Charley Weeghman
“Lucky” Charley Weeghman was a well-liked figure in Chicago in the early 20th century. He owned several quick-serve restaurants around town, as well as a movie theater and a billiard parlor. Local papers liked to speculate that Weeghman was a millionaire, and especially nice capper to his rags-to-riches life story—he had come up to Chicago from Richmond, Ind., after the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. He worked at King’s, a popular restaurant that catered to late-night diners (frequently journalists) in Chicago’s Loop, but eventually collected enough capital to open his own string of restaurants.
Weeghman was not really a millionaire, though he did little to discourage people from thinking of him that way (he knew a good story when he saw one). He had tried to buy into the Cubs, but did not have enough money. Instead, he bought into the Chicago Federal League team, and had a new concrete stadium built for them in 1915, on Chicago’s North Side at Addison and Sheffield. When the Federal League agreed to end operations, one of the contingencies of the deal was that Weeghman be allowed to put together a group to purchase the Cubs for the bargain price of $500,000.
He did. And it was quite a group, including the biggest names in Chicago business. Meatpacker J. Ogden Armour was one of the owners, as well as Sears-Roebuck head Julius Rosenwald and chewing gum magnate William Wrigley. After the sale, one headline in the Tribune giddily called the Cubs the, “$100,000,000 ball club.”
Still, the Cubs struggled in Weeghman’s first two seasons, and those struggles were made worse by the fact that, on the South Side, Charles Comiskey’s White Sox won the World Series in 1917. And so, before the 1918 season, the ownership group gave Charley an edict: Get players. And they gave him a $250,000 bankroll with which to do so.
Charley Weeghman was a well-liked Chicago restaurant owner with a keen interest in baseball. (Photo courtesy of the Baseball Hall of Fame.)
At first, things went well. Weeghman was able to get pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander and catcher Bill Killefer from Philadelphia. But Weeghman may have been too flamboyant in boasting to the papers about his bankroll. The Sporting News labeled him, “The Mad Spendthrift.” Other executives didn’t take kindly to his insistence that he could simply buy up a pennant-winning roster. Weeghman made overtures to the Cardinals for young hitter Rogers Hornsby, and though St. Louis dragged Weeghman through sometimes bitter negotiations, the Cardinals never dealt Hornsby to Weeghman. In February, at an N.L. meeting, Cardinals secretary Branch Rickey made a strong anti-Weeghman speech, and Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss accused Weeghman of tampering.
Meanwhile, the war was killing Charley’s restaurants. As part of the war effort, the government was rationing food and calling for different items to be given up on different days—Porkless Saturday and Wheatless Wednesday. This wasn’t good news for a restaurant owner. Nor was the winter weather in Chicago. January 1918 remains one of the snowiest months on record in Chicago, with a total of 42.5 inches. Weeghman was going broke.
To keep his head above water, Weeghman began selling his shares of the team to his friend, Wrigley. So concerned was Charley with his business that he didn’t even make the trip to spring training—instead, Wrigley began acting more like the mouthpiece of the team. By the end of the 1918 season, Charley was out of stock and out of baseball. He would soon divorce and go broke. As Wrigley—who took over the team from Weeghman—said, Weeghman had tried to, “butter his bread too thin.”
