4

The American Labor Movement and the Players’ League (1884 to 1891)

as the united states became an industrial nation during the Gilded Age, a wide gap emerged between rich and poor. Businesses did all they could to maximize profits, including increasing income and decreasing costs. Labor became a commodity that workers sold for wages, thereby losing their independence. Along with low pay and long hours, they encountered dangerous working conditions. In response, many states began adopting laws protecting workers by mandating safe working conditions and limiting the number of hours an employee could work. Businesses often used the courts to strike down these laws. Unable to gain protection through the government, many workers concluded they could not accomplish their goals if they did not unite. In 1866, workers in Philadelphia formed the National Labor Union, and in 1869 a more powerful union, named the Knights of Labor, emerged. The Knights wanted higher wages, shorter hours (including an eight-hour workday), and better conditions. Believing that workers, not company owners, should enjoy the benefits of the wealth their labor created, the Knights of Labor also opposed the wage system. As a result, the Knights supported the creation of cooperatives in which the workers owned the company for which they worked. Labor squared off against employers over the next few decades, sometimes violently. Such riots discredited the Knights of Labor, and in 1886, members turned instead to the American Federation of Labor, a more conservative union that accepted the wage system and protested in moderation. Still, labor tension persisted, and whenever a major labor dispute broke out, such as the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 or the Pullman Strike of 1894, the government stood with the companies and against the workers. Baseball was by no means immune to the fights between workers and owners.

On June 17, 1880, twenty-year-old John Montgomery Ward took the mound at Providence’s Messer Street Grounds for a game against the Buffalo Bisons. Although he only had two years of major league experience, Monte Ward had already established himself as the premier pitcher in baseball. The previous year, Ward’s league-leading forty-seven victories helped the Providence Grays secure the 1879 National League pennant. That Thursday afternoon in June, he achieved his greatest feat as a pitcher: He did not allow a single Bisons player to reach base. Ward’s accomplishment was largely overlooked at the time, however, as only five days earlier J. Lee Richmond of the Worcester Ruby Legs shut out the Cleveland Blues in the National League’s first perfect game. Four years later, Ward’s promising pitching career came to a disappointing end when, as a member of the New York Gothams (soon to be called the New York Giants), he injured his arm in a baserunning accident. Unwilling to give up baseball, Ward became a star shortstop for the Giants. He retired following the 1894 season. In his seventeen-year career, Ward played in 1,825 games, amassing 2,104 hits and compiling a .275 batting average. The only player to collect more than 2,000 hits as a batter and tally more than 100 wins as a pitcher, Ward was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964. Yet his greatest contribution to baseball occurred off the field, when he formed baseball’s—indeed, professional sports’—first labor union.

New York Giants’ shortstop John Montgomery Ward formed the first union for professional athletes, the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, in 1885. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Cooperstown, N.Y.

As a teenager, Ward briefly attended Penn State until he was expelled following a fight with a fellow student. While playing baseball for the Giants, Ward began to take evening classes at Columbia Law School, from which he graduated in 1885. That same year, a Philadelphia sportswriter named William Voltz attempted to establish a protective association for ballplayers. Voltz was primarily concerned with creating a benevolent fund for retired players, but because he never played the game, most baseball players were suspicious of his motives. When Voltz brought his idea to Ward, the Giants’ shortstop realized that such an organization could address the many grievances baseball players had with the clubs that employed them.

Gilded Age unions struggled against low pay, long hours, and dangerous working conditions, often unsuccessfully, because the government usually took the side of the companies and opposed the workers. Despite much violence, death, and destruction caused by nineteenth-century strikes, workers in the Gilded Age saw few gains from their actions. Neither did most major league players. Although they worked in a glamorous profession, they, too, felt squeezed by team owners. Denied even the basic right to negotiate with their employers, ballplayers were at the mercy of the teams that employed them. Like workers in other industries, baseball players in the late nineteenth century formed a union and even took part in a labor action.

