Bill Bartholomay

William Conrad Bartholomay

• School Lake Forest College

• Born August 11, 1928 in Chicago, IL USA
• Died March 25, 2020 in New York, NY USA

Biographical Information

Bill Bartholomay had a long career as a major league executive who played a major role in the relocation of the Milwaukee Braves to Atlanta, GA where they became the Atlanta Braves in 1966.

His parents were friends of the Wrigley family, who owned the Chicago Cubs and he served as the team's batboy as a kid and would often go to the family's estate in Lake Geneva, WI. He went into the insurance business after graduating from college in 1955, and in 1962 first became involved in baseball when he bought a minority share in the Chicago White Sox along with some friends. A few months later, he learned that the Milwaukee Braves were on sale, and with the same friends, he put together a group that also included Braves GM John McHale that purchased the team from Lou Perini and his two brothers for $6,218,480. He was named the group's chairman of the board.

He soon became concerned about the size of Milwaukee's market - even though the team had set attendance records in the 1950s. He saw the tremendous potential of the growing city of Atlanta, which was in the process of building a new ballpark (Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium) and which was in the center of a completely untapped market in the deep south. In 1964, he announced that the team would move there for the 1965 season, but the move was delayed by a full year by a court battle which he eventually won. He added the title of team President from 1966 to 1972. He remained chairman of the board of the Braves until his passing over half a century later, although the title had become an "emeritus" one by then. There had been a number of ownership changes in the intervening years, including the team's purchase by media mogul Ted Turner in 1976. However, he retained his title because he had helped Turner acquire the team's broadcast rights two years earlier and also because of his close connections to everyone in baseball (he claimed shortly before his death that he was the only man to have met everyone who had served as Commissioner of baseball - which is true with the caveat that he only met Kenesaw Mountain Landis as a young child through his friendship of the Wrigleys).

He served on Major League Baseball's Executive Committee for a long time and was involved in all of the major decisions that shaped baseball from the 1970s through the 1990s. In his last major contribution to the cause, he chaired the eleven-member committee that examined bids to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012, a sale that was forced by the costly divorce of Dodgers owner Frank McCourt from his wife Jamie McCourt. The process resulted in a record-breaking sales price for the team.

He was named to the Atlanta Braves Hall of Fame in 2002.

Further Reading

• Tim Tucker: "Former Braves owner Bill Bartholomay, who moved team to Atlanta, dies", Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 26, 2020. [1]

Related Sites

• Bill Bartholomay at the SABR Bio Project