He had joined a group headed by his cousin William H. Locke, that had agreed in principle to buy the Phillies from Charles Phelps Taft.
Baker called Ruch, an old friend of his from New York City who was an outdoor advertising executive, and asked him to join the syndicate.
A mere three years after going to the 1915 World Series, the Phillies had crashed to sixth place and had not had a winning record since.
True to his word, he persuaded slugger Chuck Klein to end a holdout that lasted through all of spring training, signing him to a $45,000 contract, a tidy sum by Phillies standards of the time.
[1] He was succeeded by team business manager Gerald Nugent, who had already been handling the Phillies' day-to-day operations for some time.