History of Ownership of Yankees and Yankee Stadium
In 1945, Del Webb and Dan Topping joined Larry McPhail in purchasing the Yankee franchise from Jacob Ruppert's estate. They paid a total of $2.8 million for the team, the stadium, and the farm system. In 1947, Webb and Topping bought out MacPhail for $2 million.(1)
Larry MacPhail
On December 17, 1953, Webb and Topping made a transaction that forever changed how baseball stadiums were used. They sold Yankee Stadium to Chicago financier Arnold Johnson for $6.5 million, along with the adjacent parking lots and a minor league park in Kansas City. The sale of Yankee Stadium began a series of transaction throughout Major League Baseball in which teams sold their stadiums to other parties, or in most cases, local governments, in order to make money. This ushered in a new age in Major League Baseball, because it made teams portable. Franchises were no longer bound to a stadium since they did not own them. It made relocation a much more credible threat, and a threat that finally began to be realized in the 1950s.
After purchasing the Stadium, Johnson immediately sold it again, to the Knights of Columbus, for $2.5 million, and then leased it from them for a twenty-eight year period for a cost of $4.85 million. Johnson, in turn, then leased the Stadium back to the Yankees, who would pay him $11.5 million to use it for the next twenty-eight years.(2)
Del Webb and Dan Topping sold 80 percent of their stock in the Yankees to CBS on August 13, 1964, for about $14 million. CBS owned the Yankees for less than 10 years, the shortest time of any Yankee owner. CBS's time owning the Yankees was unique in that it was the one decade in which the Yankees truly were an awful team. They eventually sold the Yankees in 1973 to a group headed by George Steinbrenner, and took a loss on the deal. At the end of CBS's ownership, the city, faced with a fiscal collapse, nevertheless began to sink $100 million dollars into the renovation of Yankee Stadium.
Renovated Yankee Stadium
In 1971, Mayor John Lindsay announced that the city was going to purchase Yankee Stadium and completely renovate it for $24 million. They would then lease it back to the Yankees for 30 years. The lease was over in 2001 and, despite efforts by George Steinbrenner and Rudy Giuliani to find a new home for the team, the Yankees remain in the Bronx at Yankee Stadium, which just celebrated its 80th year.
