"Four Straight Jake"

In 1880 Jacob Ruppert, aged 13, was owner, manager, captain and second baseman of a baseball club. Son of a well-to-do Manhattan brewer with a home on Fifth Avenue, he made his players clean the cages of his private menagerie before he would bring the bat and ball down to the vacant lot where they played. He fired any player who struck out. For young Jake could not bear to see his team lose.

At 19 Jacob Ruppert went to work in his father's brewery, at 23 he was general manager, at 29 he succeeded his father (who retired) as president. One of the most eligible bachelors in New York, Teutonic, punctilious Jacob Ruppert, who had been appointed a colonel on Governor David B. Hill's staff, served four terms in Congress, bought a stable of race horses, raised blue-ribbon St. Bernard dogs, collected little monkeys, began to pick up choice parcels of Manhattan real estate.

By the time he was 48, Colonel Ruppert was a very rich man. He had made millions in real estate, millions more in beer. But he was not happy. He wanted to own a ball club again. His offer for the New York Giants was refused. Someone suggested that he could buy the down-at-the-heels New York Yankees, weak sister of the American League, for $450,000. He did--in 1915, with a rich contractor, Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, as partner. For the next five years the two optimists shopped for a player who could produce home runs, finally found him in Pitcher Babe Ruth, whom they bought from the Boston Red Sox for $125,000.

The sensation caused by this unheard-of price made Jacob Ruppert a magic name in baseball. In 1923, after a squabble, he bought out Partner Huston for $1,200,000. Same year he opened the $2,500,000 Yankee Stadium. He paid record salaries ($80,000 to Babe Ruth one season), built up the most extensive, most expensive chain of farm teams in the country.

To the bachelor colonel, with a fortune estimated at from $70,000,000 to $100,000,000, the results of his $10,000,000 baseball investment were gratifying. Babe Ruth blasted records and boomed attendance. The Yankees made the other clubs in the League look like seven dwarfs. Since 1921 they have won ten pennants, seven world championships. They won pennants as he wanted them to--early in the season. They won World Series in four straight games. The sport-pages' nickname Owner Ruppert liked best was "Four Straight Jake."

Last October, Colonel Ruppert did not see the World Series. Ill with phlebitis (inflammation of the veins), he listened at his radio, beamed with joy as he heard his beloved Yankees annihilate the Chicago Cubs in four straight victories. The colonel was as pleased as Punch. His Yankees were toasted as the greatest team in baseball history, the only outfit that ever won three World Series in a row. His farm teams, too, were tops. Of his 14 minor-league teams, eight won their pennants, one took the Little World Series, and four others got into playoffs.

Last week baseball fans suddenly realized that the 71-year-old Emperor of the Yankee Empire was gravely ill. In their papers they read that Babe Ruth, long estranged from the colonel, had gone to his bedside for a touching reunion. Next morning death came to Jacob Ruppert.

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