Edward G. Barrow Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Full name Edward Grant Barrow
Born May 10, 1868, Springfield, Illinois
Died December 15, 1953, Port Chester, New York
Buried at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York
Managed First Game: April 22, 1903; Managed Final Game: September 28, 1920

Selected to the Hall of Fame in 1953
Named Major League Executive of the Year by The Sporting News (1937 and 1941)

EDWARD BARROW
This article was written by Dan Levitt and is presented in part, courtesy of the Society for American Baseball Research

Most famous for his wildly successful tenure in the New York Yankees front office from 1920 through 1945, Ed Barrow left his mark on the Deadball Era as well. Though he never played a game of professional baseball, the ubiquitous Barrow was a key participant in the careers of countless players and a major actor in many of the era’s biggest controversies. The man who scouted Fred Clarke and Honus Wagner, moved Babe Ruth from the pitcher’s mound to the outfield, and managed the Red Sox to their last world championship of the 20th century also experimented with night baseball as early as 1896, helped Harry Stevens get his lucrative concessions business off the ground, and led an unsuccessful campaign to form a third major league with teams from the International League and American Association. In his official capacities, he served as field manager for both major and minor league teams, owned several minor league franchises, and served as league president for the Atlantic League (1897-1899) and the International League (1911-1917).

Hot-tempered and autocratic, over the years Barrow crossed swords with Kid Elberfeld, Frank Navin, Babe Ruth, and Carl Mays, among many others. Harry Frazee, owner of the Red Sox during Barrow’s managerial tenure with the club, jokingly referred to his skipper as “Simon,” after Simon Legree, the infamous slave-driver from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “Big, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, dark-haired and bushy-browed, [Barrow] had been through the rough-and-tumble days of baseball,” Frank Graham later wrote. “Forceful, outspoken, afraid of nobody, he had been called upon many times to fight, and the record is that nobody ever licked him.”

Edward Grant Barrow was born on May 10, 1868, in Springfield, Illinois, the first of four sons of Effie Ann Vinson-Heller and John Barrow. John and Effie met in Ohio after the Civil War, and the young couple decided to head west for the greener land-grant pastures of Nebraska; Edward’s birth came during that arduous journey.