Industrial Relations in American Baseball Photo Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y

1 A Simple Matter of Control: Industrial Relations in American Baseball Photo courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, N.Y. Mickey Mantle, the Yankees’ legendary hitter and 1956 Triple Crown winner, asked for more pay from general manager George Weiss. Weiss declined, and threatened to show Mantle’s wife reports, from a private detective, of her husband’s nocturnal habits. merican baseball is a child’s game played by adults, transformed from Aan amateur to a professional pursuit celebrated as a national pastime with an ability to generate ever increasing, untold wealth. Like other com- petitive team sports, baseball is a labor-intensive industry. Its production cannot be enhanced by substituting machines1 for players, downsizing or 4 b c h ap t e r 1 going off-shore−making players into devices at the disposal of employers who produce tangible products. Robert C. Berry, William B. Gould, and Paul D. Staudohar have said, “The magic that is sports is fast fleeting … Players as actors are both the machinery and the product … It is not just that athletes are part of the game. They are the game.”2 While players do not need to fear competition from machines, their employment, nonetheless, can be controlled. Baseball employers−and those in other professional team sports−have instituted rules which have closely controlled and severely restricted the employment rights and income earn- ing potential of players. Players, in turn, both individually and collectively, have bucked against and resisted such controls. Since the inauguration of a regular league competition in 1876, baseball industrial relations,3 in the words of Robert Burk in Much More Than a Game: Players, Owners and American Baseball Since 1921, have been characterized by a struggle between on-field employees and management over ac- cess to its opportunities, workplace rights, and over-arching both of these, administering the industry and defining the re- lationship−paternalistic, adversarial, or cooperative−between the two sides.4 The major device baseball owners used to control players was the reserve system, or option clause. Introduced in 1879, the system enabled clubs to “reserve” their right to continue employing existing players, and a club had a right (or option) to resign a player for the next season after the expiry of his contract, and so on, indefinitely. Once a player signed with a club, he was bound to that club for the rest of his playing life. He could only negotiate with one club−what economists describe as monopsony. A player could only move to another club−be sold, traded, or released−with the permission of his “original” club. Moreover, players could be sold or traded to other clubs whether they wanted to move or not. The choice confronting such a player was to “agree” to such a move or to seek an alternative career. Industrial Relations in American Baseball b 5 The extent to which baseball owners/employers were able to “lord” it over players, and their concomitant ability to restrict their incomes, is no better illustrated than by the following example from the early 1950s− almost three-quarters of a century after the introduction of the reserve system. In 1952, Ralph Kiner tied the league record for the most home runs. He was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the worst performing club of that year. Branch Rickey, the Pirates’ general manager, offered Kiner a contract for 1953 which included a 25 percent wage cut, the maximum allowed at the time under baseball’s employment rules. Kiner objected, pointing to his batting skills as the basis for attendance at Pirates’ games. Rickey retorted, “We can finish last without you!”5 It was not so much that the reserve system could be used by clubs to “persuade” players to receive “low” incomes, but that it provided them with a means to avoid, or renege, contractual obligations. Clubs deducted sums for uniforms, travelling, and medical expenses and imposed fines for pro- fanities expressed on the field and other misdemeanors, both on and off the field. In the early years of regular league play, team doctors, who were employed by clubs, would declare players unfit, thereby further reducing their incomes. Clubs employed detectives (“spies”) to watch over the private activities of players.6 In 1956, New York Yankees’ legendary hitter Mickey Mantle won the American League’s7 triple crown−batting average, runs batted in, and home runs. He asked the Yankees’ general manager, George Weiss, for more pay. Weiss said no. He told Mantle if he did not accept the Yankees’ offer he might be inclined to show Mantle’s wife reports, from a private detective, of her husband’s nocturnal habits.8 Baseball, in distinction from other American sports, has been fortunate in that its operations have been found not to be inconsistent with the Sher- man Antitrust Act of 1890. Sections 1 and 2 of the Act state: • Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or con- spiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal … 6 b c h ap t e r 1 • Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or com- bine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony. Baseball’s reserve system would appear to be in breach of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Baseball’s exemption, however, did not originate from a test of its employment rules. Rather, it resulted from a challenge to the set- tlement of a trade war between rival leagues. In 1914 and 1915, the Federal League emerged as a competitor to organized baseball. The upstart league merged with the stalwarts at the end of 1915. In so doing, they dealt out the Baltimore club of the Federal League. The Baltimore Federals challenged the merger, claiming that organized baseball was a monopoly in breach of the Sherman Act. In 1922, the United States Supreme Court ruled against Baltimore, thereby exempting baseball from the reach of the Sherman Act. The Supreme Court said The business is giving exhibitions of baseball, which are pure- ly state affairs. It is true that, in order to attain for those exhibitions the great popularity that they have achieved, competi- tions must be arranged between clubs from different cities and States. But the fact that in order to give exhibitions the League must induce free persons to cross State lines and must arrange and pay for their doing is not enough to change the character of the business. … the transport is a mere incident, not the essen- tial thing. That to which it is incident, the exhibition, although made for money would not be called trade or commerce in the commonly accepted use of those words.9 Two subsequent cases before the Supreme Court, which challenged baseball’s employment rules, confirmed its exemption from antitrust actions. In 1953, George Toolson and, in 1972, Curt Flood lost actions on the basis of stare decisis.10 In Flood the Supreme Court said its decision “is, in a very distinct sense, an exception and an anomaly. … an aberration confined to baseball.”11 Industrial Relations in American Baseball b 7 Denied the use of antitrust actions to escape the overarching reach of the reserve system there were two other conceivable means through which players could improve their economic lot. Such means, employing the basic model of economists, involved changes to either side of the labor market for players. First, focusing on the demand side, new baseball employers could emerge to provide players with the prospect of alternative employment. Sec- ond, turning to the supply side, players could act collectively and unionize. They could seek to use collective bargaining and the use, or threatened use, of industrial action to obtain concessions from owners, including revisions to and the winding back of the reserve system. The more than 125 years of industrial relations in American baseball can be divided into three periods.12 The first is from 1876, the beginning of regular league play, to the demise of the Federal League in 1915−the “trade war” period. The second is from the end of the Federal League to 1966. These years, with the exception of the emergence of a Mexican League after World War II, were a period in which organized baseball’s control over players was at its zenith. This was the “paternalistic” period. In 1966, players decided to embrace collective action and transformed baseball’s company union, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), into an aggressive and dynamic organization. It not only devised a strategy to challenge and defeat the reserve system, but also obtained major increases in salaries and other concessions for players/members. From 1966 to the present has been the “unionism” period. The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs commenced operations in 1876. Over the next 40 years it found itself involved in trade wars with rival leagues on six occasions. They were the American Association (1882-1883), the Union Association (1883-1884), the Players League (1890), a second battle between the National League and American Association (1891), the American League (1900-1903), and the Federal League (1914-1915). In addition, 1921 witnessed an unsuccessful attempt to create the Continental League. Such trade wars were resolved by either the incumbent league(s) 8 b c h ap t e r 1 defeating and destroying its (their) rival, or by the respective leagues or var- ious financially strong member clubs calling a truce and merging.

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