Fido Murphy left his mark

Life is full of poor imitators, and a few good ones. Whether Raymond "Fido" Murphy had a model to go by or not, he left enough of a mark of his own for classification as one of baseball's great characters, if not promoters.

By Bryce Martin
8/7/2004

In Bill Veeck’s classic biography, Veeck As in Wreck, there is not a mention of Raymond “Fido” Murphy. That is likely because the legendary public relations stunts pulled off by baseball owner Veeck were original, memorable and still talked about today.

You do not make comparisons to an original. Especially when you are the original and it is your book.

Veeck promoted his teams, the game itself, mostly with substance and sometimes with schlock. Murphy promoted himself, and he did it quite well, if not as lasting in lore as Veeck. As early as 1937, Veeck was etching his name in the annals of baseball history. Working for the Chicago Cubs on a project to refurbish Wrigley Field, it was his idea to plant the ivy for climbing the outfield walls.

Veeck later, as a Major League baseball owner, introduced the spectacle of fireworks following home runs, names on the backs of uniforms, a midget batter, and a host of wacky promotions.

Murphy danced more on the periphery – a legend, if you will, on a smaller scale.

Murphy was an umpire for the minor-league baseball Western Association just before the Great War, an in-the-shadows assignment for a schemer of his repute. Still, he sang his own praises loud and long enough until he found the big ear he was looking for.

It came in the form of an article in Esquire, a national magazine at the time aimed specifically to a male audience. Leo Fisher wrote the piece for the June 1942 issue. The title: “World’s Greatest Athlete; Recalling Fido Murphy’s Amazing Exploits in Baseball, Football, Basketball, Coaching and Umping.”

You got the feeling, before even beginning to read on, that the title may not have covered it all, that Fisher was purposely being grandiose as befitting his subject.

During the mid-1940s, Murphy ventured north to the Providence, Rhode Island, area. It was there much work awaited to outplace products of the war machine, in such locales as the Walsh-Kaiser Shipyard on Field’s Point, where some 21,000 workers built Liberty ships and manifold weapons for battle in early 1945. In addition, the nearby Quonset Naval Base, opened in 1941, was awash with activity.

A company team at Quonset, assembled and managed by Murphy during this time, formed the core for the team he would later introduce in Kansas as the Topeka Owls in 1946. It must have been a whale of a team. Tales of Murphy and his Quonset crew hammering heavyweights such as the Boston Red Sox in exhibition tilts were commonplace.

Not commonplace, however, was the duality of the athletes who went to Kansas with Murphy. A few of the transplanted Owls now in Topeka were also members of the Chicago Bears football team, said to include running back Ray “Scooter” McLean and Jake Watkins. As the Owls’ baseball campaign neared finality and a new football season was just a blink away, the Owls/Bears players scurried to make the transition to Chicago, but not before trying to recruit some of their baseball counterparts.

Just how enticing those offers were taken by athletes from a comparatively leisure sport is a matter lost to history, and anecdotal at best. Much of the names, numbers, and facts from that era of the National Football League, and perhaps even more so for independent teams in minor-league baseball, are difficult to find and corner.

However, it would have been a big jump from pro baseball to pro football. Perhaps more so than even what it would be years later.

While today’s football players are bigger, faster, stronger, and, yes, better, they are also better equipped and better protected. Football in the 1940s was just plain rough. Padding was rock hard and did not absorb blows well.

In addition, the pads were difficult to adjust and tended to ride the body in all the wrong places. Shoes were heavy and the screw-on cleats collected clods of dirt for even more weight. Cleats, too, often dislodged and fell off and created bad footing. The helmets – caps, really -- were leather and folded with ease to fit in a pocket when not in use. Nose guards did not exist.

For those with injuries, it did not matter much. They played anyway. Slimmed-down rosters equaled few substitutions.

Still, the enticement of playing pro football, especially with the Chicago Bears, had some appeal.

During the 1940s, the National Football League’s makeup mainly amounted to just 10 teams. Coach George Halas’ Bears held the most formidable talent by far. The Bears won championships in 1940, 1941, 1943, and 1946, narrowly missing out in 1942. In fact, it was only in 1945 that the Bears did not win a divisional title or push for the lead during the season.

Available talent, and the skills required for playing in the NFL, fell dramatically with the arrival of WWII. When the 1943 season approached kickoff, 376 players on NFL rosters during the previous three years were now serving in the military.

Common players during the war years could expect to receive in the area of $100-$250 per game. At the other end of the scale were stars such as Sid Luckman. Halas signed him in 1939 for a $5,000 per year salary.

