II What t, ba&ball to America? Eacb to . his own way, the writers in this edition TNP ofThe National Pastime confront that question and suggest different answers. Where all agree, however, is that while baseball is surely a game-a fact sometimes obscured in a gumbo of"rites ofpassage" and "cosmic resonances"-it is also more thanjust the game of our youth. (Why else study a box score, or read a publication like this?) Merritt Clifton, in "Where the Twain Shall Meet," ~~=================::'THE points out that America's national pastime has long since -===================== gone international. Now baseball may-perhaps must­ National @ Pastime provide a model to all humanity ofhow the values ofthe A REVIEW OF BASEBALL HISTORY individual and those of society can be in harmony. For Clifton, "the twain" signifY not only East and West but also male and female, winter and summer, farm and city, Let's Go Back to Eight-Team Leagues, war and peace. Can baseball light the way for the world's john McCormack 2 tribes to come together as one? Read this provocative Do Clutch Pitchers Exist? Pete Palmer 5 piece, beginning on page 12. Take-Charge Cy, Dan Krueckeberg 7 Baseball is sport, and it is business.John McCormack, in Where the Twain Shall Meet, Merritt Clifton 12 "Let's Go Back to Eight-Team Leagues" (page 2) proposes The Last Brooklyn Dodger, jack Zafran 23 a revolutionary plan-in the sense that the old has re­ Acrostic Puzzle,jtjfrey Neuman 25 0 volved 180 to become new again-to make baseball The Year of the Hitter, William B. Mead 26 better sport and better business. He makes sense-here's 1884: Old Hoss Radbourne and the hoping that those in a position to effect such change Providence Grays, Frederick Ivor-Campbell 33 consider the reasoning. In the same vein, Gary Hailey Mutrie's Mets of 1884,johnj. O'Malley 39 looks back to the events of seventy years ago­ particularly, the dismantling ofthe Federal League. This Dick Allen's 1972: A Year to Remember, chaotic r~treat culminated in the famous Supreme Court Mark Lazarus 42 ruling of1922 exempting Organized Baseball from anti­ Spring Training, Mike Mumby and Mark Rucker 45 trust legislation. Hailey clears up many misconceptions The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, about baseball's legal standing-including the erroneous Mark Gallagher 57 notion that the Court ruled in favor ofbaseball because it Anatomy of a Murder: was "not a business"-and poses to today's owners and The Federal League and the Courts, Gary Hailey 62 players a highly cautionary tale. Statistics and Fair Play: The Oliver System, Baseball is mathematics (what isn't, all you Pythogore­ Frank P. Bowles 74 ans must be muttering). It is governed by the laws of The National Baseball Library, Bill Deane 82 nature, the laws ofman, and the laws ofprobability. In its Farrell as Fan, David Sanders 85 order and regularity, it seems an exemplar offairness in that what one sees is what one gets. For dissenting views, PS, Vern Luse,jerry Malloy, David Kemp 87 see Pete Palmer's "Do Clutch Pitchers Exist?" (page 7) and Editor: John Thorn Frank P. Bowles' "Statistics and Fair Play: The Oliver Associates: Bill Felber, Mark Rucker System" (page 74). Baseball is a myth machine, writer-fodder for remem­ PICTURE CREDITS Mark Rucker:. front and back covers, 24. brances ofthings past. See David Sanders' "Farrell as Fan" Dan Krueckeberg: 7. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Library, (page 85) andJack Zafran's "The Last Brooklyn Dodger" Inc.: inside front cover, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 27, 29, 34, 37, 48 (r.), 49 (top), 55, 56, 58, 60, 61, 64, 67, 68, 71, 72, 79, 80, 81. John (TNP's first entrant in the realm of fiction, page 23). Thorn: 11, 30. A.G. Spalding Collection, General Research &> Hu­ And baseball is, as the current TV spots rightly put it, a manities Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and game offathers and sons, a bridge across the generations. Tilden Foundations: 38. Mike Mumby: 45, 46 (top), 47 (bot.), 48 It not only has tradition, but in this experimental, diverse, (I.), 49 (boL), 50-54. Library of Congress: 46 (bot.), 47 (top), 48 (bot.). volatile society ofours, baseball is tradition, the tie that binds where faith, community, and family fall away. Fred THE NATIONAL PASTIME (ISSN 0734-6905, ISBN 0-910137-11-0), Ivor-Campbell writing of the Providence Grays ofa cen­ Spring 1985, Vol. 4, No.1. Published by the Society for American tury ago; Bill Mead recalling the Flint Rhem caper of1930; Baseball Research, Inc., P. O. Box 1010, Cooperstown, NY 13326. Edi­ Mark Gallagher exorcising the "Damned Yankees" of torial andAdvertising Offices, 18Virginia Avenue, Saugerties, NY 12477. 