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George Weiss

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

George Weiss is one of the former baseball players who hold the honor of being inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Weiss was born on June 23, 1895 in New Haven at Connecticut. He went on to become one of the game's most successful executives when in 1929, he left for Baltimore of the International League and then earned a job with the Yankees. He died on August 13, 1972 in Greenwich at Connecticut.

As the Yankees' general manager from 1947 to 1960, his teams won 10 pennants and seven World Series, including five in a row. His 29 seasons with the team lasted from 1932 to 1960 and brought 19 pennants, 15 World Championships, and handsome profits. Weiss was a shy, colorless, and humorless penny-pincher who clung to his wife and an inner circle of old friends.

Weiss became the baseball entrepreneur of New Haven while attending Yale. His semi professional team outdrew the local Eastern League club, as Weiss gave the fans what they wanted - big-name stars and Sunday baseball. As a baseball man, Weiss ran the club along conservative lines. When the Yankees finished third in 1948, Weiss was disappointed to not hold the first position and hired Casey Stengel.

Weiss was named as the Major League Executive of the Year in 1950, 1951, and 1952 when the Yankees won three of five consecutive World Championships and again in 1960. He was forced to retire after the Yankees lost to the Pirates in the 1960 World Series, with Topping and Webb citing their desire for a more youthful front office. Weiss moped around before coming out of exile in 1961 as president of the expansion New York Mets. He concluded his career in 1966 as the first president of the Mets, and for his career, collected four major league executive of the year awards.

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