Origins and Birth
of Major League Baseball
The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings: baseball’s first professional team.
Artemus Ward
Dept. of Political Science
Northern Illinois
University
aeward@niu.edu
Introduction
Salt print of the 1848–1850
New York Knickerbockers.
Taken December 1862.
We will discuss baseball’s origins and its journey from an
amateur’s 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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Baseball’s Origins
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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.
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.
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.
Organized Baseball
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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 amateur’s 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. Harry’s brother, the SS, was the
highest paid player receiving $1,400—seven-times the
average working man’s 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 Wright’s new Boston Red
Stockings (the dominant team of the era as it included several
of his former Cincinnati players—the 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.
The National League
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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
salaries—a 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.
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 AA—commonly known as the “beer and whiskey”
league—drew 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
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Aiding in the demise of the AA was a third league born out of the Brotherhood of
Professional Base-Ball Players, the sport’s first union.
Lasting only one year—1890—the 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 League’s 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
Albert Goodwill Spalding
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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 Hulbert’s
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 battle—thereby shutting the
players out of team ownership and league governance
forever.
The American League
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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 League’s Sioux City
team, moved it to St. Paul, and then to Chicago in 1900 where they
initially took on the old nickname of the city’s 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
Anson’s departure—and of course later the Cubs).
Following the NL’s 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 Ward’s 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
Napoleon “Nap” Lajoie
and the Enforcement of Contracts
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Napoleon “Nap” Lajoie was a star 2B for the NL’s 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 Mack’s offer and jumped to the AL’s 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 A’s in 1901 and set the league’s single-season batting record. But
the Phillies appealed and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the trial
court decision and enforced the provision of Lajoie’s contract that he not play
for another club. In Philadelphia Ball Club, Ltd. v. Lajoie (1902), the Court
reasoned that a professional baseball player—and certainly one of Lajoie’s
talent—was 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 A’s, he was traded to the AL’s Cleveland club. Whenever Cleveland
travelled to Philadelphia to play the A’s, 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.
The National Agreement
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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 Agreement”—the “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.
Charles Comiskey
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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.
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
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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
league—the National Association—the
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 Baseball’s monopoly over the
game was in place.
Bibliography
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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.