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Samuel Wilson Breadon State of Missouri Death Certificate (; BRAY-din) (July 26, 1876 – May 8, 1949) was an American executive who served as the president and principal owner of the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1920 through 1947. During that time, the Cardinals rose from languishing as one of the National League's doormats to a premier power in baseball, winning nine NL pennants and six World Series championships. Breadon's teams also established the highest regular season winning percentage of any owner in franchise history at .570. His teams totaled 2,470 wins and 1,830 losses.
In 1917, he also became a minority investor–for $2,000–in the Cardinals, then a struggling, second-division team chronically strapped for resources. But the club's enterprising young president, Branch Rickey, discovered that the team could compete successfully against richer opponents by developing its playing talent on an assembly line of minor league teams, from Class D to Class AA (then the highest-ranking minor league level), that it owned and controlled. This was the effective creation of the farm system, perfected by the Cardinals and—when the Redbirds came to dominate the National League—eventually copied by the 15 other MLB teams.
In , on May 31, Breadon moved Rickey into the front office full-time as business manager—general manager in contemporary terms—and promoted star second baseman Rogers Hornsby to playing manager.
The move was highly successful. Rickey would forge a Baseball Hall of Fame career as a general manager, while, in 1926, Hornsby's Redbirds won the franchise's first-ever National League pennant and World Series championship, a seven-game triumph over the New York Yankees of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But during the offseason, Breadon traded Hornsby to the New York Giants, the result of a heated confrontation between owner and player-manager in September 1926 over the playing of exhibition games during the late-season pennant race.Lowenfish, Lee, Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Page 162
Rickey worked for Breadon until the end of 1942. While Rickey was granted wide-ranging authority in baseball matters, Breadon always reserved the right to choose the team's field manager. In addition to Hornsby, he would select men such as Bill McKechnie, Billy Southworth, Gabby Street, Frankie Frisch (obtained from the Giants in the Hornsby trade) and Eddie Dyer to run the Cardinals' bench. With one exception, all won world championships for St. Louis. The exception, McKechnie, was the Cards' losing skipper in the 1928 World Series, and he would be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962 for his credentials as a manager. (Hornsby and Frisch were elected to the Hall on the strength of their brilliant playing careers, and in 2008 Southworth would enter the Cooperstown shrine posthumously for his managerial success.)
His Cardinals won more than 100 games four times: the 1931 world champions, and then the juggernaut 1942–43–44 teams of the World War II era that won 106, 105 and 105 games in consecutive years, along with their three NL pennants and two World Series championships. The 1942 Cardinals were the only National League champion to ever defeat Joe McCarthy's Yankees in a Fall Classic, taking the series four games to one. That season marked the last year of the Breadon-Rickey tandem; their relationship had begun to fray during the late 1930s, when Breadon sold his automobile dealerships and became more involved in his baseball team, and Commissioner of Baseball Kenesaw Mountain Landis cracked down on Rickey's farm system, making 74 players . With Rickey's contract as general manager set to expire at the end of October 1942, Breadon notified him that he would have to take a cut in pay. Instead, Rickey moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers, where he would make history as the club's president and top baseball executive.
Despite their success on the field, the 1931–1945 Cardinals were frequently plagued by low attendance. Although they were by far the dominant team, they shared St. Louis, the smallest, two-team market in the major leagues, with the American League Browns. Their home attendance also was devastated by the Great Depression, with the 1934 world champions—the colorful "Gashouse Gang", one of the most memorable teams in MLB historyFeldmann, Doug (2000). Dizzy and the Gas House Gang: The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals and Depression-Era Baseball. McFarland & Co. ]—drawing only 325,000 fans. BaseballAlmanac.com, "St. Louis Cardinals Attendance Data" Breadon seriously explored selling the team in 1934; Retrosimba (March 19, 2015), "Why the Cardinals Considered Relocating to Detroit" then, after his Cardinals had defeated the Detroit Tigers in that year's World Series, Breadon, with his connections within the auto industry, openly pondered moving the Redbirds to Detroit. Ferkovich, Scott, "The Cardinals Briefly Considered Leaving St. Louis ... and Moving to Detroit". VintageDetroit.com
Both ideas came to nothing, however; the team remained in St. Louis and continued to struggle at the turnstiles, drawing only 291,000 fans in during a rare losing season, and not reaching pre-Depression attendance levels until the pennant-contending edition. But World War II interrupted the momentum and—despite their three pennants and two World Series titles—the Cardinals treaded water in attendance, although exceeding the National League average, from 1942 to 1945. However, with their on-field success and the advent of radio in the 1930s, they would develop a fanatical regional following, their appeal extending beyond Missouri and throughout the lower Midwest, Arkansas, Louisiana, the Great Plains states and much of the Southwest.
That season, the "outlaw" Mexican League, operating outside the "Organized Baseball" structure and its reserve clause, signed away three important Cardinal players: starting pitcher Max Lanier, swingman Fred Martin and second baseman Lou Klein. When Lanier defected in May, he had thrown six complete game victories in six starts, with an earned run average of 1.93. The Mexican League might have done even greater damage to the Redbirds. Jorge Pasquel, the league's founder, offered Musial (then making $11,500 a year) a $50,000 bonus to jump the Cardinals; the young superstar was tempted, but rejected Pasquel's offer. Page 114
In June 1946, Breadon flew to Mexico City—without the permission of Commissioner of Baseball Happy Chandler and National League president Ford Frick—for a "fact-finding" meeting with Pasquel; the raids on the Cardinals stopped, but Breadon was hit with a $5,000 fine and a 30-day suspension by Chandler, although both punishments were quickly rescinded. Carvalho, John P., Frick*: Baseball's Third Commissioner. Jefferson, NC, McFarland & Company (2016). , pp. 111–112 Lanier, Klein and Martin, meanwhile, were banned by Chandler from Organized Baseball for jumping their contracts; they would not be reinstated until June 5, 1949.
Breadon died in St. Louis 18 months later at the age of 72. As it turned out, the ballpark fund nearly forced the Cardinals out of town. When the tax dodge that made the purchase possible came to light, Saigh—who by this time was sole owner—was forced to put the Cardinals on the market. Just as it appeared they were moving to Houston, Texas, Anheuser-Busch and its president, Gussie Busch, stepped in to buy the team in 1953 and keep it in St. Louis.
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