Free Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer by William Knoedelseder Page A

ceremony took place in Gussie’s cottage on the grounds of the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and was performed by a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. It was a brewery family affair: Eberhard Anheuser gave away the bride; Gussie’s cousin Adalbert (“Addy”) von Gontard, an A-B vice president, served as best man; and Gussie’s two daughters by his first marriage, Lilly and Lotsie, were Trudy’s bridesmaids.
    Press coverage of the event was carefully managed. Gussie’s public relations man, Al Fleishman, had alerted the local newspapers to the impending nuptials just the day before, telling reporters that August III “was expected to attend.” He did not, however, and neither did his sister Elizabeth. Following a breakfast buffet reception that featured unexpected entertainment by comedian Joe E. Lewis, who “just happened to be in town,” the newlyweds boarded Gussie’s motorbus and left for a two-week Florida vacation.
    As Busch weddings went, it was a low-key, seemingly inauspicious event, an impression the newspapers furthered by devoting nearly as many words to Gussie’s two previous unions as they did to the one at hand. Trudy’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the society-page headlines, one of which said, “August A. Busch Jr. Will Marry Swiss Girl Today” (she was twenty-five).
    A lot of people underestimated Trudy Buholzer in the beginning, but marrying her turned out to be one of the best moves Gussie Busch ever made, ranking up there with his decision less than a year later to purchase the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. Together these two “acquisitions” defined the rest of his life.
    The Cardinals weren’t even his idea. He was approached in February 1953 by a contingent of local businessmen that included several A-B board members and Fleishman, who was fast becoming one of his most trusted confidants. The men told Gussie that the owner of the Cardinals, Fred Saigh, was in talks to move the team to Milwaukee, where an investor group had offered him more than $4 million for the franchise. Saigh had financial problems and was about to begin serving a fifteen-month prison sentence for tax evasion. He needed to sell the team, they said, but he preferred that the Cardinals remain in St. Louis; he just hadn’t been able to find a local buyer. If Gussie was interested, then Saigh might sell the team to A-B for less than the Milwaukee people had put on the table.
    Gussie didn’t give a good goddamn about baseball or the Cardinals. He was a “sportsman”; he enjoyed hunting, fishing, horseback riding, and coaching—all gentlemanly pursuits. He had never followed professional team sports; that was for the masses. He knew that St. Louisans loved their “Red Birds,” of course, and that outfielder Stan Musial was considered one of the greatest players in the game. The men who worked at the brewery idolized “Stan the Man” or “Stash” (pronounced stosh ), as some of them liked to call him, a childhood nickname bestowed by his Polish-born father.
    The Cardinals were in fact one of the most successful teams in the major leagues, having won nine National League pennants and six World Series titles in the previous twenty-seven years. That paled in comparison to the New York Yankees’ record of nineteen pennants and fifteen World Series wins, but the Cardinals boasted a broader fan base than the Yankees. As the farthest west and farthest south major league franchise, they were the home team of more Americans than any other ball club. If you lived in Kentucky, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Texas, Tennessee, or a dozen other southern and western states in 1952, you likely rooted for the Red Birds. They were, arguably, “America’s team.” Which made the radio and TV broadcasting rights to their games all the more valuable. Those rights were then held by the St.