Like successful industrialists of the Gilded Age, baseball team owners sought to increase their profits. The most obvious way to do this was to enhance their revenue streams. The creation of professional leagues and the establishment of monopolies generated steady revenue for the moguls who operated baseball clubs. Enterprising club owners also found novel ways to increase their income. One strategy employed by team owners was the construction of new ballparks. The novelty of a new park always drew extra customers. New ballparks also generally had greater seating capacities than the facilities they replaced, and often featured premium seating, such as seating under a covered grandstand, for which clubs could charge extra. A number of teams opened new ballparks in the 1880s, including the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, who christened Washington Park in 1883, and the Boston Beaneaters, formerly the Red Stockings, who moved into the South End Grounds in 1888.

By the 1880s, baseball clubs discovered that offering food, drink, and other concessions at the ballpark brought in more revenue. As early as 1882, the clubs in the American Association were selling beer and whiskey at baseball games. In the early 1880s, a man named Harry M. Stevens attended a baseball game in Columbus, Ohio, and, disappointed in the quality of the scorecards offered at the stadium, convinced the club to let him have a contract to produce an improved version. Stevens soon obtained contracts to sell scorecards, and eventually food, at many other major league ballparks. In 1893 Chris von der Ahe, the owner of the St. Louis Browns, began selling German sausages at his ballpark. Like von der Ahe, many of the fans in St. Louis were German immigrants who enjoyed the sausage from their homeland. Thus began the long link between baseball and hot dogs.

In order to increase attendance, baseball clubs began to stage promotions. Clubs added doubleheaders to the schedule, which brought in more spectators. In 1883 the New York Gothams held the first Ladies’ Day, at which women were admitted to the game free of charge if they attended with a man who paid for his admission. In 1891 the Chicago White Stockings started to hold a Baseball Day, in which boys on amateur teams who showed up in their baseball uniforms were admitted for free. The White Stockings ownership believed that if young people could be lured to the ballpark, they would continue that habit as they grew older. In the 1880s, Chris von der Ahe built an amusement park next to Sportsmen’s Park. Fans who saved their ticket stub from the afternoon’s game would be admitted to the amusement park for only a quarter. In order to cash in on the bicycle craze of the 1890s, many clubs constructed bicycle tracks along the ballpark’s warning track for pregame bicycle races.

In an attempt to make the game more exciting, the major leagues continued to tinker with the rules, still looking for the perfect formula to balance the confrontation between pitcher and batter. In 1876, the first year of the National League, the umpire warned the batter before calling the first strike, essentially giving the batter four strikes, and the pitcher needed to throw nine balls before a batter was awarded first base. That number was reduced to eight in 1879; the rules dropped the number of balls to seven, six, and five before finally settling on four balls for a walk in 1889. Until 1887 a batter could call for a high or low pitch, but beginning in 1887 the batter no longer had a choice. Starting in 1884, pitchers could throw overhand, which meant they could pitch with more speed and power. Baseball also adjusted the distance between home plate and the pitcher’s rubber. To encourage more hitting and scoring, the rules set the distance at forty-five feet in 1876, moved it to fifty feet in 1881, and ultimately set it at sixty feet six inches in 1893.

Other rules tried to make the game more interesting, all with the intention of drawing more fans to make the owners more money. In 1882 baseball adopted a rule mandating color-coded uniforms by position, with each player wearing a different color cap and jersey. For instance, first basemen throughout the major leagues wore red-and-white striped shirts and caps, second basemen wore orange-and-black striped shirts and caps, and shortstops wore maroon shirts and caps. A player’s team was not identified by the color of his cap or jersey, but by the color of his stockings. The players hated the 1882 uniforms, derisively referring to them as “clown costumes.” The major leagues quietly abandoned the uniforms when the season ended.

Baseball club owners not only tried to maximize their income by building new ballparks and adopting gimmicks to attract crowds, but also sought to reduce their costs. Player salaries were—and remain—the largest expense encountered by baseball clubs. Club owners understood that they faced a problem unique to their business: They needed the players, as the ball game was their product, but as the clubs competed with each other for players, they were driving up player salaries. At the 1879 owners’ meeting in Buffalo, New York, the National League came up with a solution: the reserve clause, which allowed a club to reserve (or retain) a player after his contract expired. Once a player’s contract expired, no other National League team could sign him to a contract; the player had the choice of either re-signing with his existing team or not signing a contract at all. At first each team could reserve only five players. The number of players on the reserve list was expanded to eleven in 1886 and to fourteen in 1887, which, with the small rosters of the nineteenth century, meant virtually everyone on the team was reserved. Eventually, the reserve list was expanded to include the entire team. With the reserve clause in place, major league teams did not need to sign a player to anything longer than a one-year contract. A one-year contract protected the club if the player became injured or lost his skill, because the team would only have to pay the player for that one season.

