Title: Origins and Birth of Major League Baseball
1Origins and Birth of Major League Baseball
The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings baseballs
first professional team.
- Artemus Ward
- Dept. of Political Science
- Northern Illinois University
- aeward_at_niu.edu
2Introduction
Salt print of the 18481850 New York
Knickerbockers. Taken December 1862.
- We will discuss baseballs origins and its
journey from an amateurs game to a professional
business. - Along the way we will meet key figures and
discuss the events that led to this
transformation. - Ultimately, control over the game shifted from
players to owners and by the early 1900s the
owners had established a collusive monopoly which
would last for the next 100 years.
3Baseballs Origins
- People have been pitching balls, hitting them
with bats, and running for as long as there have
been people. Early forms of baseball included the
English folk games stoolball in the 11th
century, forms of cricket in the 13th century,
and perhaps rounders in the 18th century. - The American game evolved from amateur urban
clubs in the 1840s and 1850s to the modern
professional major leagues that began in the
1870s - The first published rules of baseball were
written in 1845 for a New York (Manhattan) base
ball club called the Knickerbockers. The author,
Alexander Joy Cartwright, is often credited with
inventing the modern game, though he likely wrote
down rules that had been in existence for years. - In 1845, the Knickerbockers began using the
Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey to play
baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds in
increasingly crowded Manhattan. In 1846, the
Knickerbockers played on these grounds in the
first organized game between two clubs, losing
23-1 to a team of cricket players.
A 1744 publication in England by John Newbery
called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a
woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled
"Base-ball." This is the first known instance of
the word baseball in print. The book was very
popular in England, and was later published in
Colonial America in 1762.
41865 championship match between the Mutual Club
of New York and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn,
attended by an estimated 20,000 fans. Elysian
Fields, Hoboken New Jersey.
5Organized Baseball
- With hundreds of clubs forming, in 1857, sixteen
clubs from New York City sought to gain control
of the game. They standardized the rules and
formed the National Association of Base Ball
Players (NABBP). By 1862 some NABBP member clubs
offered games to the general public in enclosed
ballparks with admission fees. But players were
never to be paid. It was an amateurs game. - During and after the American Civil War
(1860-1865), the movements of soldiers and
exchanges of prisoners helped spread the game. - In 1869, former Knickerbocker CF Harry Wright
formed the first openly professional baseball
team The Cincinnati Red Stockings. Prior to
this, players were amateurs and were not paid to
play. But Cincinnati recruited nationally and
effectively by offering salaries, toured the
country, were undefeated until June 1870, and
demonstrated that professional baseball was a
viable business enterprise. Harrys brother, the
SS, was the highest paid player receiving
1,400seven-times the average working mans
wage. - The Chicago White Stockings (now the Cubs) joined
the NABBP in 1870 and one year later broke away
with several other clubs, including Harry
Wrights new Boston Red Stockings (the dominant
team of the era as it included several of his
former Cincinnati playersthe team is now the
Atlanta Braves) to found the first professional
league, the National Association of Professional
Base Ball Players (NA). - But the NA was weak. Without an overall
organization or structure, schedules and
competition were chaotic. Players moved from team
to team depending on the salary offered.
6The National League
- In 1876, William Hulbert, a Chicago coal magnate
and the owner of the White Stockings, initiated
the establishment of the National League of
Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL). - The NA folded and the new National League has
been in existence ever since. Indeed it is the
world's oldest continuously existing professional
team-sports league. - The NL had strong central authority, exclusive
territories in large cities only, a regular
schedule of games, set uniform ticket prices at
50 cents, and banned gambling, drinking, and
games on Sunday. - But most importantly, the NL sought to reduce
player salariesa considerable expense, increase
fan interest by keeping players from switching
from team to team, and impose discipline on
unruly players. The solution in 1879 the owners
added a reserve clause to the contracts of the
five best players on each team, later the best
eleven, and by 1890 all players. It required that
they play only for their present employer and
reserve their services for the following year.
At first, few complained. To be reserved was to
be assured of a job for the next season. But some
likened it to slavery. Those who complained were
fired then blacklisted. In reality, because
players under the reserve clause could not
solicit competitive bids for their services,
their salaries were artificially depressed.
