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125th Anniversary Materials 125th Anniversary

2-23-2013

John Montgomery Ward: The Lawyer Who Took On

Christopher W. Schmidt Chicago-Kent College of Law, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Schmidt, Christopher W., ": The Lawyer Who Took On Baseball" (2013). 125th Anniversary Materials. 8. https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/docs_125/8

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the 125th Anniversary at Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in 125th Anniversary Materials by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 44 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress

Photo of John Montgomery Ward, 1922, Bain Collection, Library of Congress. JOHN MONTGOMERY WARD: THE LAWYER WHO TOOK ON BASEBALL Christopher W. Schmidt

s 1888 drew to a close, John with “few equals and no superiors,” Montgomery Ward stood and “by long odds the most popu- atop the world of profes- lar player in the profession.” These Asional baseball. The star accomplishments would eventually had just led the Giants earn Ward a place in the Baseball to the , fol- Hall of Fame. lowed by a triumph over the St. Louis Ward’s skills on the ball field were Browns of the rival American Asso- only a part of what made him such a ciation in what even then went by remarkable figure. Contemporaries the inflated title of baseball’s “World and historians alike have struggled to Series.” A dominating early describe him. One adjective-happy in his career (he threw the second biographer took the saturation ap- in major league his- proach: he was a “jug-eared, willowy, tory), an arm injury forced Ward peach-fuzzed, overreaching punk” to recreate himself as an infielder, as well as “honorable, smart, and te- where he became one of the best nacious.” More admired than liked fielders and hitters of his era. He was seems to have been the consensus lauded in the press as a ballplayer view of Ward contemporaries. In a Christopher W. Schmidt 45 profession not known for intellectu- ported . “But alism, he stood out. Although Ward the thousands of spectators who ob- left school at the age of thirteen in served Miss Dauvray’s emotions lit- order to pursue his baseball career, tle suspected that one of the Giants he eventually earned, in his spare had any precedence over the others time, degrees in political science and so far as her affections were con- law from Columbia. He was said to cerned.” She had donated the Tiffany speak five languages. A regular con- that went to the tributor to newspapers and periodi- champion; it was the “Dauvray Cup” cals, in 1888 he published Baseball: that her husband brought at How to Become a Player, which he the end of the 1888 . In How described as a “handbook of the to Become a Player, the ever gallant game, a picture of the play as seen by Ward included a chapter explaining a player.” the basics of the game “for the ben- Ward was also a pioneering labor efit of those ladies whose escorts ei- leader. In 1885, he established Amer- ther cannot, or will not, answer their ica’s first sports union, the Broth- questions.” He also offered advice for erhood of Professional Base Ball his gentleman readers: “Whoever Players. Initially designed to help has not experienced the pleasure of sick, injured, or hard-up ballplayers taking a young lady to her first game and promote professional standards, of ball should seize the first opportu- the Brotherhood quickly evolved nity to do so.” into something approaching a craft Life was not all three- games union for ballplayers. Ward had for- and celebrity life for the great Mon- ward-looking attitudes on race as te Ward, however. His relationship well. At a time when the color line with Helen Dauvray was strained was hardening in American society, almost from the start. He was carry- and organized baseball had become ing on an affair, and she knew it; she a whites-only affair, Ward urged the wanted to return to the stage, and he Giants to sign an African-American didn’t want her to. They lived togeth- pitcher. er for only a year and soon divorced. If all this wasn’t enough, Ward’s His baseball career too was about social life was also noteworthy. In to veer off in some unexpected direc- 1887 he married a New York actress tions. Following his World Series tri- and socialite, Helen Dauvray, who umph, Ward captained a team of Na- also happened to be a passionate tional League all-stars that traveled baseball fan. “Her tiny hands beat around the globe between each other rapturously at every vic- 1888 and April 1889 in an effort to tory of the Giants and her dark eyes promote the game overseas. It was a were bedewed at every defeat,” re- grand gesture, fitting for an emerg- 46 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress tional League in addition to a bur- geoning sporting goods empire. The game never had a more effective and more passionate salesman. Baseball, he once wrote, captured the nation because “it is the exponent of Amer- ican Courage, Confidence, Combat- iveness; American Dash, Discipline, Determination; American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm; American Pluck, Persistency, Performance; American Spirit, Sagacity, Success; American Vim, Vigor, Virility.” (Spalding also basically created base- ball’s all-American birth myth, which conveniently featured a future Civil War hero, , in 1839 dreaming up the game in bucolic Cooperstown, New York. In fact, baseball had largely evolved from various children’s