Nine days after Joe Jackson’s unexpected defection in Philadelphia, Provost Marshal General Enoch Crowder handed Major League Baseball an even bigger shock. He announced a new draft regulation on May 23 that Americans everywhere immediately dubbed the “work or fight” rule.
“This regulation provides that after July 1 any registrant who is found by a local board to be a habitual idler or not engaged in some useful occupation shall be summoned before the board, given a chance to explain, and, in the absence of a satisfactory explanation, to be inducted into the military service of the United States,” read the statement from Crowder’s office.1
The government aimed the regulation squarely at poolroom loafers, gamblers, and men who worked in “bucket shops and race tracks, fortune tellers, clairvoyants, palmists and the like.”2 Beyond those who worked in such shady establishments, the new regulation also applied to ordinary workers who sold food or drink in public places; elevator operators, doormen, footmen, and other attendants; those associated with games, sports, and amusements, except legitimate performers in concerts, operas, or theaters; and domestic workers and sales clerks. It didn’t matter whether men working in these occupations held low draft numbers or were in Classes II, III, or IV on the grounds of dependency. “We shall give the idlers and men not effectively employed the choice between military service and effective employment,” the statement read. “Every man in the draft age at least must work or fight.”
The provost marshal general said the ruling would affect ballplayers if strictly enforced, but the War Department hedged: “No ruling as to whether baseball players or persons engaged in golf, tennis or any other sport come under the regulations regarding idlers and non-essential pursuits will be made until a specific case has been appealed to the provost marshal general’s office.”3 The New York World estimated that, if applied, the edict would leave just thirty-six current players in the Major Leagues.
Organized Baseball was shocked. “The blow came like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky to most of the baseball men,” Fred Lieb wrote in the New York Sun. “Baseball officials and executives seemed to think that if the Government cared to have big league baseball terminated for the period of the war all that would have been necessary would have been a suggestion to that effect last winter.”4
League officials and magnates made the right sort of statements in response. In effect, they said that they would close their parks if necessary, but that baseball was still valuable to the country. “I do not believe the government has any intention of wiping out baseball altogether,” Ban Johnson commented, “but if I had my way I would close every theatre, ball park and other places of recreation in the country and make the people realize that they are in the most terrible war in the history of the world.”5
Detroit Tigers president Frank J. Navin was even more candid. “Such an order would cause us to close our park,” he said. “The order would leave me Donovan as pitcher, Stanage behind the bat, Spencer at first, and Jennings at short. How does that sound for a pennant winner?”6
Baseball continued amid tremendous uncertainty. In Richmond the Virginia League launched its season the same day General Crowder dropped his bombshell, “the last organization under the jurisdiction of organized baseball [to] get under way,” according to the Washington Times. “To-day’s opening is unprecedented in the history of baseball, in that it is the latest ever held.”7 How long the Virginia or any Major or Minor League would keep playing was an open question. Many believed that the work-or-fight edict signaled the end of baseball for the duration.
“The condition in the majority of minor leagues . . . has been usually precarious in that the scarcity of labor in the smaller cities has robbed these leagues of their week-day support,” wrote Louis Lee Arms. “They have lived by Saturday and Sunday patronage alone, and no week passes without the discontinuing of some minor league race. While, generally, the playing personnel of the minor leagues contain either younger or older players than the majors, the Provost Marshal’s order would in all likelihood cause those minor leagues that have been in operation to discontinue.”8
It would have been more accurate to write that several circuits simply hadn’t resumed operations for the 1918 season. But Arms was correct about the huge pressures on the ten Minor Leagues that had taken the field. Class C and D baseball had almost vanished, with only one circuit surviving at each level. Class B had three leagues and Class A only two. The highest level, Class AA, had three leagues, including the merged and still-troubled new International. The first of these final ten went under June 15.
