Building the empire

With a little – OK, maybe, a lot – of backroom politicking, American League president Ban Johnson 110 years ago today steers the negotiations to buy the New York Yankees toward Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston.

Jacob Ruppert, left, and Tillinghast Huston, right, in the early 1920s with commissioner Kenesaw Landis

Within a month, Rupert and Huston formally purchase the team from Bill Devery and Frank Farrell, who in early January 1903 acquire the original Baltimore Orioles franchise for $18,000 and promptly move it to New York.

The cost in 1914 to Ruppert and Huston in buying out Devery and Farrell: $463,000, which today translates into $14.6 million.

Under Ruppert and Huston, the Yankees slowly work toward becoming the game’s preeminent franchise, a move that accelerates when Miller Huggins becomes manager in 1918 and then rockets toward stardom in December 1919 with the purchase of Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for $100,000.

The New York franchise that Ruppert and Huston purchase more than a century ago for $463,000 now is owned by the Steinbrenner family and is worth, according to Forbes Magazine’s latest calculations, $7.55 billion.

Everyone’s IRA plan should do so well.