The Curse of Ed Barrow
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In the 1920s, Barrow spent more than $500,000 to sign such talent as Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, and Earle Combs. As that approach became uneconomical during the Great Depression, the Yankees put away their checkbook and changed strategies. They hired George Weiss to create a minor league farm system. New York signed hundreds of young players to cheap contracts, kept the best of them, and sold the rest for a profit of two million dollars. Barrow purchased only five players outright during this period, including Joe DiMaggio and Tommy Henrich, for a total cost of $100,000.
Barrow was legendary for his toughness in salary negotiations, and New York’s payroll was frequently lower than Boston’s after Tom Yawkey bought the Sox. In 1942, when there was talk of a national wage freeze to support the war effort, Barrow tried to withhold pay increases from DiMaggio and the other Yankees stars. Eventually the players received small raises. DiMaggio needed the money to support his father, a professional fisherman who was prevented from using his boat in San Francisco harbor for ‘security’ reasons because he had never applied for U.S. citizenship.