Couple that with collusion among the owners to
set maximum salary limits and it is not
surprising that players were dissatisfied. - For the first time in the history of the game the
players would serve the interest of the owners.
For the next 100 years the game was controlled by
those who owned the field and supplied the ball.
Players were merely employees.
7The Beer and Whiskey League
St. Louis Browns AA Champions 1885-88.
- In 1882, a rival league, the American Association
(AA) started play. The AA offered Sunday games,
alcoholic beverages, and sold cheaper tickets
everywhere (25 cents versus the NL's standard 50
cents, a hefty sum for many in 1882). - The new AAcommonly known as the beer and
whiskey leaguedrew huge, lively crowds of
mostly lower-class and immigrant fans. It
co-existed with the more sedate, established,
upper-class NL for ten years and the best team in
each league often played an end-of-the-season
exhibition, a kind of precursor to the World
Series. - But the AA folded after the 1891 season and many
of its teams were absorbed by the NL.
8The Players League
- Aiding in the demise of the AA was a third league
born out of the Brotherhood of Professional
Base-Ball Players, the sports first union. - Lasting only one year1890the Players League was
organized by star player (and Columbia Law School
graduate) John Montgomery Ward who was
disenchanted with the heavy-handed tactics of the
owners. The Players League included a profit
sharing system for the players and their
investors. Each club was governed by an 8-man
board of both players and investors. The league
was governed by a senate of 16-members split
evenly between players and investors. Most
importantly, player contracts had no reserve
clause. - 80 of NL players flocked to the new league
including many of its stars such as Dan
Brouthers, Pud Galvin, Hugh Duffy, and Ed
Delahanty as well as future influential club
owners Connie Mack and Charles Comiskey! - But the NL owners undermined the Players League
at every turn. First they sued Ward and other
players who left the NL but in Metropolitan
Exhibition Co. v. Ward (1890) the New York
Supreme Court held that the reserve clause only
bound players and owners to make future contracts
without specifying the terms of those contracts
and therefore were unenforceable. Hence NL
contracts did not prevent players from signing
with other leagues. - The owners turned outside the law to coercion and
bribery to thwart the new league. Outdrawn by the
Players League, the NL distributed free passes to
fans around town, used propaganda, threats,
personal intimidation, and financial offers to
induce the Players Leagues relatively naïve and
inexperienced financial backers to desert the
players. - While Ward failed in his bid against the owners,
he continued playing finishing his career as the
only player in history to win over 100 games as a
pitcher and collect over 2,000 hits. - Where there had been three top-level leagues in
1890, by the start of the 1892 season there was
only one. The NL operated as a monopoly for the
rest of the decade setting maximum salaries at
2,400 and considered setting up a trust whereby
there would be one common ownership of all 12 NL
teams. But when the NL contracted to 8 teams in
1900, there was an opening for new competition.
Monte Ward
9Albert Goodwill Spalding
- He was the finest pitcher of the 1870s. Harry
Wright paid him 1,500 per year to pitch for the
Boston Red Stockings. - In 1876 he left Boston for Chicago, lured by
William Hulberts offer of a raise and a percent
of the gate. He was the first star to use a glove
in the field to protect his hand. - But he stopped pitching entirely at age 27
finishing with a record of 253-65 for a winning
percentage of .796 the best in baseball
history. - He became a full-time promoter. He opened a
sporting goods business and began manufacturing
all the baseballs in the league as well as bats
and uniforms. Spaulding crushed or bought out his
competitors and Spaulding became the largest
sporting good manufacturer in the country. - After the death of William Hulbert in 1882,
Spalding became the principle owner of the White
Stockings. He moved the team to a new venue West
Side Park. He built a private box in the new park
fitted out with a gong to summon servants and a
new invention the telephone to keep track of all
his enterprises while he watched the game. - In 1888-89 he even took a team of players on a
global tour to promote the game. Newspapers
called him the baseball messiah. - He led other NL owners in their war against the
Players League and ultimately won the
battlethereby shutting the players out of team
ownership and league governance forever.
