Читать книгу No Money, No Beer, No Pennants. The Cleveland Indians and Baseball in the Great Depression онлайн

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While the Cleveland front office tinkered with the roster, the city prepared to launch the campaign for the new stadium. On Friday, October 19, an executive committee was announced to lead the important battle. The chairman was Charles Otis, one of the most well-connected men in Cleveland and possibly the entire United States. Charles was born on July 9, 1868, to one of the wealthiest families in northeast Ohio. Otis’s grandfather William came to Cleveland in the 1830s and immediately started a shipping enterprise linking Cleveland to New York City via the Erie Canal. He became one of the original men to invest in the fledging railroad business and later was a pioneer in the iron industry. Charles’s father was a well-known local businessman who founded Otis Steel in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the 1870s the elder Otis served one term as mayor of Cleveland.

Young Charles enjoyed a life of exceptional privilege, attending the best schools and frolicking in Europe with his closest pals. In the 1880s his brother owned a cattle ranch in Colorado where Charles rode horses and carried a six-gun in his belt. After attending Yale, Otis started his own steel business in Cleveland. He used his status as a member of the elite to solicit all the business he could handle. When he grew tired of the steel industry he hired more executives and left the business to others while he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1899 he founded the Otis & Hough Company, one of the initial brokerage houses in Cleveland. As might be expected, he had well-off clients with rolls of cash to invest. Soon after, he formed the Cleveland Stock Exchange, where he was elected its first president. Six years later it was time to explore new opportunities. In 1905 he bought the Cleveland News. Charles had great fun writing editorials and trying to boost the paper’s circulation. He is credited with hiring a young Grantland Rice for his sports department. Rice went on to become one of the most respected sportswriters in all of America.