Bob Quinn (baseball, born 1870)

James Aloysius Robert Quinn (February 14, 1870 – March 12, 1954), often referred to as J. A. Robert Quinn, was an American executive in Major League Baseball who became renowned for his management of four different franchises.

Born in

In the summer of 1923, fresh off that success, Quinn put together a syndicate that purchased the Boston Red Sox from Harry Frazee. The purchase was financed by four investors who knew him from his days in Columbus, with the largest contribution coming from glass magnate Palmer Winslow. The investors trusted Quinn enough to make him president and operating head of the franchise. Quinn had every intention of rebuilding a team that had been rendered bereft of talent after Frazee's chronic cash shorts forced him to sell nearly every talented player to the New York Yankees. To that end, he spent $250,000 on minor league stars^[1] However, in a case of exceptionally bad timing, Winslow fell ill in 1924 and largely withdrew from financing the team.^[2] He died in 1926, and the three surviving members of Quinn's syndicate didn't have nearly enough money between them to make up for the loss of Winslow's investment.^[1]

For the remainder of Quinn's tenure as owner of the Red Sox, the team was severely underfinanced. The team lost over $200,000 from 1924 to 1929.^[2] This led to a vicious circle in which lack of talent on the field sent attendance through the floor, thus denying Quinn money that could have been used to acquire more players or retain the few good players he had.^[1] As a result, Quinn's tenure as owner was, statistically speaking, the darkest in franchise history. With rosters made up mostly of castoffs from other AL teams, they finished dead last in the American League eight times during Quinn's ten years as owner, only rising as high as sixth twice. They finally bottomed out in 1932, with a 43–111 (.279) record that is still the worst in franchise history.^[3]

By the 1932–33 offseason, Quinn knew he was at the end of his tether. He needed to borrow against his life insurance just to send the team to spring training.^[3] Realizing that there was no way he could operate the Red Sox in 1933, he began searching for a buyer. He found his white knight in lumber magnate Tom Yawkey, who had been looking to buy a baseball team as soon as he turned 30 and gained full access to money in a trust fund set up for him by his uncle and adoptive father, former Detroit Tigers owner Bill Yawkey. Former baseball great Eddie Collins, who had attended the same prep school as Yawkey, set up a meeting between Yawkey and Collins during the 1932 World Series. The $1.5 million deal closed just before the start of 1933 spring training, and just days after Yawkey turned 30.^[2][4] Supposedly, the $1.5 million from the sale of the team was only enough for Quinn to pay off all of his debts from his owning the Red Sox, with no money left over for himself. Quinn later said that once the team was sold, "I was broke and out of a job, but I was free of debt. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was all over."

Quinn then became general manager of the

• Honor Rolls of Baseball

• Bob Quinn at SABR (Baseball BioProject)
• Armour, Mark; Levitt, Daniel R. (December 13, 2017). "Boston Red Sox team ownership history". SABR. Retrieved September 22, 2020.