Lady Into Sox

When Grace Reidy, daughter of a Chicago traction executive, set off on her honeymoon in 1913, she had plenty of company. Two baseball teams went with her --the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants. Her father-in-law, Charles Albert ("The Old Roman") Comiskey, founder-owner of the White Sox, had arranged a world exhibition tour for the two teams. With them she visited eight countries, sat in the same grandstand with King George V, skedaddled home just ahead of World War I.

Had her husband's appetite been reasonable, Mrs. John Louis Comiskey's intimate association with baseball might have ended with her honeymoon. It was not. He ate himself up to a round 400 lb., retired to a hospital to diet, came out and ate himself back up again. This seasonal performance alarmed jolly, portly Grace Comiskey. For her husband was vice president and treasurer of the White Sox. With an eye to the future, she showed up at the ball games, sitting in Box No. 45, near home plate.

Meantime, she bore two daughters, Dorothy and Grace Lou, and a son, Charles Albert II.

After the Old Roman died in 1931, mountainous J. Louis took over the White Sox. He lasted eight years. His will be queathed the $2,000,000 ball club to his wife and children, but directed Chicago's First National Bank to run it. The bank, not much liking so ephemeral a trust, wanted to sell. Grace Comiskey fought the action.

Month ago she won the right to manage her own baseball team. Last week she be came the first woman president of an American League team, the second woman to head a major-league baseball club.*

With a possible pennant contender on her hands, she needed plenty of help. It was there in the person of swarthy Harry Grabiner, White Sox executive vice president, who has been running the club for years. What President Comiskey wanted most of all, however, was to turn the White Sox over to her son on his 21st birthday. Now 15, a strapping five-foot-ten, 165-pounder with a definite talent for baseball, young Charles Comiskey has one ambition--to be a great first baseman like his grandfather. If he makes it, he will be the first player-president in the history of the big leagues.

*First was Mrs. Schuyler P. Britton, who succeeded her husband in the presidency of the St. Louis Cardinals for a short time in 1916.

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