1959: The skein ofbaseball's history is all of a piece. Postage paid at Manhattan, Kansas. Copyright © 1985 the Society for American Baseball Research, Inc., All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibitcd. Our front cover is by Mark Rucker. FIRST PRINTING-Ag Press, Manhattan, Kansas. brought the pillage of all but one of SOAPBOX the two-league cities (Boston, Phil­ adelphia, St. Louis, and New York­ only Chicago remained) just about killed league loyalty. Fans in one­ Let's Go Back league cities have no feel for the other league. Little attention, let alone pas­ sion, is given to it. And, how could it be otherwise? There is no longer ani­ to Eight-Team mosity between the leagues. Even churlishness is rare. The leagues are, in effect, business partners who put on a display of mock-combativeness Leagues at the All Star game and the World Series. Contrast Connie Mack's approach JOHN McCORMACK to the 1933 All Star game with Whitey Herzog's to the 1983 game. Mack was there to win. He wanted to humiliate his old antagonist,John McGraw, the National League's manager. He told his squad that ifsome did not play, it was unimportant so long as the T THEIR 1983 winter meet­ It soon had franchises in five of the American League won. Among those ings the major leagues in­ National League's seven cities. who rode Mack's bench all day were A structed their long-range Thereafter it was war, a nasty, bitter future Hall ofFamers Bill Dickey and planning committee to consider the war for survival in which anything Jimmie Foxx. His future colleague at feasibility ofexpanding the National went. The resulting wounds were Cooperstown, Earl Averill, was luck­ and American leagues to sixteen deep, the scars long-lasting. Though ier. He got to pinch hit. But the Amer­ teams each. I believe the committee peace came with the 1903 season, the ican Leaguers won. should recommend such an expan­ National League still regarded the In 1983 Herzog's pregame position sion, and moreover it should recom­ upstart with scorn-so much so that toward victory was, "Who cares?" His mend that the National and Ameri­ in 1904 there was no World Series. National League team reflected its can leagues be dissolved, to be re­ The National League's New York leader's indifference, being battered, placed by four regional eight-team Giants refused to play the American's 13-3-whereupon Herzog an­ leagues. Boston Pilgrims, surprise victors of nounced to one and all that he was The National and American the previous year's Series. Disin­ glad the American League had won! leagues have long since outlived their genuously, the Giants proclaimed John McGraw, Barney Dreyfuss, and usefulness. They are, in fact, detri­ themselves champions of the only Charlie Ebbets must have spun in mental to the game. As long as they major league: What could they gain their graves. Unfortunately for base­ exist, no sensible realignment of through postseason play? ball, however, theAmerican League's teams can be effected. And, only Although peace did not bring good victory had little emotional impact on through such realignment-and ex­ fellowship, it did bring a great asset the game's fans. If the leagues didn't pansion to thirty-two teams-can to the game: league fan loyalty. Itwas care who won, why should the fans? baseball regain undisputed sup­ deeply ingrained by the war and was Even ifinterleague rivalry is a thing remacy in professional sports. passed thereafter from parent to ofthe past, would tradition warrant Before discussing realignment and child. A fan was a National Leaguer retaining the two leagues? Hardly. expansion, however, it would be use­ or an American Leaguer-ifhis team The Organized Baseball Establish­ ful to review the transition of the didn't win the pennant, there was ment has given the backofits hand to National and American leagues from always the hope that his league could tradition at every opportunity. What vital forces to their present mean­ win the Series. It's inconceivable, for happened to tradition when such hal­ ingless states. Once things were example, that a true Giant fan would lowed franchises as the Brooklyn different. Very different. ever have rooted for the New York Dodgers, Boston Braves (a charter The American League was formed Yankees in a World Series, even in 1901 as a rival to the National against the loathsome Dodger:=;. JOHN Mrr.ORMACK ofDal/as is SABR's League, then in its twenty-sixth year. Continental expansion, which vice president; he has writtenfor the B.Rj. THE NATIONAL PASTIME National League member), and Phil­ again there would be true pennant baseball would have bonafide cham­ adelphia Athletics were callously up­ races. No longer would contenders pions competing for the game's ul­ rooted when greater profits beckoned meet for the last time in midsummer.