Baseball

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BASEBALL

BASEBALL. Contrary to the myth that Abner Doubleday originated the sport in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, a form of baseball was played in the 1820s, if not before. The sport probably originated in England from games like cricket and rounders, in which players struck a ball with a stick and ran to a base. In 1748, an English woman recorded that the family of the Prince of Wales played baseball. George Washington's army at Valley Forge played a game of "base." By the 1840s, different types of baseball had developed in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. In 1845, Alexander Cartwright, a New York bank teller, proposed rules borrowed from these various forms to organize the sport for middle-class gentlemen. Unlike today, pitchers threw underhand, the winning team had to score twenty-one runs, and batters were out if hit by a thrown ball or when a hit was caught on one bounce. But Cartwright's rules did require play on a diamond-shaped field with bases ninety feet apart, nine players on the field, and three outs to an inning.

By the Civil War, baseball was a popular sport with men from both the middle and working classes and had spread to the Midwest and California. Newspapers already reported on it regularly. In fact, one newspaper in 1856 described baseball as "the national pastime," a claim that soon became true and remained so at the beginning of the twenty-first century, no matter how clichéd the phrase itself has become. Henry Chadwick, an English immigrant and sportswriter, did much to popularize baseball by creating the box score in 1860, by calculating batting averages, and by promoting the game as an enjoyable sport to play and to watch. From the start, as Chadwick discerned and generations since have discovered, base-ball's statistics have proved to be a subject of debate and fascination, more so than in any other sport.

After the Civil War, baseball's popularity spread to the South, and growing numbers of fans throughout the country encouraged more intense competition and brought money into the sport. The first professional team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings, founded in 1869. While the quality of play steadily increased and amateurs rarely won against professionals, disputes over salaries, gambling, alcohol abuse, and rowdy fans also began to plague professional baseball by the early 1870s.

Players organized the first professional league in 1871 but it collapsed in 1875. A year later, William Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White Stockings, helped create the National League with teams from other cities in the Midwest and East. While this league also saw many franchises fail over the years, it did survive. The rival American Association was formed late in 1881. By 1887, at a time when the country accepted the practice of Jim

Crow segregation, players and owners agreed not to employ African Americans in baseball. The owners also agreed to the reserve clause, which at first limited the number of players eligible to switch teams. By 1889, the reserve clause blacklisted any player who broke his contract, thus keeping players' salaries low and ensuring the owners' survival. It also prevented players from marketing their talents freely. A century later, the reserve clause would be broken and players' salaries would explode.

By the late 1880s, baseball resembled the modern game. Baseball parks began to be built, and the two leagues played a series to determine the world champion. The distance between the mound and home plate lengthened to fifty feet; overhand pitching became the norm; four balls, not seven, made a walk; a strike zone was de-fined; and most players wore gloves, thus reducing errors. Players like Cap Anson and King Kelly had become stars, popular culture celebrated the sport in poems such as "Casey at the Bat," and periodicals devoted exclusively to baseball, such as The Sporting News, appeared. In 1890, players rebelled against the salaries imposed by the owners and formed a union and a new league. However, the players' league lasted only one year and helped kill the American Association.

Lack of competition in the twelve-team league, the dominance of pitching, and the poor reputation of players like John McGraw hurt baseball in the 1890s and attendance declined. But in 1893 the distance between home plate and the pitcher was increased to its present sixty feet six inches and as a result hitting improved. In 1899, Ban Johnson, a former sports editor who influenced baseball until the 1920s, transformed a minor league into the American League. It won acceptance as an equal from the National League in 1902, creating a rivalry that has endured. The first modern World Series was held in 1903. Major stars, such as shortstop Honus Wagner of the Pirates, and superlative teams—like those managed by McGraw in New York and Connie Mack in Philadelphia—arose. After 1909, ten ballparks were either built or remodeled, replacing wooden structures prone to fire with steel, and were located near public transit stations to attract the growing urban middle class. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, for example, were built during this period. In 1910, in a reflection of the importance of baseball, President William Howard Taft threw out the first ball of the season, establishing a tradition that has continued ever since.