games; if it ever had a proper birth moment, it was among young professionals in 1840s ing era of American nationalism .) Spalding envisioned and confidence on the international the world tour as an opportunity to scene. But the world tour also helped sell two things he loved above all: set in motion one of the most signif- the game of baseball and the equip- icant upheavals in baseball’s history. ment that bore his . Despite his The man who organized and led the background as a player, and despite tour around the globe was Albert his overwrought romanticism about Goodwill Spalding. Soon after they the national pastime, Spalding ap- returned home, he and Ward would proached his role as a team owner face off in an epic struggle for the fu- from the perspective of the ture of the game. of industry that he had become: the Spalding, a star pitcher in his players were employees, and com- younger years, now owned the Chi- fortably paid ones at that; and it was cago White Stockings of the Na- the owner’s job to control costs and John M. Ward, por- ensure a compliant workforce. Need- trait, 1887, Library of Congress. Facing: Photo of Albert Goodwill Spalding, 1910, Bain Collection, less to say, he didn’t think much of Library of Congress. Ward’s efforts with the Brotherhood. Christopher W. Schmidt 47 he world tour had just reached TCairo, Egypt, in February 1889 when the players received news that, at their in New York, the National League owners had adopted a major reform de- signed to reign in player salaries. They created a player classification system under which “” play- ers earned $2,500, “Class B” players $2,250, and so on, down to “Class E” players who earned $1,500. The clas- sifications scheme took into account not only player ability, but also “con- duct, both on and off the field.” Ward, who had already estab- lished himself as his generation’s most outspoken critic of baseball’s sential to ensuring the stability of distinctive labor practices, saw the the game. It did indeed further this plan as an affront to the players. goal. But there was another reason, What made working as a profes- one they didn’t trumpet so proud- sional ballplayer different from any ly: it kept down player salaries. And other occupation was the “reserve here too it was effective. In the late clause,” a provision in player con- 1880s, as club profits tripled, player tracts under which an owner could salaries grew by only 30 percent, a “reserve” a of players when fact at least partly attributable to the the term of their contracts ended. reserve system. The clause prohibited the player In 1887, Ward had a scathing at- from negotiating with another team tack on the reserve clause, titled “Is unless his team released him. As the Base-Ball Player a Chattel?” He was controlled compared the reserve clause to “a fu- by an agreement between the teams gitive-slave law”: it “denies [the play- under which each team agreed to er] a harbor or a livelihood, and car- respect the player contracts of oth- ries him back, bound and shackled, er teams, the reserved player faced to the club from which he attempted three options: sign a new contract to escape.” The remedy, according to at the terms dictated by the owner; Ward, was simple: get rid of “base- out and hope for better terms; ball law” and allow “the business of or stop playing baseball. Owners base-ball to be made to rest on the defended the reserve clause as es- ordinary business basis.” 48 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress When he learned of the owners’ had National League teams. But the classification plan, Ward was so in- business model behind the Players censed he threatened to abandon the League was radically different from world tour to come home and con- anything that had come before. front the owners. (The news that the Each club was by an eight-man Giants were trying to him only board, consisting of four players and added to his frustration.) He sus- four investors. The league was gov- pected that Spalding had planned the erned by a senate-like organization, entire trip just to get him and some with two representatives from each of his allies out of the country in or- team (one elected by players, one by der to go forward with their plans. owners). Players had three-year con- If this was indeed Spalding’s plan tracts, and no reserve clause. Inves- (and there is no evidence it was), it tors were promised the first $10,000 backfired, as the tour ended up giv- of each club’s net profit, with the rest ing some of the game’s top players to be divided among the players. long hours to share their grievances. Spalding and the National League The plan for the baseball revolution attacked the Players League. First, that would upend the game in 1890 they turned to the courts: the Giants might very well have been hatched sued Ward for breach of contract. in quiet conversation among the Ward had violated the terms of his players while on Spalding’s world reserve clause, they claimed, and tour. Nearly all the players on the they asked a New York state court tour would join Ward’s revolt against to issue an injunction prohibiting the National League. Ward from playing for anyone else. During the 1889 season, Ward The court denied the injunction. As began preparations for the creation the reserve clause failed to specify of a rival major league, the Players such essentials as Ward’s salary and League. Working in secret (he was, the terms of the renewed contract, after all, still on the enemy’s payroll), the judge concluded that it