“The addition to the heaping debris pile of Organized Baseball is the Blue Ridge League, which started with four clubs late in May, ran a couple of weeks and then decided to quit,” said Sporting News.9 The popular little Class D league had played only in Maryland and West Virginia, having lost two franchises in Pennsylvania. “Increase in transportation, inability to secure good players at fair salaries and other reasons, all of which were caused by the war, in an indirect way, prompted the moguls in their action,” the Washington Star reported.10
Soaring transportation costs troubled all of Organized Baseball in 1918. The sixteen Major League clubs each traveled about ten thousand miles by rail during a season, with each player getting a sleeping-car berth. “Including the war taxes, it is figured that traveling expenses this year will total more than $170,000 for the two leagues, or an average of more than $10,000 for each club,” a wire service reported. “It is believed that as a result of the new rates the clubs will decide to carry not more than 14 or 16 men on the road in order to save expenses. Under former conditions managers thought nothing of buying tickets for at least 20 players.”11
The next Minor League to suspend was the Southern Association on June 29. The directors cited lack of interest, poor attendance, and the work-or-fight regulation, but others saw an additional influence. “The Southern was doomed by the placing of army camps and cantonments in the territory of every city in the league. The fans got so they liked the army games better than they did the league contests.”12 Since franchises and players fell under the so-called war agreement of the National Baseball Association, which defined a half season as a completed season under wartime conditions, all territorial rights were protected. Still, many players soon signed with other leagues. The Red Sox snatched three men from pennant-winning New Orleans. “While none of the three are .300 hitters, they are experienced fielders and immune from a call into the army.”13 The Pirates also signed three men from Birmingham, including outfielder and future Hall of Fame manager Billy Southworth.
Three more leagues fell in quick succession, their seasons also half over. The Texas, Western, and Pacific Coast International Leagues all quit the weekend following the Fourth of July. One Lone Star sportswriter believed that public perception had as much to do with the suspension of the Texas League as financial difficulties or other business obstacles.
When ball players were placed in the class with the riff-raff of the country and made the objects of the remarks of some of the more narrow-minded individuals, it was decided by the magnates to take action and relieve any ill feeling toward the players of the Texas League. Baseball at the onset could not have been carried on for profit this season. This was known by those interested, but to help perpetuate the game during war time as recreation for the public, the venture was made in Texas.14
When news of the Pacific Coast International’s impending shutdown broke in the Northwest, “members of the [Portland] Buckaroos were scurrying from ship yard to ship yard today seeking the best obtainable salaries.”15 The president of the Vancouver club wired Western League president Emerson W. Dickerson, offering his players, unaware that Dickerson’s circuit planned to shut down as well.
The head of the Western’s Oklahoma City franchise suggested combining several Western and Texas clubs into a new “Liberty league,” but Dickerson insisted on protecting territorial rights and rejected the idea out of hand. “Organized baseball would not permit this,” he said. “The suggestion should be considered as a joke.”16 Still drawing his league salary, “Dick” Dickerson later signed on as a war correspondent for the Rocky Mountain News and the Grand Rapids News.
The Class AA Pacific Coast League (not to be confused with the Class B Pacific Coast International) unexpectedly threw in the towel July 14. “Exemption boards in the two states in which the league operates—California and Utah—have ruled that the players are subject to the ‘work or fight’ rule, and the league has decided to abide by this decision rather than appeal to higher authorities,” said a league statement.17 The critical event, however, was the imminent financial collapse of the Vernon club, which the six-team circuit was unable to weather. “Magnates gathered hurriedly in Los Angeles . . . and found the situation so bad as regards Vernon affairs that, when it was coupled with the threats of the work or fight order, the draft and the ship yards, they concluded the jig was up.”18 Pacific Coast officials also mentioned the same poisonous atmosphere reported in the Texas League.
“The crowds were beginning to taunt the players with ‘Why don’t you go to work?’” Los Angeles Angels owner Johnny Powers told writers. San Francisco manager Charlie Graham said the situation was just as bad in the Bay Area. “Not only did the draft board rule that ball players must work, but a police sergeant with fifteen officers entered the ball grounds several days ago and asked every man between 20 and 31 why he was not working. . . . Then we got a telegram from Salt Lake saying that the draft board there had ordered all the players to work or go to war. Matters were getting tighter all the time.”19
The league wrapped up its season with a best-of-nine championship series between frontrunners Los Angeles and Vernon, which also helped the latter club financially. Los Angeles won the series in seven games. For battalions of Minor Leaguers, however, failure or suspension of individual leagues no longer mattered, as was apparent in a statistic published about the same time in New York.