Despite the play of stars like Ty Cobb, Christy Mathewson, Grover Alexander, and Walter Johnson, attendance began to decline in 1909, for no clear reason. Even so, baseball continued to attract wealthy investors, and in 1914 the Federal League was founded. Although the new league lasted only two years, it lured away many players from the other two leagues, doubled many players' salaries, and hurt most owners. Attendance revived in 1916, but World War I reduced baseball's appeal and more than two hundred players went into the service. The 1919 season might have been cancelled had the war continued. Baseball rebounded well from the war and doubled the attendance of the previous year as the nation embraced a return to normalcy. In addition to enjoying fine pennant races, baseball audiences were thrilled by Babe Ruth, a superb pitcher for the Red Sox, who, after being moved to the outfield, hit twenty-nine homers, a record that had stood since 1884.

Yet in retrospect, 1919 proved to be a disastrous year for baseball when in 1920 it was found that eight White Sox players had conspired with gamblers to lose the 1919 World Series to the underdog Cincinnati Reds. Rumors of a fix appeared even before the series began, but White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, who underpaid his talented players, ignored them. Five of the eight players were clearly guilty of throwing the series. The newly appointed baseball commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned all eight for life. The ban included Shoeless Joe Jackson, a marvelous hitter, who was probably not involved. Landis's autocratic rule, which lasted into World War II, helped save baseball, as did the outlawing of trick pitches like the spitball.

Another factor that restored popularity to the game was Babe Ruth's superlative performance as a New York Yankee during the 1920s. The slugger, from a Baltimore home for wayward boys, hit fifty-four home runs in 1920 and transformed the game. While he also hit .376, it was Ruth's power and personality that attracted millions of fans. His personal home run total was greater than the team totals of all but one of the fifteen other teams and his slugging percentage was the best ever until Barry Bonds broke his record in 2001. The next year, he hit fifty-nine homers. It was not until the 1970s that Henry "Hank" Aaron broke his home run total record. The Yankees became the first team ever to draw one million fans in a season and did so six more times in the 1920s, allowing them to build Yankee Stadium in 1922. More generally, baseball's new emphasis on the home run, as opposed to a dependency on pitching and defense, changed the game dramatically. Pitchers won thirty or more games seventeen times between 1900 and 1920, but not once in the 1920s. In addition to homers, eight players hit over .400 between 1920 and 1930. Only Ted Williams, in 1941, has done so since.

The era from 1920 through 1930 was a great one for baseball. The Yankees began one of their many dynasties, the Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack may have been the best team ever, and Branch Rickey, through his invention of the farm system, made the Cardinals a strong franchise despite not having much money. There were also many stars besides Ruth, including Lou Gehrig, Al Simmons, George Sisler, Hack Wilson, and Rogers Hornsby, probably the greatest right-handed hitter ever.

Not surprisingly, the Great Depression and World War II hurt baseball severely. Attendance declined so much that many teams faced collapse, often selling off good players just to survive, while many stars had to serve in the war. Hard times, however, bred innovation to maintain fan interest. The All-Star game, the Hall of Fame, and the Most Valuable Player award were invented in the 1930s. Night baseball, pushed by Larry MacPhail, and radio broadcasts, especially with Red Barber in Cincinnati, became popular. Among the great players of the 1930s, Hank Greenberg, a Jew, and Joe DiMaggio, an Italian American, illustrate the important role minorities have played in baseball. African Americans, however, were conspicuous by their absence.

Blacks, of course, had continued to play baseball at all levels after whites barred them from organized baseball in the 1880s. But none of the black leagues lasted very long until the 1920s, when Andrew "Rube" Foster, formerly a great pitcher, helped establish the Negro National League with teams in the Midwest and East. A rival league survived for only five years. As with the majors, black teams did well in the 1920s but only a few prospered in the 1930s. By World War II, the idea of integration had surfaced, largely from a desire to exploit black talent and interest in baseball. While most African Americans wanted baseball to integrate, many realized it would kill the Negro leagues, an integral part of their society. In 1945, Branch Rickey, now of the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed the twenty-six-year-old Jackie Robinson to a contract with the minor-league Montreal Royals, thus breaking the color barrier. In 1947, Robinson played for the Dodgers and won the Rookie of the Year award. Later in the same year, Larry Doby of the Indians integrated the American League, but it lagged behind the senior circuit in signing black players until the 1960s.

