Origins and Birth of Major League Baseball

1
Origins 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

2
Introduction
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.

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Baseballs 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.
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1865 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.
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Organized 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.

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The 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.

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The 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.

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The 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
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Albert 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.

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The 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
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Napoleon 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.

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The 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.

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Charles 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.

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The 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.

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Conclusion

• 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.

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Bibliography

• Abrams, Roger I. 1998. Legal Bases Baseball and
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  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.