The reserve clause put baseball players at a severe disadvantage. Once a player signed his first contract, he lost all negotiating leverage for the remainder of his career. Because he could not sign with another team once his major league club reserved him, that player had little choice but to re-sign at whatever terms the club offered. Occasionally, a big star would threaten to sit out the season, assuming that if the team wanted him badly enough, it would give in to his demands. But few players were important enough to have that effect on a club. The reserve clause could even prevent players from playing at all. If a team had no current need for a player but did not want another club to sign him, that team could keep the player on the reserve list without signing him. Because the player had been reserved, that player was not free to sign with another team.

When the American Association was founded in 1882, it announced that it would not recognize the National League’s reserve clause. As National League players were no longer under contract when the season ended, American Association teams could legally sign them. The competition for players raised salaries in both leagues. But after the American Association and the National League began to collude in 1883, each league recognized the other’s reserve clause. Players again lost their leverage, and salaries tumbled downward.

Having agreed to end competition between the two existing leagues, club owners encountered new competition in 1884. A Missouri millionaire named Henry V. Lucas, having inherited an enormous sum of money from his wealthy father, wanted to own a baseball team in St. Louis. Denied a club by both the National League and the American Association, Lucas created a new team called the St. Louis Maroons and established a new baseball league, the Union Association, in which the Maroons would compete. The UA created problems for the existing major leagues. Lucas announced that the new league would not honor either league’s reserve clause. As a result, players’ salaries increased as all three leagues competed for the same players. Even without the new league, baseball teams would have experienced increased competition for players, as in 1884 the American Association expanded from eight teams to twelve teams. Competing for players and vying for fans in many of the same cities, teams in all three leagues lost money in 1884. In the middle of the season, the American Association’s Washington Statesmen went out of business. A minor league team from Richmond, Virginia, joined the association in August to complete the Statesmen’s schedule. When the season ended, the American Association, facing heavy financial losses, contracted to eight teams.

The Union Association suffered the greatest losses. Of the eight clubs that formed the Union Association in April, only five completed the season. As Union Association teams went under, minor league clubs joined to take their place. As a result, even though there were only eight franchises in the Union Association, thirteen teams competed in that circuit in 1884. With only three clubs willing to continue, the Union Association disbanded after a single season. Lucas’s St. Louis Maroons moved to the National League in 1885. Chris von der Ahe’s St. Louis Browns of the American Association objected, but with both the American Association and the National League suffering heavy losses, neither circuit could afford to fight.

Table 4.1. The Major Leagues at the Start of the 1884 Season

NL Clubs	AA Clubs	UA Clubs
Boston Red Stockings	Baltimore Orioles	Altoona Mountain Citys2
Buffalo Bisons	Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers	Baltimore Monumentals
Chicago White Stockings	Cincinnati Reds	Boston Reds
Cleveland Blues	Columbus Buckeyes	Chicago Browns3
Detroit Wolverines	Indianapolis Hoosiers	Cincinnati Outlaw Reds
New York Gothams	Louisville Colonels	Philadelphia Keystones4
Philadelphia Phillies	New York Metropolitans	St. Louis Maroons
Providence Grays	Philadelphia Athletics	Washington Nationals
	Pittsburgh Alleghenys
	St. Louis Browns
	Toledo Blue Stockings
	Washington Statesmen1