Baseball’s talent pool dwindled, too, during the war years. Looking just at the National League rosters in 1944, 33 rookies age 28 and older were on teams. Another 13 were teenagers, including for a brief moment 15-year-old Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds.

Even after the war, athletes in both sports seemed to have an identity crisis of sorts. In 1948, Branch Rickey, as owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers football team, tried Pepper Martin, a charter member of the fabled St. Louis Cardinals’ Gas House Gang, as a place kicker. Steve Filipowicz was probably the most noted name to play in both pro leagues during this era.

Murphy’s 1946 collection of players held spring training in Carthage, Mo. From that group, he fashioned two independent teams, one to compete for Chanute, Kans., in the Class D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League, and the other for Class C Topeka in the Western Association.

Carthage was also home to the Cubs in the K-O-M League.

Minor league baseball was expanding at war’s end like never before. It seemed a person anywhere in the United States could leave home with a hot cup of coffee, drive in any direction, and find a minor league game before their brew cooled.

Murphy was either a poor judge of talent or one blessed with a creative business sense. The Chanute Owls team won a K-O-M pennant and rubbed it in against its parent team by traveling to Topeka and soundly drubbing “The Kombat Kids” in an exhibition series arranged by Murphy to bring in some extra revenue.

In fairness to Murphy, he may have purposely dealt his best overall talent to Chanute. One could speculate that in the larger, state capital city of Topeka, a decent team would do well in attendance because of the size of the population in which to draw from; whereas, a really good team in a small town like Chanute would pull in the bigger part of the region.

Murphy promoted his three biggest stars from the Chanute team – Ross Grimsley, Bob Curley and Lee Dodson – to his 1947 Topeka roster. The Owls won the Western Association title.

Always the promoter, Murphy’s eccentricities, not his baseball or business acumen, found a national focus when writer Carlton Brown contributed to The Saturday Evening Post an article about Murphy. In the weekly publication, he was heralded as “Baseball’s Dizziest Owner” for the popular magazine’s Aug. 9, 1947, edition. Households in middle-class America now knew a little something about Murphy.

An incident that helped inspire the article, though it was not part of Brown’s writing, came about on fan appreciation night in Topeka. A local meat packer presented a large ham to Murphy, and in so doing could not help adding a tasty line about how much the two had in common. Murphy heaved the hefty pork backside to the backstop from home plate and stormed to his dugout.

With the conclusion of the 1947 baseball year, Murphy sold Dodson to the New York Yankees, and Grimsley and Curley to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Dodson, however, did not plan to go quietly.

With Dodson’s elevation to Topeka, Murphy had promised the pitcher a bonus if he won 15 games. Dodson came to collect and did not like what he heard. A confident Murphy informed him that since no actual contract existed, he did not have to honor the agreement. Murphy was wrong, and it nearly turned out to be his downfall.

Dodson sent a letter expressing his complaint regarding the standoff to George Trautman, President of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (Minor League Baseball), at headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. Trautman had been involved with minor league baseball since 1933 and most recently served in an executive position with the Detroit Tigers. He replaced William Bramham (1933-1946) at the position during the NAPBL Winter Meetings in December of 1946.

Murphy discovered the hard way about contracts: they can be oral as well as written.

With his leadership reputation in tow Trautman issued his decision. He decided Dodson was deserving of his bonus money. He banned Murphy for life.

Trautman knew his territory. In September 1947, Bill Propst, peddled to Greenville (Miss.) from the Fulton Chicks of the Kitty League, had an oral agreement for compensation if sold. Propst got some but not all of his money. The club received a $1000 fine and K.P. Dalton, club president of the Chicks, $500 more for circumventing the bonus rule. Trautman cited two violations of rules: (1.) Full disclosure of all contracts and (2.) A requirement to designate players receiving a bonus. Trautman levied the fines in January 1948.

Murphy rebounded from under the ban and resurfaced in 1949 after a year’s layoff to head an independent Leavenworth (Kans.) Braves team in the Western Association. It was a bad team. After a long losing skid, Murphy fired the manager and named himself as the new skipper. He went on to lose as pathetically as before.

Murphy was still good for a quote or two clear into the 1960s. A former NFL scout for the Bears and the New York Giants, when asked to appraise the talents of Terry Baker, the bald Oregon State quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy in 1962, Murphy was in vintage form.

“For carrying around a trophy, he’s got a great arm,” Murphy said. “For throwing a football, no.”
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