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wins to his ball club in 1918—and had he been able to keep Gardner, the haul would have been even better. On those terms, purely as a transfer of talent, the deal was roughly on par in terms of total value with the Ruth sale still to come. It gave Mack the cash to survive the season and made the Red Sox the most powerful team in baseball.
    On paper anyway. That was the challenge they faced in Hot Springs, to turn the paper tiger into a potent force, a team that pulled together. And that wasn’t going to be easy.
    Frazee had already lost his manager in 1917, Jack Barry, to the Navy, and in the off-season one more thing became certain—it was unclear precisely who would be available to play in 1918, or for how long. The war was dragging on, and as it did it drew more and more players into the fray—Boston lost outfielder Duffy Lewis and pitcher Ernie Shore, among others. In order to compete, teams had to fill their rosters with unproven talent, the infirm, or players otherwise past their prime. By mid-December, no fewer than eleven Red Sox players had been lost to the war—the most of any team in baseball.
    That’s where Ed Barrow came in. The International League president and onetime manager of the Tigers had been in baseball for more than two decades and knew virtually everyone—Frazee had been an acquaintance for years. Barrow was one of several baseball figures Frazee regularly consulted to keep his finger on baseball’s pulse while he jockeyed to buy a team. Well, now he had one, but he didn’t have a manager, and he still needed more players. After efforts to get Barry released from military duty failed—Frazee wasn’t shy about asking for special treatment, either, as long as he benefited personally—Barrow, fully aware that the job was open, dropped in on Frazee at his office.
    â€œWell, Ed,” said Frazee, “I guess it’s about time I begin looking around for a manager.” Barrow feigned indifference, as did Frazee, before finally blurting out, “I’ve just selected you as a manager of the 1918 Red Sox. Want the job?” Barrow was delighted to accept. He needed the job, knew Frazee was in a mood to spend, and no one in the game had a better idea about who might be available to play in 1918 than he did, and in his new position he acted as both manager on the field and general manager, responsible for trades and signing players. However, this being baseball circa 1918, there was also more at play. A year before, Barrow had tried to duplicate Johnson’s ploy and reorganize the International League into a third major league, the Union League, a move that, according to some reports, initially had Johnson’s support. He even promised Barrow the presidency of the Red Sox if he could force Frazee to sell. Barrow tried to put together a deal with some International League backers—but then he’d been left hanging. Joseph Lannin, after selling the Sox, had since made amends with Johnson. He owned the International League’s Buffalo franchise and took offense at the league president working the back room. He led a move to cut Barrow’s salary by two thirds, which caused Barrow to resign.
    Barrow wasn’t finished—he was tough, a disciplinarian who wasn’t above playing the revenge game, either—Frazee called him “Simon Legree,” after the greedy slave owner in Uncle Tom’s Cabin . By joining forces with Frazee, Barrow was looking forward to the chance to prove Lannin and Johnson wrong. One of his first acts was to skim the International League of some veteran talent, signing outfielder George Whiteman, a longtime minor league star who hit .340, mostly for Toronto in 1917.
    The end result, however, was that as the train chugged from Boston to Little Rock, picking up the stray player along the way, by the time they all arrived in Arkansas, Barrow still wasn’t quite sure what kind of team he had. If