Looking for a good time in St. Louis when their team came to play the Cardinals, Reds fans rolled out the barrels and got busted.
One hundred years ago, in April 1925, Reds owner Garry Herrmann and seven others associated with the Reds Rooters fan club were arrested at the Hotel Statler for possessing real beer.
Home to breweries such as Anheuser-Busch and Falstaff, St. Louis was synonymous with suds, but not during the Prohibition era in the U.S.
Herrmann and the Reds Rooters found out the hard way when federal agents raided their roost before a game.
Dry land
Influenced by repressive religious groups, particularly Christian denominations, and temperance organizations, federal lawmakers approved an amendment to the Constitution that prohibited the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages. The Prohibition era lasted from 1920 to 1933 and prompted gangsters to fill the void with violent bootlegging businesses.
In his book “Mr. Rickey’s Redbirds,” author Mike Mitchell noted, “The battle over Prohibition pitted rural versus urban, Protestant versus Catholic, native-born Americans versus newly arrived immigrants … War gave a final push toward a national prohibition. Those who wanted to ban alcohol often made no distinction between America’s enemies in World War I and brewers in the United States with European heritage.”
St. Louis breweries Anheuser-Busch and Falstaff survived Prohibition by producing near beer, a malt beverage which typically had an alcohol content of less than 0.5 percent, and other products, such as soda pop. (The Anheuser-Busch near beer was called Bevo.) Most other St. Louis beer producers, including Lemp, a major lager brewer, went out of business.
Prohibition didn’t stop the Reds Rooters from carrying on a tradition of traveling to the city where the team played its first road series of the season. About 110 of them went by train from Cincinnati to St. Louis for the four-game set between the Reds and Cardinals April 22-25, 1925.
Beer and bratwurst
The Reds Rooters booked rooms at the elegant Hotel Statler at the corner of Washington Avenue and Ninth Street in downtown St. Louis. Built in 1917, Hotel Statler was the first air-conditioned hotel in the United States.
Another feature of the grand hotel was its 17th floor, which was designated for sample rooms used by traveling salesmen to display products. The Reds Rooters reserved the entire floor and converted it into a party clubhouse for their stay.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Reds Rooters brought with them “several kegs of sauerkraut, barrels of pickles and great quantities of sausages, pretzels and cheeses.”
That’s not all. To quench their thirst, the Cincinnatians also brought 25 half barrels of beer. Real beer.
An informant tipped off John Dyott, special assistant attorney general in charge of federal Prohibition cases, that the Reds Rooters were guzzling illegal brew. Dyott contacted federal law enforcement agents and ordered them to investigate.
At 1:30 p.m. on April 24, 1925, four agents arrived on the 17th floor, where they found 40 Reds Rooters about to leave for the ballpark, the Post-Dispatch reported. The Cincinnati group included Reds owner Garry Herrmann.
Down the drain
Orphaned at age 11, August Herrmann had worked as an errand boy filling salt stacks and then as a printer’s apprentice, where he got the nickname Garibaldi (shortened to Garry), according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He went into politics, becoming a Cincinnati city administrator, and rose to prominence with his creation of a modern waterworks system.
Herrmann was the life of any party. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, “He was considered the greatest host in Cincinnati and he entertained his friends lavishly.”
In the raid on the Reds Rooters, agents found two half kegs of beer on tap and 11 more half kegs in an ice box waiting to be tapped, the Post-Dispatch reported. After taking samples for analysis, the agents poured all the brew down the drain.
Tests showed the beer had a 3.94 percent alcohol by volume (ABV) and qualified as illegal real beer, the St. Louis Star-Times reported. (Before Prohibition, a typical ABV for beer was 4.5 percent to 6 percent. In the early 1930s, a weaker, 3.2 percent beer gained prominence as a legal alternative in states that repealed dry laws before federal Prohibition ended.)
“We were under the impression that the stuff was near beer,” Herrmann told the Star-Times. “It was just an unfortunate mistake.”
Herrmann, five members of the Reds Rooters who were in charge of the arrangements, and two employees of the group were arrested on federal warrants charging possession of intoxicating alcohol. Herrmann posted a bond of $500 immediately after the warrant was served on him. A hearing in federal court in St. Louis was set back to the fall.
Costly pitchers
In October 1925, Herrmann led a contingent of Cincinnatians to Pittsburgh for the World Series between the Senators and Pirates. According to columnist Westbrook Pegler, when Herrmann arrived at Hotel Schenley, friends approached and asked, “Where are the kegs?” Herrmann replied, “Ever since that time they took the kegs away from the Cincinnati boys in St. Louis, I go without kegs.”
Later that month, Herrmann and the other defendants appeared for their hearing in the St. Louis courtroom of U.S. district judge Charles Breckenridge Faris, a former prosecutor who was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
Charges against Herrmann and the five members of the Reds Rooters were dismissed on the grounds that they were not in physical possession of beer when the agents raided the clubroom.
The two Reds Rooters employees, John Rosskopf and Leonard Schwab, who were in their shirt sleeves and wearing the aprons of bartenders when the agents came, pleaded guilty to charges of possession of alcohol. Each was fined $390.
According to testimony reported in the St. Louis newspapers, agents said they saw Rosskopf at a tapped keg with a foaming pitcher of beer in his hand and Schwab also had a pitcher filled with suds.
After the hearing, Herrmann told the Post-Dispatch, “We feel no malice toward St. Louis for our difficulties in this case. You can tell the world the Reds Rooters are still loyal. They’ll be back in the spring.”