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“ e [other franchise] owners wouldn’t even let her sit down for the picture,” Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum manager Amy Berra says. “ ey made her stand behind them!” | THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
When Helene Hathaway Robison Britton inherited the St. Louis Cardinals, everyone expected her to sell the team. She had other plans BY LESLIE GIBSON MCCARTHY
AT SOME POINT this month — or maybe into November if we’re lucky — the lights will go out on what arguably has been the greatest year in modern Cardinals history. That’s not a stretch for a season that saw the joyful race to 700 home runs by Albert Pujols; a record 328 starts, and counting, by Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina; and more than 3 million fans attending games at Busch Stadium. The Cardinals are our family, St. Louis’ glorious, messy, sometimes dysfunctional, sometimes-we-hate-’em-but-we-always-forgive-’em family, winners of 11 World Series titles, and home to a slew of Hall of Famers. The team gave us the Gas House Gang, El Birdos, Rogers Hornsby, Sunny Jim Bottomley, Stan the Man, Brock, Gibby, Whitey, Ozzie. Lou. Lou. Lou. And probably the most iconic moment in Cardinal’s history just last Sunday when u ols, ainwright and olina wal ed off the field for the last time together. Go crazy folks! We will see you tomorrow night.
Yet they weren’t always the Cardinals, the National League’s premier franchise with all the history, ags, trophies and retired numbers adorning usch Stadium III like ornaments on a Christmas tree. The winning started with a 1926 World Series win over the New York Yankees. That’s about the same time the o cial history of the ardinals starts, too, because the folks who write books typically start with the good stuff. ut before they won that first title, the team we know and love as the Cardinals had been a profes-
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sional entity in St. Louis for 45 years — 35 years in the National League. The franchise didn’t even adopt the name Cardinals until 1900. A whole lot of early history has been overlooked — including that the seeds of Cardinal Nation were planted by a woman.
One hundred and eleven years ago, a brave, tenacious, pearlswearing mother of two owned the Cardinals. A woman who couldn’t vote, or even go to a game without a male escort, sat in the owner’s box and kept score. A woman who had grown up in privilege but learned to love the game of “base ball” from her father and uncle.
Her name was Helene Hathaway Robison Britton, and she owned the Cardinals from 1911 to 1917 after inheriting the team from her uncle, Stanley Robison. Her inheritance made national headlines, most speculating that she would sell the team. Yet she had no intention of selling. Instead, Robison Britton held her own with her fellow owners at a time when she couldn’t keep her maiden name if she wanted to, or even easily divorce her gambling, drinking and abusive husband.
Yet few have heard of her. That Helene Hathaway Robison Britton has been a footnote to history all these years is likely due to the Cardinals’ mediocre performance on the field during her six years as owner. The team ne er finished higher than third. Despite having some supporters, each year she faced legal challenges, intense media scrutiny and outright bullying. But she never backed down, introducing measures that changed the atmosphere of the game.
She was “undaunted and determined,” writes Joan M. Thomas, a writer and baseball historian from Le Mars, Iowa. Thomas wrote the seminal book on Britton, Baseball’s First Lady: Helene Hathaway Robison Britton and the St. Louis Cardinals. Robison Britton’s surviving relatives credit Thomas for first shedding light on the former owner’s legacy. “She claimed her rightful inheritance despite everyone telling her she should back down,” Thomas wrote, “and fearlessly accepted her responsibilities.”
“She crashed the boys’ club,” says Amy Berra, manager and curator of the Cardinals Hall of Fame and Museum in Ballpark Village. “Her story lets young girls know women can not only like baseball, they can run it, too.”
“Helene dared to do the unthinkable,” says her great-granddaughter Candy Barone, an engineer and now leadership-development expert and executive coach in Austin, Texas. “She dared to set herself apart. For six years, she fought, she used her voice and she championed women’s rights in the realm of sports. She played in a fierce good ol’ boys’ club and survived challenges and struggles.
“Yet, she showed up,” Barone continues. “She chose to be brave. She chose to lead. And she made history.”
Helene Hathaway Robison Britton in the stands with her children Marie and Frank. | MISSOURI HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Despite the national attention — and the pleas to sell — Robison Britton held fast. “I shall feel it my duty as well as my pleasure and advantage not to shrink from doing everything in my power to further the interests of the Cardinals,” she told Martyn at the time. “And the team is not for sale.”
