One of the all time favorite people of mine and so many others on the sports beat was Bill Veeck. I adored him because he was essentially a man of the people. One year when he ran the Chicago White Sox I went out to see him in Chicago. When I got up to see him at his hotel room, he was in the soaking bathtub. He had an artificial leg from injuries suffered in the Marines during World War II. As he talked, he smoked and emptied the cigaret ashes in the hollow of the joint connecting the stump of his leg with the prosthesis. He always said he was not "handicapped;" he was "crippled." We rode out from downtown to Comiskey Park on the south side. Whenever we stopped for a light and adjoining cars saw Veeck, the people greeted him, cheered him and wished him good luck against the Yankees. He was like a pied piper of good feeling. Two things about Veeck: He said you should always work at a job that is to the west of where you live. That way when you drive to work in the morning and when you return home in the evening you will never be driving looking into the sun. He told about the time he ordered a toy rocking horse from a mail order house as a Christmas present for one of his boys. The toy didn't arrive until the day before Christmas and it was a horse you had to assemble. Veeck then spent the long hours of the night before Christmas struggling to put the toy together. Exhausted, he finally got it together in the wee hours of the morning and put it under the Christmas tree for his son. When he wrote out the check, he tore it into little pieces and put it in the envelope addressed to the manufacturers with the note, "I put your toy together, you put my check together." The company did. Veeck later got the check back all pasted together. This column is about one of Veeck's post-baseball enterprises, running the Suffolk Downs racetrack in Boston. It captures the delightful sense of the man. April 21: Veeck's Touch Transforms a Racetrack East Boston-Bill Veeck's handsome beer-drinker's face was smiling. A plumber was working on getting the sink ready for the new lady jockeys' quarters. Men were unpacking crates of candy-striped jackets for the waiters in the dining room. An executive told the band leader where to station himself in the clubhouse and explained how he would have to get into uniform because it wouldn't look right for a German beer-garden band to be wearing regular dark suits. This was three hours before post time for Veeck's new venture as a racetrack entrepreneur. People were running around, nervously looking out at the heavy rain that was pelting Suffolk Downs Saturday. And Veeck, taking a rare pause at his desk, was smiling. He said, "The thing I enjoyed most was knocking the pay toilet machines out of ther rest rooms. Next, I enjoyed getting rid of the barbed wire around the track. A funny thing about that barbed wire. It was barbed to keep the customers inside the place." Veeck heads Realty Equities Inc., which took over old Suffolk Downs, Jan. 6, and which has been mad-dashing to get things done the Veeck way in too short a time. There was much bad weather so Veeck put up signs on opening day which read, "We're Sorry; Too Much Snow and Too Much Indecision-Bill Veeck." He said, "Sometimes you have to do a thing eight times to get it done. There are the artificial flowers in the middle of the new clubhouse. I don't like artificial flowers. Fresh flowers are much nicer, don't you think? Well, every time we had the artificial flowers removed, somebody sees them off in a corner and puts them back again." While he was on the phone supervising a fresh-flower detail his secretary came away from the window with concern. She asked, "Shouldn't the gates be open by now?" It was noon, a half-hour after opening time, but there was a group of people waiting in the hard rain outside a locked gate at the grandstand entrance. Veeck looked out the window and started hobbling in a hurry toward the gate. Veeck has an artificial leg and moved on it with just about the difficuty it takes John Havlicek to race down the basketball court. Veeck is fond of saying, "I'm not handicapped; I'm a cripple." Out in the rain the people spotted Veeck coming toward them. "That's him, That's Bill Veeck. . . get us in here, Bill." The ticket-taker told Veeck that the Brinks men hadn't arrived yet, and he couldn't open because he couldn't make change. (The admission charge is $1.50). Veeck didn't hesitate. He said, "All right, open the gates and let them in." To the crowd he called, "Everybody come in. Be my guests." About 100 customers raced in, pausing to thank Veeck effusively as they went by. One old man who looked like Barry Fitzgerald said, "God bless you, Bill." Veeck continued into the track. He hardly ever stopped moving, and as people recognized him they called, "Good luck, Bill. . .congratulations. . .you've got a gold mine here if it's run right. . . the place looks better than it ever looked." In the clubhouse a lady told Veeck, she admired the artificial flowers. "You do?" Veeck said, not blinking an eye. "I'd like to present you with these," he said, and he gave her an armful, noticing out of the corner of his eye the fresh flowers waiting to be put into place. Veeck kept hobbling along. "That's him, that's him," you heard. Some walked up to introduce themselves and wish him well. In the refurbished clubhouse he picked up a cigaret butt off the new rug, he took two empty glasses off a table, and wiped some dust off a counter. He moved two chairs that were blocking an escalator near the new restaurnant. Veeck inherited a racetrack that was notorious for holding up the start of races so that the maximum betting money could be squeezed in. Now, Veeck walked around, looking at the rain, and fretted that the first race might not get off exactly on time.When it did get off, it was two minutes late,an improvement noted with satisfaction by many veteran customers. Veeck said,"Two minutes late. No good." Things settled down when the racing was underway. Out in the infield some workmen were planting a dozen crabapple trees. The trees had been lying there a week. Veeck wanted the planting to take place in full view of the customers. "It shows them you're doing something," he said. When Veeck took over the track a man not known for talking off the top of his head said, "You know, it just might be possible that time has passed all that by, that bright uniforms and giveaways won't be good enough to make something go any more." It was not an unreasonable thought. Veeck may have entertained it himself. But an afternoon with the old maestro Saturday illustrated anew that gimmicks are not what has made Veeck a success. Time will have passed Veeck by when work goes out of style.
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Sherluck: The 65-1 Belmont Bonanza 