The end of World War II, the return of baseball's stars, and good pennant races increased attendance dramatically up through 1949. To exploit this success, the Mexican League tried to lure players away with large salaries in 1946 but the effort failed. Prompted by talk of a players' union, the owners established a minimum salary and a pension plan in 1946, halting unionization for another twenty years. Baseball faced other problems by the late 1940s, however. The Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees, with stars like Robinson, Mickey Mantle, and Willie Mays, proved too dominant up through 1956 for the sport's health. Television hurt attendance, particularly in the minor leagues, and owners feared using it to broadcast games. And baseball had not followed the population flow into the South, West, and the suburbs; franchises had not moved out of the East and Midwest for almost a century.

In 1952, the Boston Braves decided to move to Milwaukee, thus beginning a shift of franchises that has consistently annoyed the cities, such as Boston and then Milwaukee, which were abandoned, enthralled those that got teams, and led to a dilution of talent. Soon the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, the Athletics moved to Kansas City and then to Oakland, and the Dodgers went to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco. In the early 1960s, expansion occurred in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York, and Houston, followed in 1969 by the first international team, the Montreal Expos, then eight years later by the Toronto Blue Jays. Having more teams prompted baseball to divide the league into divisions in 1969, with playoffs to determine World Series opponents.

Sports became a phenomenal business in the 1960s. Baseball's attendance increased by more than 60 percent during the decade, even as basketball and football grew tremendously, competing for both athletes and customers. The influx of great black athletes into baseball began to slow in the 1960s, partly replaced by an expansion in the number of Hispanic players, such as Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, and Tony Oliva. Baseball itself also changed after the pitcher's mound was raised in 1962; defense, pitching, and speed came to dominate, with players like Maury Wills, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and Lou Brock replacing the sluggers as heroes. In addition, relief pitching became more important, further weakening the offense. In 1973, to increase run production and attendance, the American League introduced the controversial designated hitter, who could replace the pitcher as a batter.

Money proved the most significant problem for baseball, however. After World War II, the owners controlled both baseball and the commissioner. In 1966, the players' association hired Marvin Miller, formerly of the United Steel Workers of America, to help them bargain. Often helped by weak commissioners and inept owners, Miller and the players changed labor relations dramatically. After a brief strike in 1972, their pension plan greatly improved and they won the right to arbitration in disputes with the owners. In 1975, five years after the Cardinals' Curt Flood unsuccessfully challenged the reserve clause, two players, with Miller's counsel, successfully evaded the clause by letting their contracts lapse. Thereafter, players could become free agents and bargain for higher salaries, which they quickly did. In 1981, another strike occurred as owners tried but failed to regain their control of baseball.

Regardless of labor difficulties, baseball enjoyed great success from the late 1970s into the 1990s, with competitive races and great players like Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, Tom Seaver, George Brett, Nolan Ryan, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, and Cal Ripken Jr., who broke Gehrig's consecutive game record. Until later in the decade, when the Yankees prevailed, no team dominated. As attendance rose, with increased leisure time, expansion continued even as franchises became incredibly expensive. Strikeouts increased dramatically as more players tried for home runs and the importance of relief pitching increased. In 1955, only three players struck out 100 times; in 1998, seventy-three players matched that total. But home runs also increased and spectacularly so in 1998 and 1999, when Mark McGuire hit 70 and 65 and Sammy Sosa 66 and 63 to shatter Roger Maris's mark of 61 in 1961. In 2001, Barry Bonds surpassed McGuire's record by hitting 73. For his part, Sosa hit over 60 for the third time, becoming the first player ever to achieve such a feat.

Labor troubles also remained part of baseball with another strike in August of the 1994 season. It was a bitter struggle that wiped out the World Series and only ended at the start of the 1995 season, with both sides far apart and the public angry. Attendance dropped by 20 million from 1993 and was regained only by 2000. The appeal of baseball remained, however, as enthusiasm for minor league teams revived and new parks in Baltimore, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, and Cleveland renewed interest. But baseball faced serious problems, such as increased competition for the entertainment dollar, high ticket prices, excessively long games, declining television audiences, the weakness of small market teams with poor finances, and the need to import more and more talent, now from Japan, to play the national pastime.