% stake of the Detroit Tigers franchise that he'd purchased that year, despite the fact that Bing also owned a piece of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

When it comes to great celebrity/sportsmen, Bing Crosby just may top the list as the most notable of all time. In his heyday of the 30's and 40's he was the biggest star in the nation, known for his mellifluous baritone and easygoing film roles in which he inevitably played the All-American, handsome, unflappable hipster who has the goods on everyone and who's always quick with a joke. He was some impossible bygone combination of George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Louis Armstrong, with whom he was great pals and who evidently introduced him to weed, which Bing loved.

As far as sports went, Bing was game across the board. In that respect, he is probably most famous today for the annual pro-am at Pebble Beach, once known colloquially as the Crosby Clambake, a term that gives a good mental image of what the tournament was all about in its prime - more drinking than golfing. Of course, this event is now known as the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, and just as it no longer bears his name, nor does it bear the spirit of the man in any way imaginable.

Bing was as much a fan of the ponies as he was the links, if not more so - he owned many horses in his time and was a founding partner of the great Del Mar Racetrack. Today there is an annual event at that track named in his honor, The Bing Crosby Breeders' Cup Handicap.

As for baseball, Bing first got involved as part of a group of investors who bought the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1946, ending the era of ownership by the Dreyfuss family that had begun in 1899 when Barney Dreyfuss merged his franchise, the Kentucky Colonels, with the Pirates and became the team's principal owner (Dreyfuss is often credited with creating the World Series and was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee this past December).

Bing owned a substantial piece of the team, 15%, although his partner John Galbreath emerged as the majority owner of the group, and would continue in that role for the next 35 years. Crosby's stake in the team was well-known, however, and impassioned - he even made a film cameo as a Pirates' executive in the 1951 film, Angels in the Outfield.

It seems that his purchase of a stake in the Tigers was mostly financially motivated, but it immediately ran him afoul of the Commissioner's office, which was not a first for Bing. In 1941, Crosby's bid to buy the Boston Braves was blocked by the great Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who in his ongoing vigilance to insulate baseball from gamblers did not approve of Crosby's extensive participation in horse-racing.

In Frick's case, however, the concern was merely about conflict of interest, and once it was established that Crosby's stake in both the Pirates and Tigers had no influence on the day-to-day management of the clubs, his purchase was deemed official. It didn't last long anyway - by the mid-60's Bing's money was out of baseball altogether, as he went off to pursue his easygoing, hard-drinking life of leisure. His death in 1977 was about as fitting as a man's death can be, a heart attack after 18 rounds of golf on a course in Madrid. He shot a very respectable 85 that day, and his last words are reputed to have been, "That was a great game of golf fellas... let's go get a coke."