When John H. Farrell, who is secretary of the National Association of Professional Baseball leagues as well as president of the International League, was in Rochester a day or so ago, he said that more than 800 minor league ball players were with the colors. Secretary Farrell’s latest bulletin gives the names of more than two score of players who have recently enlisted or been called for service.20
The updated list of those who had entered the armed forces included ballplayers from twenty-four franchises around the country.
The United States meanwhile had held a second national Registration Day, exactly one year after the first. All American males who had turned twenty-one in the interim were required to appear. General Crowder didn’t sugarcoat his message. “Many of these men [who registered in 1917] are now on the battlefields of France, and on to-morrow, the 5th of June, that voice will have found its echo when one million more will rally to their support,” Crowder’s statement read. “Those who are of such an age and condition in life that they may, without detriment to the economic support of the army, actively oppose themselves against our enemy on the European battlefields are indeed privileged. Most of the men who register to-morrow will be so classified.”21
Ballplayers who had come of age since June 5, 1917, registered alongside everyone else. A month later, the National Commission advised all Major League clubs how their eligible players could request deferred draft classifications. “The Commission strongly recommends the use of an affidavit in every case and submits herewith a form that should be used after consultation with club officials, who will properly introduce and make the most of such other features, as the large number of dependents on the players and other such evidence that may impress the Board.”22 With so many players already gone, and more reporting for military training every week, the Major Leagues and the few remaining Minors waited anxiously for a definitive ruling on whether General Crowder’s work-or-fight regulation applied to baseball. If it did, the future would grow far darker.
The situation seemed headed toward a resolution when a draft board in Fort Worth, Texas, notified Cardinals shortstop Rogers Hornsby that he must either take up an essential job or immediately be classified 1-A. The St. Louis club appealed the ruling and told Hornsby to keep playing until his case was settled. “Hornsby has received offers from several industrial plants to leave the St. Louis club, but he says he will stick to the profession that has made him famous as long as possible,” the Washington Herald reported. “Hornsby is said to be drawing $7,500 in salary. He is the sole support of his mother. If he is compelled to seek essential employment, will he receive the same amount of money?”23
The case of pitcher James “Rube” Parnham also seemed a likely test. After two seasons with Connie Mack’s Philadelphia club, Parnham now toiled for Baltimore in the International League. Although he was married and classified 4-A, his local board had ordered him to seek essential employment. “Parnham’s case is a model on which the whole baseball matter may be threshed out. There are scores of ball players who come under the same conditions, and it would be an excellent way for organized baseball to find out just how far the government cares to go with the case.”24
Events moved faster in the nation’s capital than in either Texas or Baltimore, however. Another player emerged in Washington as the new central figure in baseball’s work-or-fight drama. “Decision in the case of Eddie Ainsmith, the Washington catcher, who last night received a work or fight notice, will be taken as a guide by local draft boards throughout the country and definitely settle a question that has proved a source of great worriment to magnates as well as players,” Washington Star sportswriter Denman Thompson wrote July 12.
Ainsmith’s notification to engage in a useful occupation or shoulder a gun was served on him by local board No. 9 of the District, where he registered June 5, 1917, after the player had appeared before the board in company with Manager Griffith and, to show cause why his draft status should remain unchanged, stated that base ball was his profession, was the only calling in which he was fitted to earn a good living, and that if compelled to give it up a financial hardship would be worked on his dependents. Ben Prince, chairman of the board, and his associates, ruled that under the regulations, the only action open to them was to order Ainsmith to obtain more productive employment or be reclassified from 4A to 1A. There was one dissenting vote.25
Ainsmith had replaced Gabby Street behind the plate as Walter Johnson’s regular catcher. The contrast between the two receivers seemingly was the stuff of melodrama. One man asked to stay home and continue playing baseball. The other had been fighting in France with the First Gas Regiment since the big German offensive in March. Still Ainsmith was a tough, amiable player who had caught more games for Johnson than anyone, and certainly was no courtroom villain. He was, however, perhaps unlucky in having supplanted popular, patriotic Street.