Born on January 30, 1879, Robison Britton grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, as the middle daughter of Frank Robison, who along with his brother Stanley had made the family fortune in streetcars. Helene accompanied her father and uncle to games of the Cleveland Spiders, the franchise the brothers founded in 1887. They taught her baseball’s nuances, including the intricacies of keeping score. The middle of three sisters growing up in a mansion on Lake Erie, she not only accompanied her father and uncle to every game, but she also learned from her father his favorite pastime of billiards — to be played “only within the family confines, Thomas writes.
Hers was a life of wealth and privilege. St. Louis came into the picture in 1899, when the Robison brothers purchased the city’s National League franchise from owner Chris von der Ahe, who lost the team (then called the St. Louis Browns) due to a string of bad financial decisions and a fire at the ballpark. They kept dual ownership of the Spiders but moved all the best players, including future Hall of Famer Cy Young, to baseball-friendly St. Louis and renamed the team the Perfectos.
In 1899, the Spiders ended up being the worst team in baseball history with a 20-134 record, while the Perfectos, less than perfect, finished fifth. y , the Spiders had folded, and the Robisons put all their efforts in their St. Louis team, changing the name to the Cardinals to match the color of the uniforms.
Right around this time, Helene Robison was keeping active as a Cleveland debutante and going to parties and outings in the company of young suitors, one of whom was a young salesman named Schuyler Britton. They married on October 29, 1901, and would have two children within seven years, Frank and Marie. The marriage was unhappy, so much so that Robison Britton twice filed for di orce, both times citing abuse and lack of support.
Her father, Frank, didn’t seem to like Schuyler Britton either. He died in 1908, but in 1905, Thomas writes, Frank added a codicil to his will ensuring everything in his estate went to his wife, his daughter (of his children only Helene lived into the 20th century) and their descendants, leaving Schuyler Britton nothing. “The codicil provides evidence,” Thomas writes, “that at the time Frank Britton had misgivings about his son-in-law.”
Two years after Frank died, Robison Britton lost her uncle, M. Stanley Robison, president and owner of the “Cardinals National League baseball team of St. Louis.” It made front-page news in the evening edition of St. Louis PostDispatch of March 24, 1911, that he had died of “heart stroke” earlier that day.
“Though all of Robison’s legal heirs are women — his sister, sister-in-law and niece,” the story reads, “it was made clear soon after the announcement of his death that the Cardinals will not be owned or controlled by women.”
Except nobody asked Stanley’s eldest surviving niece, Robison Britton, who inherited 75 percent of his team shares, with the other 25 percent going to her mother (and Stanley’s sister-in-law), Sarah Robison. Neither woman had any intention of giving them up.
“I don’t think that because I am a woman I will be handicapped in managing a baseball team,” Robison Britton would tell Marguerite Martyn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a few weeks later. Her ascent to baseball owner made national headlines because of her gender, her status in the social register and because baseball was, at the time, the national pastime.
“This Woman May Head St. Louis Ball Club,” warned the April 4, 1911, Tacoma Times, above a picture of Robison Britton holding her son. “Lovely Woman May Head St. Louis Ball Club,” wrote the Seattle Star. Her fellow owners, including Reds owner August Herrmann, who was a pall bearer at her uncle’s funeral, suggested that not only would she sell but she should.
But despite the national attention — and the pleas to sell — she held fast. “I shall feel it my duty as well as my pleasure and advantage not to shrink from doing everything in my power to further the interests of the Cardinals,” she told Martyn at the time. “And the
team is not for sale.” When asked if she felt her gender would hinder her in anyway, she said, “On the contrary, I think there are some ways in which I can take a positive stand and actually aid the prosperity and popularity of base ball by very reason of my sex.”
But controversy was already waiting in the wings. On June 14, , Robison ritton filed her first petition for di orce and got a restraining order against Schuyler. “The restraining order clearly indicates that Helene was the victim of physical abuse at the hands of her spouse,” Thomas writes.
In 1911, Robison Britton found herself a 32-year-old woman with an estranged, abusive husband; a national figure being made fun of in the media because no one thought she belonged; the mother of two and an aid to her aging mother; and somehow running a baseball team that was not even the most popular team in St. Louis (that honor belonged to the new St. Louis Browns, an American League team brought in from Milwau ee , with a fiery catcher and popular team manager named Roger Bresnahan. She and Bresnahan would soon be getting into some very public arguments, including one after a loss in Chicago where she questioned his strategy, and he replied, through the papers, that “No woman can tell me how to play a ball game!”
