Robert F. Burk.Pdf

MUCH MORE THAN A GAME MUCH MORE THAN A GAME PLAYERS, OWNERS, & AMERICAN BASEBALL SINCE 1921 ROBERT F. BURK The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill & London © The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Richard Hendel Set in Monotpe Garamond and Champion Types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burk, Robert Fredrick, – Much more than a game : players, owners, and American baseball since / Robert F. Burk. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. --- (cloth : alk. paper) — --- (pbk. : alk. paper) . Baseball—Economic aspects—United States—History—th century. Baseball players—United States—Economic conditions— th century. Baseball team owners—United States—Economic conditions—th century. Industrial relations—United States— History—th century. I. Title: Players, owners, and American baseball since . II. Title. . .''—dc - CONTENTS Preface vii PART ONE The Paternalistic Era: The Age of Rickey Chapter . A New Era, – Chapter . Working on a Chain Gang, – Chapter . War and Revolution, – Chapter . Men in Gray Flannel Suits, – PART TWO The Inflationary Era: The Age of Miller Chapter . Miller Time, – Chapter . Star Wars, – Chapter . The Empire Strikes Back, – Chapter . Armageddon, – Appendix Notes BibliographicEssay Index ILLUSTRATIONS Kenesaw Mountain Landis The St. Louis Cardinals Leroy ‘‘Satchel’’ Paige Robert Murphy locked out of Pirates clubhouse, June , Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey Major league umpires on strike, October , Andy Messersmith C. Raymond ‘‘Ray’’ Grebey and Marvin Miller Peter Ueberroth Donald Fehr Jerry Reinsdorf Allan H. ‘‘Bud’’ Selig PREFACE Although we prefer to see baseball as a game we play or watch for recre- ation, from almost the beginning it has been a labor-intensive industry whose on-field personnel constitute both the entertainment product we enjoy and men engaged in doing their job. At the very heart of this labor- intensive business has been the struggle between on-field employees and management over access to its opportunities, workplace rights, and over- arching both of these, administering the industry and defining the relationship—paternalistic, adversarial, or cooperative—between the two sides. This history can be divided into three main eras. The first—exam- ined in my previous volume, Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and Ameri- can Baseball to —is most accurately viewed as the ‘‘trade war era’’ and lasted from the formation of intercity cartels, most notably the National League, in the s through World War I. The two subsequent peri- ods—the subject of this study—stretched from the s to the s and from the s to the present day and can be described as the ‘‘paternalistic’’ and ‘‘inflationary’’ eras (see Appendix, Fig. ). Although each era featured the general issues mentioned above, the answers reached and the labor relationship forged differed in significant ways. In the first, or trade war, era, professional baseball emerged from its nurturing ground of northeastern Protestant villages, neighborhoods, and voluntary associations to become a fledgling entertainment business. During that process the search for the best playing talent and the demands for inclusion by the Irish and Germans led both to the modest broadening of ethnicemployment and the growing separation of personnel, functions, and power between off-field managers and on-field performers. After a decade of confusion and false starts, the strong- est clubs, led by the Chicago White Stockings, formed the National League and extended territorial monopolies to member franchises and strict ‘‘reserve clause’’ limits on the geographic mobility and choice of employment of players. Probably the most representative and influen- tial figure in this first era was Albert G. Spalding, who followed up his playing career with leadership of the Chicago club and in large measure the entire circuit from the s to the s. The trade war era earned its label through a succession of economic wars for urban markets and players in which the National League either crushed its adversaries or merged with them (the most notable being the American League in ) in an expanded cartel. Although performers made several attempts to unionize, the frequency of trade war and the multiple suitors it tempo- rarily created did more to give them greater workplace leverage. Even unionization itself tended to occur during times of temporary protec- tion through trade war competition, only to collapse once the wars, and players’ marketplace leverage with them, ceased. In this first era, as baseball magnates sought ‘‘order’’ in their industry, the search also led to efforts to standardize playing rules to strike the most profitable balance between player productivity, fan attendance, and labor-cost pressures. It also led to the dominant cartel developing working agreements with lesser leagues to secure an ongoing source of white playing talent, while systematically excluding in Jim Crow fashion baseball aspirants of color. The second, or paternalistic, era followed the defeats of the Federal League and Players Fraternity, World War I, and the ‘‘Black Sox’’ scandal of –. It was marked by a semblance of stability and management- dominated order, with the / combination entrenched in the same sixteen northeastern and midwestern cities until late in the age and with a single commissioner in place to arbitrate disputes and enforce discipline upon players. Thanks in large part to a Supreme Court ruling upholding the cartel’s antitrust exemption, with the sporadic ex- ceptions of the Pacific Coast League and the Mexican League, trade war threats eased. Unionization forays were either sabotaged, as in the case of the post–World War II American Baseball Guild, or co-opted, as in the postwar representation system that subsequently evolved into the Major League Baseball Players Association. The National League and the American League, prodded by their demand for low-cost labor and by Depression-era pleas from the ‘‘minors’’ for economic salva- tion, erected vast, captive ‘‘farm systems’’ of clubs and players. This viii PREFACE step further reduced the marketplace leverage of individual performers and effectively delayed serious reconsideration of supplementing Orga- nized Baseball’s playing force through racial integration. But although the industry seemed to have secured a stable monopsony over its human ‘‘means of production,’’ and a subsequent generation of owners would look upon these years as a lost ‘‘golden age,’’ baseball remained subject to the winds of change, whether they be the Depression’s economic ca- lamity, the rise of industrial unionism, the strains of world war, the push for civil rights, the advent of radio and television, or the demographic shift to the Sun Belt. As a consequence, baseball late in the era reluctantly reversed itself and began to integrate racially its playing ranks, and it also grudgingly adopted a system of player representation, a pension plan, and a minimum wage for its big league performers. Although the era began with the quarter-century commissionership of Kenesaw Landis, the individual most representative of the entire period and its series of labor policy adjustments was not Landis but Branch Rickey—champion of the farm system, the first big league executive to proceed with integration, and a pioneer late in the era in the scouting and recruitment of Latin American playing talent. The third, or inflationary, era—in which we either remain or are in the painful process of leaving—began with renewed stirrings of franchise expansion in response to Sun Belt growth and the rising revenue importance of television. A new generation of players, weaned on the civil rights struggle and a new tide of youthful political activism and protest, emerged in the affluent America of the s with a more ques- tioning outlook toward authority and a fresh appreciation of the power of mobilization and collective action. Drawing strength from the ranks of the new generation of players, the Major League Baseball Players As- sociation, now headed by Marvin Miller, transformed itself from a ‘‘com- pany union’’ into the industry’s most powerful force for change. The union’s aggressive campaigns in Miller’s first decade of leadership led not only to higher minimum salaries and greater procedural rights, including the outside arbitration of younger players’ salary disputes, but even the collapse of the reserve clause and the establishment of ‘‘free agency’’ for veteran performers. The success of the big league players in forcing higher salaries and greater industry power inspired imitation, most notably by the umpires. In the s and s, owners tried with only limited success to keep ahead of the payroll surge through revenue- PREFACE ix boosting actions such as pro-offense rules changes, franchise and territorial expansion, and aggressive licensing and television negotiating, as well as cost-restraint measures including jettisoning older big league journeymen and increasing their recruitment of cheaper prospects outside the United States. After a long series of labor confrontations that spanned three decades, by the late s the two sides had battled them- selves nearly to exhaustion and had risked killing the ‘‘golden goose’’ that had

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