Ainsmith’s appeal would go all the way to Newton Baker, President Wilson’s capable and innovative secretary of war, who “looked as if he ought to be teaching Latin in some girls’ academy.”26 Other players’ appeals progressed at lower levels. A board in East Orange, New Jersey, considered the case of Yankees pitcher Joseph “Happy” Finneran. “Finneran, whose classification in the draft was 4A, . . . advanced the plea that he had a wife and child dependent upon him for support and that, being skilled in base ball alone, there was no other work he could do by which he would be able to support them as well. In consideration of this the board granted him permission to remain with his team and continue to earn his livelihood by playing professional base ball.”27 The Senators and the rest of baseball hoped Secretary Baker felt the same way.
As the Major Leagues awaited the big decision, Fred Toney popped back into the news. Still facing trials for draft evasion and violating the Mann Act, he was having a very poor season in Cincinnati. The New York Giants purchased his contract July 22 from Cincinnati, a move generally interpreted as an attempt by manager John McGraw to strengthen his pitching staff. “Were it not for his 1917 record, ‘Muggsy’ McGraw would not consider him for a moment,” Louis Dougher wrote in the Washington Times.28 Toney compounded his problems by trying to hold out for a portion of the purchase price, reportedly as high as $10,000.
“While the major league officials are trying to talk the Secretary of War into granting them a respite, Fred Toney balks at being sold by Cincinnati to the Giants,” Dan Daniel wrote in wonder. “Especially is this hard to understand when that man is a pitcher who has lost nine games in ten starts and is confronted with the probability of making every start an early and winning one in shipyards and the like.”29
Toney finally suited up for the Giants on August 1 to face Jim “Hippo” Vaughn and the Cubs at the Polo Grounds. “The first intimation that Toney was a full-fledged Giant and had finally signed the ‘papers’ was flashed to the press box when the big fellow walked in front of the grandstand to warm up.”30
Vaughn and Toney had faced off in an epic game the previous season, in which each pitched a no-hitter through nine innings. Toney’s Reds had then won 1–0 in the tenth. The New York papers stayed silent now about what sort of reception Giants fans gave their new right-hander. Chicago hitters ran Toney ragged as Vaughn threw a one-hit, 5–0 shutout. “Toney moves over the ground with just about as much grace as an army tank, and when the Cubs started to deposit bunts on the infield lawn, monstrous Frederick found himself getting in the way of his own feet.”31
Vaughn beat Toney again four days later in the final game of the Cubs series, effectively ending the Giants’ hopes of overtaking Chicago for the National League pennant. Toney next appeared out of the bullpen to face his old club, the Reds. He would ultimately win six games for the Giants and improve his record to 12-12 for the season . . . after which he still faced two federal criminal proceedings.
Baseball’s anxiety over Secretary Baker’s work-or-fight decision meanwhile continued for several days, prompting speculation that he might delay his ruling until after the season. “Relief from the suspense under which all connected with base ball now are laboring is what is most earnestly sought. No matter how it is brought about, it will be welcome,” Denman Thompson wrote. “It is not merely the mental stress being suffered by men having their all invested in the game. The players who have only the diamond to rely on for the support of their dependents, who have received or know they soon will receive orders making it obligatory for them to find something ‘useful’ to do, are leaving their teams in increasing numbers.”32
A decision on the appeal of Edward Ainsmith, order No. 1239, serial no. 1137, local board no. 9, District of Columbia, finally arrived July 19. In a long and thoughtful statement, Secretary Newton reviewed the history of the appeal and of the work-or-fight regulation itself. He addressed the three main arguments for excluding baseball from the regulation. Paraphrased, they were these:
1. Baseball was a large business that the regulation would destroy.
2. Ballplayers devoted so much time to attaining their high level of skill that they couldn’t maintain their families’ standard of living in other occupations.
3. Stopping the national pastime would cause social and industrial harm far outweighing any military loss from exempting players.
Baker rejected all three.
“The situation of professional base ball differs in no wise from other civilian peace-time business which by reason of the stress of war and its demands upon the industries and energy of the country must be content to bear whatever burden is imposed by temporary inactivity. . . .
It has been necessary for us in this country to institute processes of rapid industrial training, and it is quite inconceivable that occupations cannot be found by these men which not only would relieve them from the onus of non-productive employment but would make them productive in some capacity highly useful to the nation. . . .