How bad was the media hazing? They nicknamed her “Lady ee, for the first letter of her last name. Or she was known as “Mrs. Schuyler P. Britton” because a woman’s own first name didn’t matter. None other than Grantland Rice — the patron saint of sportswriters (at least the male ones), the man who coined iconic sports phrases such as “The Four Horsemen,” “One Great Scorer” and “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game” — wrote a December 1911 poem about women taking over baseball after Robison Britton’s ap-
Chad, Crystal, Char and Candy Barone are Helene Hathaway Robison Britton’s grandchildren and great grandchildren. | COURTESY PHOTO
pearance at the owners’ meetings in New York. The poem expresses outrage at the idea of a woman’s name being printed alongside the names of the game’s great stars. The last verse:
They’ve gone out after baseball, and they stand the one best bet
But as full of conversation and as fussy as they get
When they start the old hairpulling and the hat pin stabs some mogul
They’ll have no bloomin’ edge upon our Ebbetts, Murph or Fogel.
It was the 1911 version of being canceled. Six Tumultuous Seasons
Robison Britton’s years as an owner were tumultuous. he first had to withstand a legal contest of the will. he had her di cult marriage to contend with. Though she
Three ways Robison Britton changed baseball
1. Bringing women and families to the ballpark. One of her first actions as owner was to ban the sale of alcohol at games, telling the board it was her uncle’s wish and that it had nothing to do with the game itself. She re-instituted “Ladies Days” with free admission and added a downtown drugstore as an offsite ticket booth.
2. Livening up the ballpark experience. She instituted giveaways such as free scorecards and began the practice of playing music between innings.
3. Passing the torch: The ownership group she sold to included Sam Breadon. A minority owner in 1917, Breadon gained control by 1919 and hired a young man named Branch Rickey, whose idea of a farm system would revolutionize baseball. did not manage the franchise on a day-to-day basis, she did make sure that all the big decisions of running the team went through her. Robison Britton was smart enough to know she had to appoint a man as president, first selecting family friend Ed Steininger and eventually her husband after they reconciled and she withdrew her petition for divorce.
In her six seasons as owner, the Cardinals languished despite having such stars as player/manager Miller Huggins, who took over after resnahan was fired after the 1912 season. The team also had to share the city with the St. Louis Browns and, for two seasons, the St. Louis Terriers in the upstart Federal League.
But Robison Britton made changes that transformed the game and attracted fans. One of her first mo es, e en though it cut into team profits, was to prohibit the sale of alcohol at Robison Field in order to draw families, telling the media that her uncle had been planning to do the same thing. She allowed game tickets to be sold at a downtown drugstore, a safer venue than local saloons. She reinstituted “Ladies Day” at Robison Field, a practice she had encouraged when her uncle owned the team. The difference was that instead of a reduced rate, all “fanettes” were given free admission to Robison Field — and eventually would be allowed in without a male escort.
She attended games; she sat in the owners’ box with pearls, her kids and a scorecard and knew exactly how her team was doing on the field and in the standings. She’d attend owners’ meetings in New York, and hold her own, even when they tried to maneuver a sale of the team behind her back. In January 1916, she was told she should sell “for the good of the game,” while at the same time, the owners were trying to convince her to accept a below-market price. Her response: “I have not sold the Cardinals and I’m not selling the Cardinals.” Naturally, the media blamed her for all the team’s misfortunes.
Eventually, the challenges caught up with her. The team was bleeding money and so was her family. There were rumors she was forced to sell personal possessions to offset her husband’s gambling debts. By November 17, , she filed again for di orce, on the grounds her husband was “addicted to habitual drunkenness” and someone who “frequently struck and frequently swore” at his wife.
The divorce might have been a personal victory, but Schuyler Britton, who had been serving as team president, resigned, leaving Robison ritton the first female
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executive in baseball. That might ha e been the final straw. he made the agonizing decision to sell. n ebruary 2 , , she sold the team for , to a syndicate, one that promised to sell shares that included a season tic et to be used by a boy under , with the idea of both ensuring a family atmosphere and creating future ardinals fans.
Among the in estors was am readon, who would become ma ority owner within two years. That’s where the history of the ardinals as the ational eague’s premier franchise generally begins. ut it was set up by a woman, who held on as long as she could and wal ed away from it all for the good of her family. or her to ma e the decision to wal away on her own terms, that was badass, great granddaughter andy arone says.
