Uncommon commons: In more than 30 years in
sportscards publishing I have thrown hundreds of notes into files about the
players – usually non-star players – who made up the majority of the baseball
and football cards I collected as a kid. Today, I keep adding to those files as
I peruse microfilms of The Sporting News from the 1880s through the
1960s. I found these tidbits brought some life to the player pictures on those
cards. I figure that if I enjoyed them, you might too.
Dozens of professional athletes, including major league
baseball players, were shown they were not in the big leagues when it came to
slimy Chicago politics in 1963 when their investments in “slum” real estate
went south, leaving them holding the bag for up to a reported one million dollars.
The ballplayers were among the backers of Consolidated
Investment Associates, an Illinois corporation that fell into receivership in
early 1963.
That company owned or controlled 22 buildings in what a Chicago
newspaperman termed “various Chicago slum areas.” CIA was headed by R. Patrick
Wagner, who the reporter described as a “pal of many major leaguers.” The
company was formed around 1957.
Wagner reportedly induced many of those ballplayers to put
money into his corporation and, for a time, came through with the promised 20
percent annual dividends.
Then, as the 1962 baseball season was drawing to a close,
Wagner went incommunicado, leaving the players in the dark as to the state of
their investments.
Louis Wexler, an assistant corporation counsel for the City
of Chicago, was in charge of prosecuting building violations cases against
Wagner’s CIA. At one time city building inspectors reportedly found a total of
2,693 violations in 18 of the 22 buildings owned by CIA.
In late February, 1963, Wexler said, “It now appears that
investments made in Wagner’s companies are a total loss.”
In his defense, Wagner was quoted as saying that “pressure
men” had brought down his real estate venture. “There are 150,000 buildings
like ours in the city, and we own 22 of them. It should seem obvious that we
are the victims of harassment.”
The slumlord blamed the University of Chicago for his
plight. “The university did not want buildings in this area repaired,” he
charged. “The university wanted them torn down so the tenants would be driven
into other neighborhoods.”
Wagner seems to have been able to induce the ballplayers and
other investors into putting up money in a “sure thing.” Rentals of from $65 to
$100 a month in the dilapidated buildings were being paid not by individual
tenants, but by the Cook County welfare department, insuring a continued
revenue stream.
While most of the ballplayer investors preferred to keep
their involvement under wraps, CIA corporation papers at the time showed Walt
Dropo, recently retired 13-year major league veteran, as executive vice-president, with Billy Pierce, Ken Boyer, Bob
Shaw, Jimmie Dykes and Jim Rivera listed as members of the board of directors.
Two of the players, cited anonymously in an article by Jim
Enright in the March 2, 1963, issue of The
Sporting News, said they had lost $5,000 each in the venture. The headline
on the TSN article was, “Slum-Property Deal Backfires on Ball Players”.