The country will be best satisfied if the great selective process by which our Army is recruited makes no discriminations among men, except those upon which depend the preservation of the business and industries of the country essential to the successful prosecution of the war.”33
The war secretary denied Ainsmith’s appeal and affirmed the ruling of the catcher’s local and district boards. “Base Ball Ruled a Non-essential,” read a front-page headline in the Washington Star, echoing others all around the country.34 “Base ball received a knockout wallop yesterday,” Denman Thompson wrote. “But although shaken from stem to stern and hanging on the ropes the sport has not yet taken the count and it is possible the magnates may take some action to continue the game even if it is but a shadow of its former self.”35 Dan Daniel believed the blow to baseball had been delivered from France. “It came from Major Til Huston, part owner of the New York Americans, in his now famous scathing rebuke to his fellow owners and his severe arraignment of the players and others connected with the clubs.”36
With rosters in flux, numbers were hard to pin down. The National Commission had informed General Crowder privately in mid-June that of 309 active Major League ballplayers (an average of 19 per club), 258 fell under the work-or-fight order, “if the Amended Selective Service Regulations issued by you are to be strictly enforced.”37 Bill Macbeth of the New York Tribune now pegged the figures at 247 out of 318. “With comparatively few exceptions, all sixteen clubs will be completely riddled as the result of the ruling of the Secretary of War,” Macbeth wrote. “Indeed, the Philadelphia National League club stands to lose all sixteen of the men now on its payroll.”38
Fred Lieb put the figure slightly lower in the Sun, at 236, but was no more optimistic than Macbeth. “An attempt may be made to continue the league races with veterans over the draft age, and boys under 21, but such baseball would be ‘major’ only by courtesy,” Lieb wrote. He estimated that at least 90 percent of the ballplayers were married, most with dependents. “A change in employment will mean a great monetary loss to the average ball player, the great majority of whom know no trade and can do little besides play ball.” Clearly angry, the sportswriter fired a broadside at the government:
Whether the baseball fan deserved more consideration from Secretary Baker was a question for the War Secretary himself to decide. It was a remarkable fact, however, that baseball was drawing better than it did last year, and the Yankees had visions of a banner season. Despite the fact that the club had lost five straight games, close to 12,000 persons paid to see last Thursday’s double header with Detroit.
A patriotic impulse to obey the Government’s latest order seems to actuate all baseball magnates, but most of them cannot hide a feeling that the Government was unnecessarily hard on a sport which has served as the nation’s summer recreation for the last generation, and all for the purpose of adding about 250 unskilled laborers to war plants.39
While expressing their disappointment, baseball’s leading men delivered appropriate remarks to the writers. “I do not know if the game could be continued with men outside the draft age, and surely we do not want to continue it if that is not the will of the administration,” Ban Johnson said for the American League.40 “If it is the desire of the President that there be no more base ball I will gladly abide by his wishes,” manager Clark Griffith agreed in Washington.41 Cleveland owner James Dunn went further and announced the Indians’ immediate shutdown. “We will play a double header with Philadelphia to-morrow and will then close the ball park for the balance of the season at least,” Dunn said the day after the secretary’s statement. “It is our desire to comply promptly with Secretary Baker’s ruling on baseball.”42
“If baseball comes under the classification of a non-essential occupation we will most gladly make the sacrifice of our business interests in the country’s welfare,” said John Tener. “We feel, however, some provisions should be made that would give us time to determine whether or not the clubs can proceed under the suggestion made by Secretary Baker or whether we will close out our business entirely, and we will request the War Department to make its ruling more definite as it concerns this point.”43
Tener’s point was pertinent and important. Secretary Baker hadn’t said exactly when his ruling would take effect. The calendar was already three weeks past General Crowder’s original effective date of July 1. Like Governor Tener, Brooklyn owner Charles Ebbets thought James Dunn and others might be moving too hastily to shutter the Major Leagues.
