H. Gabriel Murphy

Henry Gabriel Murphy

• School Georgetown University

• Born January 8, 1903 in Hogansburg, NY USA
• Died November 1, 2001 in Washington, DC USA

Biographical Information

H. Gabriel Murphy was a minority owner of the original Washington Senators of the American League who fought vainly to keep the team from relocating away from Washington, DC. He was a big sports fan from his days as a football player with Georgetown University.

He was an insurance executive in the Nation's Capital who became a minority stockholder in the Senators in 1950 as a friend of then principal owner Clark Griffith. He bought his 40% share from New York, NY businessman John James Jachym, who had purchased them from the estate of George Richardson after he had died in 1948. Jachym had unsuccessfully attempted to be named to the team's board of directors, and when that failed, sold out to Murphy. Together with Griffith's 44%, the two partners now had a solid controlling interest, preventing another attempt at a hostile takeover of the sort Jachym had attempted.

The partnership ended when Clark Griffith died in 1955 and was succeeded by his adopted son, Calvin Griffith, who antagonized Murphy by insisting on installing himself as the team's general manager. Poor on-field results led to Murphy asking unsuccessfully for Griffith to hire a professional baseball man for the job, but to no avail, leading to Murphy's resignation from the board of directors. Griffin then began to look to move the team. Murphy, who was a Washingtonian through and through, was firmly opposed and when it became clear in 1960 that the younger Griffith was ready to transfer the team to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, Murphy voiced his opposition, but was unable to put together a group to buy out the Griffith family (Calvin's sister Thelma and brother-in-law Joe Haynes were also minority owners). He had to resort to filing suit in federal court to block the move, which took place anyway. Still a minority owner of the now Minnesota Twins, Murphy continued his legal guerilla against Griffith for a number of years, forcing him to keep out of the District of Columbia lest he be served a court summons by Murphy.

Murphy kept his shares in the Twins in spite of the hard feelings, and finally enacted a reconciliation in 1977, when he returned to the board of directors. In 1984, when it looked like the Twins were going to move to the Tampa Bay area, he sold his shares to a group there in order to speed the move. However, Griffith found a local buyer for his own shares in multi-millionaire banker Carl Pohlad, and the Tampa group, seeing there was not going to be a move, sold their shares to Pohlad as well.

Murphy stayed in Washington all those years and was very much involved in charitable causes around the city, including as President of the National Symphony Orchestra and vice-president of the Washington Hospital Center. He died there in 2001 at age 98.