1 Replaced by Richmond Virginians in August.

2 Replaced by Kansas City Cowboys in May.

3 Replaced by Pittsburgh Stogies in August and St. Paul Saints in September.

4 Replaced by Wilmingon Quicksteps in August and Milwaukee Brewers in September.

The collapse of the Union Association not only meant the major leagues could enforce low salaries through the reserve clause, but it also cut—by more than a third—the number of jobs for big-league ballplayers. When Philadelphia sportswriter William Voltz, the year after the Union Association’s demise, proposed a benevolent association to assist ill and needy ballplayers, most players distrusted his intention. Monte Ward, the star shortstop for the New York Giants, however, saw an opportunity, and in October 1885 he established the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, the first labor union of professional athletes. Ward secretly organized his teammates on the New York Giants, then quietly created locals in the other seven National League cities. In 1886, after the entire league had been unionized, the Brotherhood announced its existence. At first, club owners welcomed the development of the Brotherhood. They believed the organization would help discipline ballplayers by promoting a professional attitude. They also expected the Brotherhood to help establish funds to take care of sick, injured, and retired ballplayers. But the Brotherhood was primarily concerned with the way major league teams controlled players’ salaries, and its primary goal was the abolition of the main restriction on players’ salaries—the reserve clause.

At the National League owners’ meeting in 1888, John T. Brush, owner of the Indianapolis Hoosiers, proposed a new system to determine players’ salaries. The Brush Classification Plan assigned all major league ballplayers to one of five classifications, based on skill and character, which he defined as “habits, earnestness, and special qualifications.” Players assigned to Class A, the highest level, would be paid $2,500 a year. Players assigned to the lowest level, Class E, would be paid $1,500. Players in between would be paid $2,250, $2,000, or $1,750, depending upon the class to which they were assigned. The Brush Classification Plan eliminated competition for pay. All stars would receive the same salary; all journeymen would receive the same salary.

Ward heard about the proposal while on Albert G. Spalding’s World Baseball Tour. He immediately wanted to return home to deal with the issue, but Spalding convinced him to honor his commitment. By the time the ballplayers returned to the United States, the Brush Classification Plan was already in place for the 1889 season. Ward, however, began plotting his strategy for 1890.

Following the conclusion of the 1889 baseball season, the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players announced a work action that essentially amounted to a strike of National League and American Association baseball teams. The Brotherhood established a new league, with John Montgomery Ward as the league president. With the Players’ League, which began operation in 1890, the Brotherhood established the type of organization the Knights of Labor had advocated: a cooperative owned by players and investors in which the workers would share in the wealth they created. In this case, it was the players themselves who were the product the customers were paying to see. The Players’ League did not have a reserve clause; instead, to provide job security for players and to protect the assets of investors, each player was signed to a three-year contract.

The Players’ League began the 1890 season with eight teams, seven of which competed head-to-head against National League teams. Two Players’ League teams, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, competed head-to-head against National League and American Association teams. Only the Players’ League team in Buffalo escaped major league competition.

Table 4.2. The Major Leagues at the Start of the 1890 Season

PL Clubs	NL Clubs	AA Clubs
Boston Red Stockings	Boston Beaneaters	Brooklyn Gladiators1
Brooklyn Wonders	Brooklyn Bridegrooms	Columbus Solons
Buffalo Bisons	Chicago White Stockings	Louisville Colonels
Chicago Pirates	Cincinnati Reds	Philadelphia Athletics
Cleveland Infants	Cleveland Spiders	Rochester Hop Bitters
New York Giants	New York Mules	St. Louis Browns
Philadelphia Quakers	Philadelphia Phillies	Syracuse Stars
Pittsburgh Burghers	Pittsburgh Alleghenys	Toledo Maumees

1 Replaced by Baltimore Orioles in August.

Attracted by higher salaries and the opportunity to attack the reserve clause, many stars jumped to the Players’ League. By December 1889, Players’ League clubs had signed seventy-one players from the National League, sixteen players from the American Association, and four minor leaguers. By one count, when the National League opened its 1890 season, only thirty-eight players on its rosters had played in the league the year before. All major league teams were hit hard, but some were devastated. In the nineteenth century, team nicknames were unofficial; they were usually given by sportswriters and often referred to team colors or a star player. In 1890 so many members of New York’s National League club jumped to that city’s Players’ League entry that sportswriters referred to the Players’ League team in New York as the New York Giants. The press called that city’s National League team, which was managed by a man named Jim Mutrie, Mutrie’s Mules.