“It is hard to tell how many men will be taken by the application or how fast they will be taken, but in any and every event I am in favor of continuing,” Ebbets said. “It will be found that in the long run the financial loss to the second division clubs will not be as great as might be supposed at first glance, and that will be atoned for by the protection of property rights and the heading off of law suits in the future.” Ebbets suggested that clubs further reduce their rosters to seventeen or eighteen players. “It is sure that we are not going to play to empty parks, and as conditions adjust themselves we might do pretty nearly as well as if we kept on going on the present basis.”44
Stars and Stripes in Paris wasn’t interested in the exact date on which the work-or-fight order would take effect. Strongly influenced by Lt. Grantland Rice, shanghaied onto the paper from his artillery duties, editors no longer cared to cover sports at all.
Rice had landed with his battery at Cherbourg in the spring. “I started to the front with my bunch but didn’t get very far before an order came through reassigning me to Paris and The Stars and Stripes,” he later wrote.45 He resisted the assignment the only way he could. “Lieut. Grantland Rice, hired to be sporting editor, promptly canned the sport page for the duration of the war and went off to report the front,” an editor recalled, exaggerating only slightly.46 Rice’s version was that he had visited the front to learn what sort of sports news the doughboys wanted.
“Wandering around a day later from one battery or company to another we found that most of the troops, largely volunteers, were against all sport back home,” he wrote in 1943. “They were bitter against star ball players, fighters and motion picture actors who had remained behind. ‘Slacker’ was the only word they used, heavily embellished. I reported the situation after a week’s survey and the sporting page of the Stars and Stripes was promptly canceled.”47
The army newspaper announced the shutdown in the July 26 issue. “Lieutenant Grantland Rice, the sport writer, himself recited the funeral oration for the sporting page when it was buried for the duration.”48 The piece was unsigned, but it reflected the style and elegance of Rice’s old column.
Back home the sight of a high fly drifting into the late sun may still have its thrill for a few. But over here the all absorbing factors are shrapnel, high explosives, machine gun bullets, trench digging, stable cleaning, nursing, training back of the lines and other endless details throughout France from the base ports to beyond the Marne.
Sports among the troops must go on—for that is part of the job. Sport among the youngsters back home must go on—for that, too, is part of the training job.
But the glorified, the commercialized, the spectatorial sport of the past has been burnt out by gun fire. The sole slogan left is “Beat Germany.” Anything that pertains to that slogan counts. The rest doesn’t. And that is why this is the last sporting page THE STARS AND STRIPES will print until an Allied victory brings back peace.49
Despite shuttering the sports page, Rice didn’t successfully wrangle a return to his artillery unit until autumn.
In the United States, three of the four surviving Minor Leagues decided not to wait for clarification of the government’s work-or-fight timetable. The Virginia League suspended operations after its games July 20, the day following Secretary Baker’s announcement. “The players can’t play to empty stands, you know,” said an official from the Class C league. “And we cannot keep on under the present arrangement; it would be a matter of continually asking the sporting populace to patronize a thing which they do not wish to patronize.” “Of course, allowance has to be made for the fact that the larger part of the crowds of last year has been drafted into the service,” added the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “And the rest are, consequently, kept too busy to go to the games.”50
The Eastern League and the American Association padlocked their turnstiles the day after the Virginia’s action. “In view of Sec Baker’s decision . . . there is nothing left for minor baseball leagues except to close up shop,” said the president of the Eastern, a Class B circuit. “There is no doubt but that the Government considers baseball nonessential and we hasten to comply with the Government’s wishes in this matter.”51
By far the largest loss was the Class AA American Association. Only two weeks earlier, it had actively signed players from the shuttered Western, Southern, Pacific Coast International, and Texas Leagues. “As is generally known, the baseball business is anything but a success this season, due to the war situation,” President Thomas Hickey had said, “but in view of the fact that our organization will go thru with its season we have decided to give the public the highest standard of the game possible.”52 Now his circuit, too, was finished.
