The Wall Street Journal - 04.04.2020 - 05.04.2020

A14| Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

WILLIAM BARTHOLOMAY

1928—

Baseball Fanatic Put

Atlanta in Big Leagues

W

hen William Bartholomay
decided to move the Mil-
waukee Braves baseball
team to Atlanta, Bud Selig, one of
the team’s biggest fans, was furi-
ous. “The anger in Milwaukee was
unbelievable,” Mr. Selig recalled in
an interview.
The bitterness lingered long af-
ter the move to Atlanta was com-
pleted in 1966. Yet a mutual love
of baseball finally reconciled the
two men. Mr. Selig bought the Se-
attle Pilots and moved them to
Milwaukee as the Brewers. He
served as acting commissioner and
then commissioner of Major
League Baseball from 1992 to 2015.
One of his closest friends and ad-
visers turned out to be Mr. Bartho-
lomay.
“ ‘You ought to thank me,’ ” Mr.
Selig recalled Mr. Bartholomay
saying. “ ‘Without me moving the
Braves, you don’t own the Brewers
and you’re not commissioner of
baseball.’ And he was right.”
Mr. Bartholomay died of an in-
fection, unrelated to the novel cor-
onavirus, on March 25. He was 91.
The Braves’ move, bringing MLB
to the Southeast, made Mr. Bar-
tholomay a hero in Atlanta. He
won praise in 1968 for hiring
Satchel Paige as an informal ad-
viser so the legendary pitcher
could qualify for an MLB pension.
He was near home plate to greet
Hank Aaron after the Braves star
hit his 715th career home run, sur-
passing Babe Ruth, in 1974. He met
every baseball commissioner from
Kenesaw Mountain Landis onward.
Selling tickets was another mat-
ter. In 1966, their first season in
Atlanta, the Braves had a total
home attendance of more than 1.
million. That dwindled over the
next decade, reaching an abysmal
535,000 in 1975, when the Braves
won 67 games and lost 94.
In 1976, Mr. Bartholomay sold
the team to Ted Turner for an es-

timated $11 million. (Asked a few

months earlier about rumors he

might buy the team, Mr. Turner

said, “Where would I get the

money?”) Mr. Bartholomay re-

mained chairman of the team until

2003. Though he needed a walker,
      he visited the Braves at this year’s
      spring training a few weeks before
      he died.
      William Conrad Bartholomay
      was born Aug. 11, 1928, and grew
      up in the posh Chicago suburb of
      Winnetka. His father and paternal
      grandfather were insurance bro-
      kers.

H

e played baseball and soft-

ball as a boy in Lake Ge-

neva, Wis., where his family

had a summer home.

He saw his first World Series

game in 1938, when the Yankees,

featuring Joe DiMaggio, crushed

the Cubs in four games.

At North Shore Country Day

School in Winnetka, he played for

the baseball team; he later de-

scribed himself as a “very slow,

unexciting” second baseman.

After studying at Oberlin Col-

lege, he returned to Chicago to try

his hand as an entrepreneur. He

founded a chain of toy stores and

BYJAMESR.HAGERTY invested in a candy company. In
the evening, he attended Lake For-
est College, where he graduated
with a business degree in 1955.
“Iwasalwaysbuggedinthose
early years by not having a specific
goal,” he said later. “I dabbled in a
lot of things.”
He settled down at Bartholomay
& Clarkson, the family insurance
brokerage firm, acquired in 1963
by Alexander & Alexander Inc. Mr.
Bartholomay worked for Alexander,
Willis Group and other insurance
brokers during a long insurance
career.
In 1962, after hearing that the
Milwaukee Braves might be for
sale, he made an appointment with
the owner, Louis Perini, and se-
cured an agreement for an investor
group he led to acquire 90% of the
team. Mr. Bartholomay became
chairman.
The Braves had sluggers Hank
Aaron and Eddie Mathews, along
with the veteran pitcher Warren
Spahn, but finished sixth among
the 10 National League teams in
1963 and fifth in 1964, when home
attendance totaled about 911,000,
down from 2.2 million in 1957.
Mr. Bartholomay later told the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution that
geographically the Braves were
boxed in. The two Chicago teams
were only 90 miles south, and the
Minnesota Twins, who made their
debut in 1961, lured fans from
western Wisconsin. Meanwhile, At-
lanta officials were courting him
with promises of a new stadium.
His survivors include a longtime
companion, Bethine Whitney, as
well as five children and numerous
grandchildren and great-grandchil-
dren. His two marriages ended in
divorce.
On his 90th birthday, he was
asked to name the most memora-
ble moment of his life. “I’m still
waiting for it,” he said.

 Read a collection of in-depth

profiles atWSJ.com/Obituaries

be mentioned. I think that’s an ir-

responsible attitude,” she said. “If

nobody watches it, you’re wasting

people’s money.”

She gave PBS more of a na-

tional identity by persuading in-

dependent-minded local affiliates

to air common programming sev-

eral nights each week.

During a long career, she also

was a magazine writer and pro-

ducer of television programs. In

the 1980s, she secured funding

from the MacArthur Foundation

to provide low-cost videocas-

settes of PBS and BBC classics to

public libraries.

Ms. Aaron died Feb. 29 at her

home in Washington. She was 81

and had been under treatment for

cancer.

—James R. Hagerty

CHLOE AARON

1938—

Executive Guided

Programming for PBS

C

hloe Aaron was arguably

the most influential woman

in television in the late

1970s, when she served as head

of programming for the Public

Broadcasting Service. She was

certainly one of the few women

in positions of leadership.

As a senior vice president from

1976 to 1980, she promoted pro-

grams including the documentary

“Harlan County USA,” a five-part

presentation of Eugene O’Neill’s

“Mourning Becomes Electra” and

live opera performances.

“We’re blessed with not having

to make money with everything

we put on the air,” she told the

Associated Press in 1978.

Still, she cared about ratings.

“Some people in public television

think the numbers should never

HANS STOLL

1939—

Professor Explored

Pricing of Risks

F

rom a quiet academic perch

in Nashville, Tenn., Hans

Stoll studied the math un-

derlying transactions made by

frantic traders of futures, options

and stocks in Chicago, New York

and other financial centers.

A German immigrant who was

a longtime professor of finance at

Vanderbilt University, Dr. Stoll

was well known in financial-re-

search circles and often quoted in

The Wall Street Journal and other

publications. He died March 20 at

his home in Nashville. He was 80

and had been under treatment for

Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Stoll earned his doctoral

degree at the University of Chi-

cago in the mid-1960s when the

school was abuzz with fresh

thinking on how financial risks

are priced. His professors in-

cluded Milton Friedman, and he

befriended two future winners of

the Nobel Prize in economics, Eu-

gene Fama and Myron Scholes.

He did pioneering work on the

economic factors determining the

gaps between bid- and ask-price

quotes on stock exchanges. Two

important factors, he found, were

trading volume and the costs

borne by market makers while

holding inventories of stocks.

Dr. Stoll also developed an

equation he called put-call parity,

widely used by stock-option mar-

ket makers in hedging risks.

For his 80th birthday, Dr.

Stoll’s family gave him a pinball

machine, celebrating what they

saw as his only youthful vice.

—James R. Hagerty

OBITUARIES

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