1900-1919 Baseball Review

American Baseball HistoryArvada West Senior High

Thomson

1900-1910 Baseball

Players Protective Association: Founded in 1900 Originated from the Brotherhood of

Professional Baseball Players (1885) One of the first unions created by players who

objected the Reserve Clause Forced players to stay with one team at the

owners disposal Players had no say as to where they were

traded/sold

1900–1910 Baseball

Ban Johnson

Byron Bancroft Johnson:-Created the American League in 1901

-Offered higher salaries and better contract options

-Players like Cy Young, John McGraw, and Nap Lajoie jumped from the National League

-Cracked down on dirty play and banned liquor from ballparks

-Baseball becoming a more acceptable activity

1900–1910 Baseball

Immigration and Baseball: Baseball becoming a

reflection of the changing ethnic composition of America.

Many European immigrants became club owners due to limited entrepreneurial opportunities in a less risky environment.

A number of Northern and Eastern European immigrants played on teams as a means for social mobility. Olaf Henriksen - Denmark

1900-1910 Baseball

Alta Weiss: 1907 First Woman to Play Professional Baseball

1900-1910 Baseball

US Postal Service Commemorative Stamp 2008

Take Me Out to the Ball Game:“Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and

cracker jack, I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root, for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three strikes,

you’re out, at the old ball game.”

Jack Norwith

1907

1910-1919 Baseball

The First, First Pitch: William Howard Taft establishes the tradition of

throwing out the first pitch on April 14, 1910.

1910-1919 Baseball

Player-Owner Relationships: Players were becoming increasingly frustrated with poor

conditions on and off the field. 1912 – Players Fraternity created:

Attempted to negotiate better conditions, but quickly fell apart 1912 – First Players strike:

Detroit Tigers players struck over Ty Cobb’s suspension after fighting with a fan

Tigers President, Frank J. Navin, hired scabs off the street to replace his striking players

This and numerous other problems helped to increase the sense of injustice within baseball, eventually leading to the Black Sox Scandal

1910-1919 Baseball

The Black Sox: Charles Comiskey, Owner of the Chicago Whit

Sox, paid extremely low wages and treated his players poorly

Due to their poor treatment, players leaped at any opportunity to earn more money

A group of players including: Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte, accepted money to throw the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds

1910-1919 Baseball

The Scandal: Multiple rumors and accusations led to the investigation of

eight players and their eventual trials During the investigation, both Cicotte and Jackson

confessed, although shortly after their confessions went missing

Now, with no evidence, all eight players were acquitted Because of the evident problems, Federal Judge Kenesaw

Mountain Landis was brought in as the sport’s first commissioner

Unfortunately for the the players, Landis was not as forgiving and banned all eight players for life

1910-1919 Baseball

Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis

“Regardless of the verdict of the juries, no player who

throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises

to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence

with a bunch of crooked players, and does not

promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional

baseball.”

1910-1919 Baseball

World War One and Baseball: Ban Johnson ordered his teams to learn close-order

drills John K. Tener, President of the National League, stated

“This is a war of democracy against bureaucracy. And I tell you that baseball is the very watchword of democracy.”

With baseball now one of the leaders in the entertainment industry, owners felt no reason to stop playing: This decision sparked a great deal of criticism across the

nation along with a drastic decline in attendance

1910-1919 Baseball

Eddie Grant

Players or Soldiers?-Owners argued that baseball be considered an essential industry so that players could not be drafted

-Secretary of War Newton D. Baker disagreed with this statement, leading to the drafting of 227 MLB players

-Three professional players were killed in combat, one of whom was Eddie Grant, former Captain of the New York Giants