Baseball Beginnings

Posted By John Klima on July 7, 2009

By John Klima

Tinseltown hadn’t been kind to Stephani of late. His run as an MGM contract producer ended when, after a string of box office failures, studio chief Louis B. Mayer flicked his cigar ashes at Stephani and never hired him again.

(LIFE)

Down on his luck, the best Stephani could find was a freelancing job to write and produce a forgettable movie named “Johnny Holiday.” Shot on location in Indianapolis during the summer of 1949, it brought Stephani to the city where McKinney kept his headquarters.

Enter singer-actor Bing Crosby, a 25-percent owner of the Pirates. Though no sources can directly place McKinney meeting with Stephani, and though Stephani and Crosby never collaborated on a film, studio records show that Stephani and Crosby were both under contract at Paramount in the early 1930s.

Unlike Crosby, an avid golfer, Stephani never had any interest in sports. A complete review of his career with film synopsis obtained from the American Film Institute in Hollywood reveals no stories tied to sports.

Rumors swirled that Crosby had helped orchestrate an arrangement between McKinney and Stephani in the summer of 1949 that would allow the Pirates to evade the “High School Rule,” prohibiting teams from signing players before graduation. Most observers believed a handshake deal in which the Pirates agreed to purchase Pettit’s contract from Stephani was arranged prior to his graduation in January 1950, a move which further added to the firestorm Pettit was about to walk into.

“I felt all along,” said Haak, who became a legendary Latin American scout for the Pirates before his death in 1999, “(That) the Pirates had the inside track.”

There was precedence. That winter, Crosby had helped the Pirates sign future major league right-handed pitcher Vernon Law to a minor league contract.

Some published reports claimed Crosby visited the family home in Lomita, but Pettit denies that. When Pettit finally arrived in the minor leagues in the spring of 1950, many players believed Crosby had been the instigator, pairing Stephani with McKinney and delivering Pettit to Pirates general manager Roy Hamey.

“Through Bing Crosby, you mean?” said Len Yochim, a former teammate of Pettit’s, by phone from his home in New Orleans, La. “That’s the big thing that came along with it. He assisted in the signing. That’s what we players thought.”

Stephani maintained he was in the movie business.

“I long had in mind doing a sports picture,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1950, “But the cost to an independent producer of signing established stars like Pancho Gonzales, Ben Hogan, Ralph Kiner and the like is prohibitive. So I decided to take a chance and sign some promising youngster to a long-term contract.”

Even today, Pettit has difficultly describing the eccentric Stephani.

“He was a hard personality to pin down,” Pettit said. “He just seemed to be kind of … well, I don’t know. He didn’t really know baseball that well, I knew that.”

Yet in the fall of 1949, Pettit received a curious letter from Stephani. It would lead to the decision that shaped Pettit’s career.

Stephani made a handsome offer to sign Pettit to a motion picture deal, with the sole purpose of re-selling the contract to the highest bidding major league team, while retaining the movie rights to Pettit’s life. Stephani, in effect, would be acting as Pettit’s agent, a revolutionary idea that outraged the baseball community.

“I have no quarrel with Pittsburgh,” Cardinals owner Fred Saigh told the Associated Press. “I just don’t like the idea of dealing with agents.”

Even with the potential consequences to his career, the offer was too good for Pettit to pass up.

“It was all through Stephani,” Pettit said. “He’s the one who came to me and said, ‘Hey, I’d like to make this movie.’ He wanted me to sign a contract for less money and re-sell it. I knew my value at the time. When he finally upped the ante to $85,000, plus $5,000 per picture, up to three pictures, and if we made a life story I got 10 percent, it started to add up. That’s why I signed with him. As long as I had the say as to what team I signed with.”

That was the question. In an era when owners had the right to control players, what right did a high school player have to choose his own fate?

(LIFE)

Stephani made it appear that he was sifting through offers from various teams. Because Pettit’s price had soared so high, many teams dropped out. Pettit says he was never sure what teams were really in the running, nor would he admit that a deal was in place before he graduated.

“I liked the Red Sox, I liked the Yankees,” he said. “They were all interested, but I can’t remember too much.”

Added Genovese, who became a successful scout: “I think perhaps they had already verbally agreed to terms, if not (had) an already written agreement somewhere, so it would still not be illegal.”

The Pirates had been there all along. Downey had won over Pettit with hints of what was to come.

“I was really interested in that Cadillac,” Pettit said. “He said, ‘When you sign, you’ll be able to buy one.’ ”

When Pettit graduated from Narbonne in January 1950, he and his father drove to Stephani’s office on Sunset Blvd. Paul Pettit sat at the table, surrounded by two lawyers, as well as Stephani, Downey, and Hamey, Pittsburgh’s barrel-chested general manager. The deal was to be for $85,000 until the former milkman had the final say.

“My dad spoke up and said, ‘We’d like $100,000,’ ” Pettit said.

There was silence in the room.

“They went outside of the office for five minutes,” Pettit recalled. “They came back and said, ‘You got it.’ ”

The photo of the signing is on Pettit’s wall. In it, the young pitcher stares up at a grinning Hamey. It is suggested to Pettit that he has the look of a man who has just sold his soul to the devil. Pettit only laughed and moved onto the next picture.

Categories: Baseball Beginnings Exclusives
Tags: Deal of the Century, Paul Pettit