Mary Frances Veeck was recalling the night time in 1979 that her husband, former Chicago White Sox proprietor Bill Veeck, returned from a very tough night time at Comiskey Park.
An anti-disco promotion with an area rock station and radio character Steve Dahl had gone awry, with hundreds of followers invading the sector and forcing the forfeiture of the second sport of a scheduled doubleheader with the Detroit Tigers.
Bill returned to their South Side dwelling in a foul temper.
“Bill was upset at having to forfeit the game,” Mary Frances informed the Tribune in a 1989 interview. “He had never had anything that had ever interfered with the playing of a game, including the midget.”
She was referring, after all, to the well-known 1951 stunt during which Veeck signed 3-foot-7 Eddie Gaedel for the St. Louis Browns and despatched him to the plate in a sport. It was a wierd second that endlessly could be linked to the baseball maverick, simply as Disco Demolition Night would.
“I always had kidded Bill that his epitaph would be about the midget,” Mary Frances stated. “That night, before we were going to sleep, I said, ‘Bill, you finally got the midget off your back.’”
Bill and Mary Frances Veeck had been certainly one of baseball’s most well-known {couples} from their marriage in 1950 to his demise at age 71 in 1986. She continued to reside in Chicago after Bill’s demise, and I interviewed her every so often for the Tribune on a variety of baseball-related subjects.
So it was unhappy to learn final week in freelance author Dave Hoekstra’s weblog that Mary Frances died on Sept. 10 at 102.
“Maryfrances’ life has been full,” the Veeck household wrote in a demise discover, utilizing the given spelling of her title.
In addition to elevating six kids, she hosted a radio present with Bill known as “Mary Frances and Friend,” wrote a month-to-month column for 4 years for Northshore Magazine, served as a Chicago election decide for two-plus many years, taught adults find out how to learn via a program by St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Hyde Park and helped elevate cash for the Chicago Theological Union.
“Throughout her incredible journey through life, she championed equity, empathy and kindness,” the household’s assertion stated. “She influenced many people of all ages with her positive approach to life, enthusiasm for social change and hope for our future. She was a magical person who will be missed by many, far beyond her large, loving family.”
Born Mary Frances Ackerman on Sept. 1, 1920, close to Pittsburgh, she met Bill whereas working as a publicist for the Ice Capades. He proposed one week after they met, they usually had been married in 1950. She was greater than only a sounding board for her well-known husband, who was famend for his off-the-wall concepts and an strategy to advertising baseball that was years forward of his time, corresponding to placing names on the again of the Sox uniforms in 1960.
In his guide “Veeck As In Wreck,” Bill known as her a “skilled publicity and idea” lady who co-hosted TV and radio exhibits with him and got here up with an concept to ship a Browns contract to newborns in St. Louis.
Mary Frances additionally designed the navy blue shorts the White Sox wore for 3 video games in 1976 in a quick experiment that baseball purists greeted with distaste.
“They are not garish,” Bill informed reporters at a vogue present the place the uniforms had been modeled earlier than the 1976 season. “Like my wife, Mary Frances, said, they have understated elegance. Basic blue for the road, while at home the traditional Sox colors. What have the White Sox been doing wearing red socks all those years anyway?”
Mary Frances narrated a documentary on Bill’s life for WTTW-Ch. 11 and generally sat with him within the center-field bleachers at Wrigley Field after he offered the Sox in 1981. Bill Veeck, who in 1937 oversaw the development of Wrigley’s bleachers and handbook scoreboard and planted the ivy on the outfield partitions, famously started to boycott the Cubs in 1985 quickly after the crew ended its decades-old coverage of not promoting bleacher tickets till the day of the sport.
“It did bother him,” Mary Frances informed me. “But he was definitely a man of integrity and principles. Bill felt the bleachers were the last bastion of the common man and woman. It wasn’t just a matter of picking a quarrel with the Tribune (Co.). I think he looked on (the new bleacher policy) as being a little greedy, and he just didn’t like that.”
Other groups finally adopted lots of Bill’s concepts, and Mary Frances informed the Tribune in 2000 it bothered him to see trendy scoreboards exhorting followers to cheer on command.
“It used to drive him crazy when he’d hear the contrived cheering and clapping,” she stated. “The first time he heard that, he looked at me and said: ‘What? We’ve all become idiots? We don’t know when to clap?’ It’s so false and phony and insulting.”
Bill and Mary Frances had been at all times ambassadors for the sport, regardless of its faults. They additionally believed in creating relationships with the media that coated their crew, as evidenced by Bill’s friendship with the late Tribune baseball author Jerome Holtzman.
“You develop friendships in the game, and I think the thing between Bill and Jerome was they could always count on what the other one was saying,” Mary Frances stated after Holtzman’s demise in 2008. “There was mutual respect, and when something came up and they wanted answers, they could count on each other being truthful.”
The White Sox paid tribute to Mary Frances throughout Friday’s sport at Guaranteed Rate Field with a second of silence. According to the household, a celebration of her life will likely be held at 11 a.m. Nov. 12 at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, 5472 S. Kimbark Ave., in Hyde Park.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com