The Players’ League not only drove up salaries, but, as many Players’ League teams sought to rent ballparks that had been the home of National League or American Association clubs, it also drove up rents. Attendance for all three leagues combined in 1890 was probably less than what the two leagues drew together in 1889, and all three leagues lost money. The Players’ League had the best attendance—it had clubs in more major cities, and it had attracted the most popular stars. Still, the Players’ League drew fewer spectators than the National League had drawn the year before. With the loss of most of its stars, and with a Players’ League competitor in every city but Cincinnati, the National League found it difficult to appeal to fans.

The American Association’s attendance suffered the most. By the end of the 1880s the National League, with its higher admission price and more respectable reputation, had become the more desirable circuit. Thus, whenever the opportunity presented itself, American Association clubs switched leagues. The Pittsburgh Alleghenys jumped to the older circuit in 1887, while the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers (now called the Brooklyn Bridegrooms because a number of players on the club were recently married in quick succession) joined the National League in 1890. The American Association had to replace deserting clubs with teams in smaller cities like Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, and Rochester and Syracuse, New York. When the Brooklyn Bridegrooms transferred to the National League for the 1890 season, the American Association replaced it with a new club, the Brooklyn Gladiators. Faced with competition from a National League and a Players’ League team, however, the Gladiators could not afford to remain in Brooklyn. The team moved to Baltimore in August, replacing the original Baltimore Orioles, which had dropped out of the American Association the year before. The Brotherhood, however, lacked the financial resources of the other major league team owners. Even though the Players’ League had the best attendance in baseball in 1890, when the season ended, the circuit went out of business.

The collapse of the Players’ League damaged the alliance between the National League and the American Association. After the season ended, the National League angered some American Association clubs by allowing Players’ League investors to buy into National League clubs in New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. And although individuals on Players’ League clubs were expected to return to their 1889 teams, not all of them did. The best example was Louis Bierbauer, who played second base for the American Association’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1889. Bierbauer jumped to the Brooklyn Wonders of the Players’ League in 1890. After the Players’ League folded, however, Bierbauer did not return to Philadelphia. The Athletics neglected to place his name on the reserve list, and the Pittsburgh Alleghenys of the National League signed him to a contract for the 1891 season. The Athletics accused the Alleghenys of pirating Bierbauer, and almost immediately the team became known as the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Suffering from the financial losses of the 1890 season, stuck in smaller cities, and losing players to the National League, the American Association took steps in 1891 that put it in an even weaker position. Seeking to move out of smaller cities, the American Association replaced its teams in Rochester, Syracuse, and Toledo with clubs in Boston, Cincinnati, and Washington. The move, however, meant that in addition to competing with the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies, the American Association was now challenging the Boston Beaneaters and Cincinnati Reds for fans. The Cincinnati Killers could not compete against the more established Reds, and went out of business in August. The American Association convinced the minor league Milwaukee Brewers to join the association to complete Cincinnati’s schedule, but the association’s days were numbered. Following the conclusion of the 1891 season, Chris von der Ahe’s St. Louis Browns applied to join the National League. When word of the Browns’ application leaked out, other association teams also applied.

The National League and American Association reached an agreement allowing the association’s four strongest teams—the Baltimore Orioles, the Louisville Colonels, the St. Louis Browns, and the Washington Senators—to join the National League. Starting in 1892 and continuing for the rest of the decade, the National League operated as a twelve-team circuit. The remaining four American Association clubs—the Boston Red Stockings, the Columbus Solons, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Philadelphia Athletics—split a $130,000 settlement between them and went out of business. For the remainder of the 1890s, the National League would monopolize the major leagues.

Table 4.3. The Major Leagues in 1892

The National League

Baltimore Orioles*

Boston Beaneaters

Brooklyn Bridegrooms

Chicago White Stockings

Cincinnati Reds

Cleveland Spiders

Louisville Colonels*

New York Giants

Philadelphia Phillies

Pittsburgh Pirates

St. Louis Browns*

Washington Senators*

* Played in the American Association in 1891.

Major league baseball players, like striking workers in society at large, failed to achieve the goals of their 1890 labor action. Although the Brush Classification Plan was abandoned, the reserve clause would remain in effect, in its nineteenth-century form, for another eighty-five years. And with the death of the American Association, the National League would enjoy a monopoly that allowed it to engage in further abuses for the remainder of the century. Gilded Age greed and executive domination would contaminate baseball as it did other segments of American society.