“Secretary Baker’s decision was a surprise to us,” Hickey admitted. “We have had encouraging attendance and had expected to finish the season. Naturally, however, we will abide by the government’s wishes.”53 The Kansas City Blues were awarded the pennant. “It is understood that the enforcement of the work or fight order against professional baseball players will mean an exodus of ball players from the American Association to shipyards and other war industries at Duluth and Superior.”54
The only Minor League now left playing was the new International League, the reorganized and merged Class AA circuit that had very nearly not begun the season at all. Its leaders alone took time in deciding whether to abandon the field. “It was rumored in Newark that Joe Lannin, former owner of the Boston Red Sox and a baseball enemy of AL President Ban Johnson, had convinced other New International League team owners not to close shop, intimating that if the majors did, places would be made for their players in the International,” Louis Lee Arms reported.55 Lannin, perhaps the most influential owner in the circuit, later declared that his circuit “would finish the original schedule regardless of the present crisis in baseball.”56 The league owners voted July 25 at a special meeting in New York to keep playing. The circuit would, in fact, last out the season, although the Syracuse franchise would run into trouble the first week in August and be moved to Hamilton, Ontario.
As the last Minor League still operating, the International borrowed a tactic from the shipyard circuits and tried to turn turmoil in the Majors to its own advantage. With the Syracuse-to-Hamilton shift still in progress, Newark manager Tommy McCarthy sent telegrams to Cleveland outfielders Tris Speaker and “Smoky” Joe Wood and to Brooklyn pitcher Rube Marquard, offering them good salaries to finish the season with his club. “The International will stick and will be a real big league,” McCarthy wired. “Better get in out of the wet while the getting is good.”57
The Duluth team in the Head of the Lakes–Mesaba industrial circuit had tried the same tactic while the big leagues were still waiting to learn when the work-or-fight order would take effect. Officials of the Minnesota club fired off a telegram to Washington’s Walter Johnson on July 24, offering him at least $300 per game to pitch for them if the Major Leagues disbanded. The pitcher was married with two small children and so was in Class IV of the draft. Telegrams also went out to Cubs pitcher Claude Hendrix and Browns catcher Hank Severeid. The league’s Superior team likewise tried to recruit shortstop Dave Bancroft of the Phillies. Duluth’s offer was but the latest of many that Johnson had already received from shipyard and steel leagues.
“I’d rather not talk about these offers I have refused,” “Big Train” told sportswriters in St. Louis. “The other boys are getting them, and while I love baseball, I’d prefer to wait until we receive the decision as to the future of the game from Washington before I announce my plans. Really, now, I don’t know what my future plans are.” A Washington reporter saw it this way:
It is not improbable that if baseball is declared non-essential Johnson will return to his home in Kansas and swing the plow on the farm. Walter has accumulated sufficient funds to carry him through life without worrying about the price of his breakfast tomorrow. Like many athletes, Walter is adopting a “watchful waiting” policy.58
A committee of baseball magnates called on Provost Marshal General Crowder in Washington on July 24, asking that enforcement of the work-or-fight rule be extended to October 15, which was after the date on which the World Series normally would end. General Crowder met with Secretary Baker later that day to give him recommendations. The baseball world then held its breath.
“This suspense is awful!” the Washington Herald sighed on July 26, when Baker still hadn’t issued a statement. The newspaper hopefully pointed out that Baker had once been Cleveland’s mayor and now lived in Washington, and perhaps he wouldn’t care to ruin the pennant chances of either city. “The decision has been written and all it awaits is the Secretary’s signature. No one knows definitely whether it’s a death warrant or a lease on life—until the end of the present season, at least—for the sport.”59
The suspense ended that evening. “I think it would be an unfortunate thing to have so wholesome a recreation as baseball destroyed if it can be continued by the use of persons not available for essential war service,” Secretary Baker said in a long, well-reasoned statement. “It does happen that baseball is more integrated than any other occupation in our country, at least in the sense that its successful conduct depends upon the preservation of all the major league teams scattered throughout the country, while in most occupations the work-or-fight order has merely a series of local and more or less personal effects.” Baker denied the magnates’ request for an extension to October 15, but settled on September 1 as the date for the work-or-fight rule to take effect for ballplayers. “The decision met the baseball magnates half way,” the Washington Herald concluded.60
“I suppose that the league seasons will close on Sept. 2, which is Labor Day and a legal holiday,” said Cincinnati magnate and National Commission chairman Garry Herrmann. “The day after ball players will have to start to work. It is expected that all the ball players will have secured positions in essential industries by that date, so they will lose no time getting busy for the Government as soon as the season ends.”61
The key word in Herrmann’s statement was suppose. Again, no one knew exactly what Secretary Baker had in mind. This new uncertainty set off another conflict within the Major Leagues. “Ban Johnson, and those with him, want a world’s series. The National Leaguers want a world’s series. All the magnates want the money. So far, they are united,” Louis Dougher wrote in the Washington Times. “Here steps in the interpretations of Secretary Baker’s ruling. General Crowder forgot to provide the magnates with a map, suitably adorned with crosses showing where the body lay, and so the magnates don’t know what it’s all about.”62
Johnson and the American League believed that the 1918 season, including the World Series, had to finish by September 1. In Johnson’s view, this meant ending the season August 20 to leave enough time for the championship series. Governor Tener and the National League, however, believed that September 1 was the end date (extended by another day for the Labor Day holiday) only for the regular season, with the World Series to follow.
