Alva Bradley II (February 28, 1884 – March 30, 1953), was a businessman and baseball team executive.

Early life

Bradley was born in Cleveland to a prominent family, the eldest of five children of Morris A. Bradley and the former Anna A. Leininger. He was named after his grandfather, Captain Alva Bradley, who also gave inventor

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invent ...

his middle name of Alva. (He was the best friend of Edison's father Samuel.) Alva Bradley was also the owner of the Cleveland Guardians in the 1940s and helped start what became

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio. Case Western Reserve was established in 1967, when Western Reserve University, founded in 1826 and named for its location i ...

. Morris Bradley was the only son of Capt. Bradley, inheriting his father's successful shipbuilding company and at one point was one of the largest real estate owners in Cleveland. Bradley attended the

University School University School, commonly referred to as US, is an all-boys, private, Junior Kindergarten–12 school with two campus locations in the Greater Cleveland area of Ohio. The campus located in Shaker Heights serves junior kindergarten through eigh ...

of Cleveland and Cornell, along with this brother Charles, who was 20 months younger than Alva, graduating in 1908.

Professional life

He was president of the group that bought the

Cleveland Indians The Cleveland Guardians are an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland. The Guardians compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. Since , they have played at Progressive F ...

in 1927 for $1 million, and which in 1946 sold the team to Bill Veeck. While he was the team's president, he was not the majority shareholder. Other members of the ownership group included his brother, Charles C. Bradley, with whom he invested $175,000, John Sherwin Sr. ($300,000), Percy Morgan ($200,000),

Newton D. Baker Newton Diehl Baker Jr. (December 3, 1871 – December 25, 1937) was an American lawyer, Georgist,Noble, Ransom E. "Henry George and the Progressive Movement." The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 8, no. 3, 1949, pp. 259–269. ...

($25,000), attorney Joseph C. Hostetler ($25,000) and the

Van Sweringen brothers Oris Paxton Van Sweringen (April 24, 1879 – November 22, 1936) and Mantis James Van Sweringen (July 8, 1881 – December 12, 1935) were American brothers who became railroad barons in order to develop Shaker Heights, Ohio. They are better kno ...

($250,000). During his tenure the team signed teenage strikeout king Bob Feller in a controversial move that had to ultimately be resolved by baseball commissioner

Kenesaw Mountain Landis Kenesaw Mountain Landis (; November 20, 1866 – November 25, 1944) was an American jurist who served as a United States federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and the first Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 until his death. He is remembered for his h ...

. During the 1940 season Indian players, led by

Mel Harder Melvin Leroy Harder (October 15, 1909 – October 20, 2002), nicknamed "Chief", was an American right-handed starting pitcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball, who played his entire career with the Cleveland Indians. He spent 36 seaso ...

and

Ken Keltner Kenneth Frederick Keltner (October 31, 1916 – December 12, 1991) was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a third baseman from 1937 to 1950, most prominently as a member of the Cleveland Indians where h ...

, came to him demanding that he fire team manager Ossie Vitt. The Indians were labeled "Crybabies" for doing so and lost the pennant race on the last day of the season. Bradley went out on a limb by hiring then 25-year-old

Lou Boudreau Louis Boudreau (July 17, 1917 – August 10, 2001), nicknamed "Old Shufflefoot", "Handsome Lou", and "The Good Kid", was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for 15 seasons, primarily as ...

as team manager. Bradley had a number of other business interests. He owned a real estate company and was president and treasurer of the United States Coal Company. He served on the boards of several Van Sweringen companies, the American Shipbuilding Company, Great Lakes Towing Company, and others, and was chairman of Cleveland Builders Supply Company. He was married to the former Marguerite Andrews and had four children: a son and three daughters. He is the great great grandfather of University of Louisiana Ragin Cajuns' pitching great Buddy Glass.

References

External links

''New York Times'' Obit, March 30, 1953, retrieved 24 January 2008
Baseball executives Cleveland Indians executives Cornell University alumni 1884 births 1953 deaths American sports businesspeople Businesspeople from Cleveland 20th-century American businesspeople {{baseball-business-bio-stub