10The American League
- Bancroft Ban Johnson was a former law student
and Cincinnati sportswriter who befriended
Charles Comiskey, then manager of the Reds. - In 1894, with the urging and help of Comiskey,
Ban Johnson became the president of the minor
Western League. In 1896, he formulated the plan
that would eventually see the Western League
become the American League. - Comiskey left the Reds and purchased the Western
Leagues Sioux City team, moved it to St. Paul,
and then to Chicago in 1900 where they initially
took on the old nickname of the citys longtime
NL team, the White Stockings (at this time the NL
team was known as the Colts, the nickname of
their leader Cap Anson, and then the orphans and
remnants after Ansons departureand of course
later the Cubs). - Following the NLs contraction, Johnson expanded
his Western League, changed the name to the
American League, broke his minor-league agreement
with the NL, and declared the AL a major league
in 1901, directly competing with the NL who never
saw Johnson as a threat. - In 1900, NL players created their second union
the Players Protective Association. - While it was as ineffectual as Wards earlier
union, it highlighted the players
dissatisfaction with the owners. - Ban Johnson seized on this disaffection by
persuading players to join his new American
League. Of the 182 players on AL rosters in 1901,
111 were former NL players. - The 1901 and 1902 AL seasons were unqualified
successes. In 1900 Johnson had started raiding NL
rosters by paying higher salaries, enticing more
than 100 NL players to join his league and fans
packed AL ballparks to see the stars who had
switched to the AL including Cy Young, Rube
Waddell, and John McGraw.
Ban Johnson
Cy Young
11Napoleon Nap Lajoie and the Enforcement of
Contracts
- Napoleon Nap Lajoie was a star 2B for the NLs
Philadelphia Phillies. Connie Mack, the owner of
the cross-town AL team the Philadelphia
Athletics, offered Lajoie 24,000 for a
three-year contract. Phillies owner Colonel John
I. Rogers responded with a better offer 25,000
for two years. But Lajoie demanded Rogers pay him
an additional 500 for the 1901 season and Rogers
refused. Lajoie then accepted Macks offer and
jumped to the ALs Athletics for the 1901 season. - The Phillies sued asking the state trial court to
issue an injunction that would order Lajoie to
fulfill his existing contract with the Phillies,
which stipulated that he would not play for
another team. But the trial court decided for
Lajoie. He played for the As in 1901 and set the
leagues single-season batting record. But the
Phillies appealed and the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court reversed the trial court decision and
enforced the provision of Lajoies contract that
he not play for another club. In Philadelphia
Ball Club, Ltd. v. Lajoie (1902), the Court
reasoned that a professional baseball playerand
certainly one of Lajoies talentwas
presumptively unique and difficult if not
impossible to replace, a finding that justified
equitable relief through the issuance of a
negative injunction. The decision concluded The
court cannot compel the defendant to play for the
plaintiff, but it can restrain him from playing
for another club in violation of his agreement. - Lajoie never again played for the Phillies.
Prohibited by the courts from playing for the
As, he was traded to the ALs Cleveland club.
Whenever Cleveland travelled to Philadelphia to
play the As, Lajoie went on vacation to New
Jersey. - Though other state courts followed the Ward
precedent and denied injunctive relief to the
clubs that lost players to the rival league,
Lajoie marked an important turning point in the
development of the baseball cartel and
strengthened the reserve clause. The presumption
was that player services were unique and
irreplaceable and although courts could not force
someone to play for a particular team, they were
willing to prevent that person from selling their
services elsewhere.
12The National Agreement
- As the bidding war between the two leagues grew
fiercer and player salaries continued to
escalate, the AL grew in popularity. By 1902 the
AL outdrew the NL, 2.2 million to 1.7 million
attendees. - By 1903, the two leagues realized it was in their
economic interest to compromise. The leagues
signed The National Agreementthe
constitution of the sport. The leagues pledged
to perpetuate baseball as the national game of
America, and to surround it with such safeguards
as to warrant absolute public confidence in its
integrity and methods. The two league presidents
and a third person selected by the two made up
the National Commission which would govern the
business of baseball. The owners gave the
three-person Commission the power to control
baseball by its own decrees, to enforce those
decrees without the aid of law, and to answer to
no power outside its own. In reality, however, AL
President Ban Johnson ruled both the commission
and the game until the 1920s. - The National Agreement ushered in an era of
hegemony for organized baseball. The two leagues
settled into a peaceful and collusive
co-existence with eight teams in each league, an
end-of-the-season World Series between each
league champion, and most importantly no more
bidding wars for players. Salaries once again
became artificially depressed.