Compounding the problem was yet another dispute between Johnson and Tener, this one over the services of pitcher Scott Perry. In protest of Johnson’s actions in the convoluted case, Tener for a month had refused to serve on the National Commission, effectively stalling all its functions. Hashing out a solution to the World Series was therefore bound to be contentious. The parties scheduled separate meetings—the NL in New York, the AL and the National Commission both in Cleveland. The fireworks erupted in the city on the lake August 3, when Johnson met unaccustomed opposition within his own league. Pittsburgh owner and emissary Barney Dreyfuss sparked the crisis when he arrived with precise instructions from the National League.
“My league has given me no alternative,” Dreyfuss said. “We intend to play through Labor day. If the American league quits sooner, that’s its privilege, but I can tell you positively there will be no world’s series.”63 Three rebel American League magnates agreed with that view—Clark Griffith, Charles Comiskey, and Harry Frazee.
“If the club owners wish to take a chance on acting contrary to the ruling of the war department, that is their business,” Johnson snapped back. The opposing trio retorted, “The declaration by President Johnson that we are taking a chance on continuing the season, inferring we were defying the war department, is an unwarranted misstatement of facts.” They added in a statement that although Johnson had always acted honestly, “he has bungled the affairs of his league in this particular case. . . . He has tried to close our gates several times this season, but from now on he is through spending our money. From now on, the club owners are going to run the American league.”64
When other American League magnates gave way, Johnson capitulated and agreed to play through Labor Day. It was a stinging defeat for the league founder and president, one that many sportswriters mistakenly believed he could not survive. Johnson found an unlikely defender in John McGraw, who thought he deserved better. “Johnson is big enough to take care of himself in the present controversy,” the Giants manager said. “He is a smart base ball man and I can’t figure how his enemies have a chance to down him. These base ball quarrels are unfortunate just now, when the game needs help from every one.”65 Nonetheless, if not the end of his long reign, the defeat in Cleveland was perhaps the beginning of the end of the Ban Johnson era.
The two leagues now hoped to begin the World Series on September 4. The date was later than Baker’s order had seemed to indicate but a month earlier than in peacetime. “The continuance of only two teams beyond September 2 will be required,” the National Commission said, “and as the series ends automatically when a team wins four games it is practically certain that not more than six games will be required, and at most eight or ten days will cover the time which the contesting players will lose in entering the Government’s service or essential employment.”66
In late August Secretary Baker granted a request from the National Commission and officially sanctioned the series. “I will write to General Crowder and tell him that I would be glad to have the local draft boards informed that I am in sympathy with an extension to the 15th of September for such persons as will be involved in the world series.”67
There seemed little doubt all along, however, about which two teams would play for the championship. “This will . . . give ‘dopesters,’ for the first time in their lives, a chance to pick a pennant winner in July,” the Washington Herald commented on July 27. “For in the American league the Boston Red Sox hold a commanding lead, and in the National organization the Chicago Cubs are on top. If both clubs keep up their present pace, it looks as though they will meet in the annual classic.”68
Governor John Tener wouldn’t be around to enjoy the World Series as head of the National League, however. On August 6 he asked that his resignation as league president, first tendered in December, now be accepted. Sportswriters generally thought the request was helpful in difficult times. “The resignation of President Tener will clear up the involved situation in the National Commission and expedite the work of that organization in preparing for the proposed world’s series, scheduled to begin September 3 or 4.”69