A Legacy of Baseball
arone has a picture of her great grandmother hanging in her Austin, Texas, o ce. t’s a photo from the collection of the ational Archi es of one of the ational eague owners’ meetings in ew or , and in frame are six owners seated side by side, loo ing li e the captains of industry they think themselves to be. Behind them, by herself, stands Robison ritton, with a loo that says, ’ e persisted.
Amy erra, with the ardinals Hall of Fame and Baseball Museum, has the same picture on her wall in her allpar Village office. The owners wouldn’t e en let her sit down for the picture, erra says. They made her stand behind them erra recently came across a set of Spalding Guides in a closet maintained by the ardinals communications department, a record of records that was the source of information for executi es and media from the late s to the late s. They were each bound and embossed with the names of ardinals executi es, including ranch Ric ey and am readon. And then came across one published in , which had rs. . . ritton’ embossed on it, erra says. They couldn’t e en use her first name. n 2 , erra organi ed a Women in Baseball exhibit at the ardinals all of ame. That was the same year Robison ritton’s granddaughter, har arone whose father was elene’s son ran threw out the first pitch with her two daughters, rystal and andy, and son had on the pregame field. There was something so magical about being on the field at usch tadium honoring elene, rystal arone says. don’t now if any of us really felt the magnitude of what she meant to baseball until we got to experience that and see her artifacts and photographs from the ardinals all of ame.
can’t e en describe the feeling of what that meant, says har arone, who grew up in hiladelphia attending hillies games with her father especially when the ardinals were in town. he remembers almost nothing of her grandmother, who died on anuary , , when har was ust two. e ust didn’t tal about her legacy in the family, har says. y dad was uiet, and reser ed, so had no idea how important my grandmother’s contributions to baseball were. ust new li ed baseball. o did her girls, each of whom held a lifelong lo e not only of baseball but of business. t wasn’t until rystal arone, a real estate agent in Texas, came across a story on the website of the ociety for American aseball Research, written by Thomas, that the scale of Robison ritton’s legacy began to sin in for the family. They ust new their grandmother and great grandmother owned a baseball team at one point in time. rystal reached out to Thomas, and the boo was born. feel li e there’s something in our blood, rystal arone says. There’s a dri e, and a determination, and it comes from her. There was a space about finding out my great grandmother’s legacy that was special to me and connected so many dots, says andy arone, who grew up a ubs fan. ’d been a baseball fan my whole life, but learning this connected so many things for me. elene’s legacy is a source of pride and admiration for our family. ut there was this, ow come we didn’t tal about this more ’ ut they’re tal ing now to anyone who as s. elene athaway Robison ritton deser es a more prominent place in baseball history. At the ery least, she belongs alongside owners August A. usch r. and readon in the ardinals all of ame as a pioneering baseball executi e. erhaps it is time to consider a statue at ardinal ay in honor of this courageous, pluc y woman who was way ahead of her time, who made the ind of baseball history that’s been o erlooked. thers would come behind her. ffa anley owned the egro eague team the ewar agles in the s. race omis ey owned the hite ox after her husband died in . ean aw ey owned the Red ox after her husband died in . n 4, arge chott became the first woman to buy a team outright when she bought the incinnati Reds. omen are showing up and ta ing charge. And Robison ritton pa ed the way. he made it so that women who wanted to watch a baseball game didn’t ha e to be escorted by a man, rystal arone says. t sounds so simple, but that fires me up more than anything. he was ery clear about what she stood for, rystal adds. he ga e oice to all women who li e she did and we do now simply lo e the game. n
Char Barone, Robison Britton’s granddaughter, threw out a first pitch to celebrate women in baseball at Busch Stadium. | COURTESY PHOTO
Five things Robison Britton could not do while she owned a baseball team
1. Vote. Women’s suffrage was heating up in the years Robison Britton owned the team, but the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution wasn’t ratified until August 18, 1920.
2. Go out in public without an escort. Women of polite society in the 1910s simply didn’t go to public events by themselves, much less a sporting event.
3. Use birth control.
4. Smoke in public.
5. Live long. In 1910, life expectancy in the United States was 48.4 years for men, and 51.8 years for women. Only 31 when she inherited the Cardinals, Robison Britton was considered middle aged. She died in 1950 at the age of 71.