13Charles Comiskey
- Soon Ban Johnson battled AL owners including his
old ally Charles Comiskey. When Comiskey warned
Johnson that his players may have been bribed to
fix games for gamblers, Johnson ignored him.
Johnson continually clashed with the new
Commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis and
was ultimately forced out of baseball by the
owners. - Comiskey, on the other hand, prospered. He was a
star player and manager in the 1880s and 1890s.
He is sometimes credited with being the first 1B
to play behind the bag and inside the foul line,
which is common now. - He became the owner of the Chicago White Sox from
1900 until his death in 1931 and oversaw the
building of Comiskey Park in 1910. - Notoriously frugal with his players, he made them
pay to launder their own uniforms, hence the
Black Sox nickname for their often dirty
uniforms. - The substandard wages tempted many of his players
to talk to gamblers about throwing games for
money. After eight of his players were accused of
throwing the 1919 World Series he provided them
with expensive legal counsel. But ultimately
supported the decision to ban them for life,
despite the fact that it decimated his team by
depriving them of its stars including shoeless
Joe Jackson.
14The Commissioner
- Hoping to restore public confidence in the sport
following the 1919 Black Sox Scandal in which
Chicago White Sox players accepted bribes from
gamblers in order to throw the World Series, the
owners named federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain
Landis commissioner of baseball, to replace the
three-person National Commission that have
formerly governed the sport. - Landis accepted but on the condition that he have
absolute power to take any action he deemed in
the best interest of baseball. The owners agreed
and Landis first decision was to ban the eight
White Sox players involved in the scandal. - Throughout 1921 Landis came under intense
criticism for his moonlighting, and congressional
members called for his impeachment. In February
1922, Landis resigned his position as a federal
judge saying that, "There aren't enough hours in
the day for me to handle the courtroom and the
various other jobs I have taken on." - The owners hoped that after the Black Sox scandal
passed, Landis would retire to a quiet life as
the titular head of baseball. But instead, Landis
ruled baseball with an iron fist for 25 years. At
times he antagonized the owners and the players
but historians generally agree that his actions
were consistent with his best interest of
baseball mandate and the independence of the
office.
15(No Transcript)
16Conclusion
- Baseball was initially a game played by amateurs
for amusement. - As it grew in popularity, private entrepreneurs
built enclosed parks and charged admission to see
games. - To gain control of the game, rules were
standardized and leagues were formed. - In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings began
paying players to play baseball. - Born from the ashes of the first professional
leaguethe National Associationthe National
League was formed by the owners and the reserve
clause was invented, binding players to their
teams for life and shifting power from the
players to the owners, a situation that lasted
for the next 100 years. - Although able to quash competition from the
upstart beer and whiskey and Players leagues,
the American League was able to become a
successful competitor the NL. But they soon
settled their differences and entered into a
collusive agreement of peaceful coexistence that
lasts to this day. - Major League Baseballs monopoly over the game
was in place.
17Bibliography
- Abrams, Roger I. 1998. Legal Bases Baseball and
the Law. Philadelphia, PA Temple University
Press. - Goldman, Robert M. 2008. One Man Out Curt Flood
versus Baseball. Lawrence, KS University Press
of Kansas. - Metropolitan Exhibition Co. v. Ward, 9 NYS 779
(N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1890). - Philadelphia Ball Club, Ltd. v. Lajoie, 202 Pa
210, 51 A 973 (1902). - Ward, Geoffrey C. and Ken Burns. 1994. Baseball
An Illustrated History. New York, NY Knopf. - Zimbalist, Andrew. 2003. May the Best Team Win
Baseball Economics and Public Policy. Washington,
DC Brookings Press.