William B. Cox
| William Cox | |
|---|---|
| Born |
William Drought Cox November 8, 1909 New York, New York |
| Died | March 28, 1989 (aged 79) Mount Kisco, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Sports Executivve |
William Drought Cox (1909–1989) was an American businessman and sports executive.
A Yale University alumnus and wealthy lumber broker, Cox first entered the sports world when he headed a group that bought the New York Yankees of the third American Football League in 1941. He also served as the league's president. After changing the team's name to the New York Americans, Cox's first major splash was signing Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon and complete a backfield tandem with John Kimbrough. Soon afterward, Cox was named league president as well. He had ambitious plans for the Yankees, but the outbreak of World War II resulted in several players from the Yankees and other teams either enlisting or being drafted into the military. With several teams' rosters depleted to the point that they could not field viable teams, Cox announced the league would shut down for the war's duration. As it turned out, it never returned. He also supplied the pilings used to reinforce the Panama Canal during the war.
In 1943, Cox bought the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball's National League. Financially strapped Gerald Nugent had barely survived the 1942 season, needing an advance from the league just to go to spring training. Realizing there was no way he could operate the team in 1943, he initially planned to sell it to Bill Veeck, only to have those plans derailed by Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis when word got out that Veeck planned to stock the team with Negro League stars. Landis pressured National League president Ford Frick to take over the franchise. The league sold it to Cox a week later. Although long thought to be false based on press accounts of the time, evidence has surfaced that Nugent indeed planned to sell the Phillies to Veeck, only to have Landis step in and engineer the sale to Cox. At the age of only 33 at the time, he was the youngest owner in the league.
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