was too he found financial backing and con- indefinite to be treated as a bind- vinced many of his fellow players ing contract for the 1890 season. to commit to the new league. Some The court also raised the disturbing aspects of the Players League looked question of whether, assuming the familiar. The players were famil- reserve clause were read to consti- iar—the new league lured many of tute a binding contract for the fol- the best National League players to lowing season, the renewed contract its rosters. And the cities in which would also include a reserve clause. they played were familiar—the sev- If so, the player would be tied to his en cities in which their eight teams current team for as long as the team played were all cities that already desired, while the team could release Christopher W. Schmidt 49 a player with only 10 days’ notice. olution was over. This was rather absurd, according Ward returned to the National to the judge. “We have the spectacle League, where he played four more presented of a contract which binds seasons. He was still one of the best one party for a series of years and players in the league when he retired the other party for 10 days, and of in 1894. He went on to be a success- the party who is itself bound for ten ful lawyer, a gentleman farmer, and days coming into a court of equity to a top amateur golfer. Although he enforce its claims against the party mended with organized base- bound for years.” The judge conclud- ball, his passion for the cause he had ed that the reserve clause was unen- led never left him. In 1925, shortly forceable for “want of fairness and of before his death, he gave a speech— mutuality.” at an event to celebrate the National With the courts refusing to help, League, of all places—recounting Spalding turned to public opinion. the events of 1888–1890 in which he He pulled out all the rhetorical stops. made clear that the war against the What the players were doing was National League, while doomed, was “secession,” a “revolt,” a “war”; the justified. National League was confronting “hot headed anarchists” who were or a brief moment, the Players leading a “revolutionary movement.” FLeague presented a radical al- But the fall of the Players League ternative business model for profes- after just one season came not from sional sports, one in which the play- Spalding’s attacks in the press, nor ers and owners shared control of the from legal challenges. It came from game as well as its profits. With the the marketplace. The new league failure of Ward’s baseball revolution, had the best players, but this was not the owner-dominated system lived enough. With three major leagues on. In the following decades, various competing for a limited fan base, teams would go to court to have the everyone suffered at the gate. At reserve clause enforced against play- season’s end, when Spalding opened ers who had jumped their contracts negotiations with Players League in- (a relatively common occurrence vestors, he pointedly excluded Ward any time there was a rival league that and any other players. “[T]he mon- refused to abide by the agreement ied men met with the monied men,” that controlled the baseball monop- as Spalding put it. The National League oly). Judges, with only the rarest of owners simply bought out their exceptions, sided with the players, competition; several Players League often citing Ward’s case as authori- clubs were integrated into a recon- ty on the matter. The reserve clause figured National League. Ward’s rev- lived on, however, and it did so be- 50 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress cause the baseball , while the fall of the reserve clause, the game’s periodically challenged, remained in profits are far more evenly distrib- place. As long as owners respected uted between players and owners. the contracts of their on-the-field It took almost a century, but John competitors, they did not need the Montgomery Ward’s vision for ma- courts. For this reason, the most jor league baseball has, in some part, significant legal challenges to base- been realized. ◆ ball’s unique labor practices came in the realm of antitrust, not contract law. But survived this Sources and Further Reading ■ Stuart Banner, The Baseball Trust: A History of challenge too, as the Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption (2013). Supreme Court granted, and then ■ F. Burk, Never Just a Game: Players, Own- ers, & American Baseball to 1920 (1994). twice reaffirmed, that federal anti- ■ Brian Di Salvatore, A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life trust law did not apply to profession- and Times of John Montgomery Ward (1999). ■ Mark Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic al baseball. Adventure That Took Baseball Around the Globe— When change eventually came in And Made It America’s Game (2006). the 1970s, it was at the hands of an- ■ Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (1960). other organized players movement, but this time it was achieved not through a rival league but through Christopher W. Schmidt graduated labor negotiations (with a critical as- from Dartmouth College and received his sist from a sympathetic arbiter). To- law degree from Harvard Law School and day, operates a Ph.D. in the History of American Civ- in a way that has some similarities ilization from . Prior to the core premise of the alternative to joining the faculty at Chicago-Kent in model Ward had offered. The game 2008, he taught history at Phillips Acad- emy, Andover, and Dartmouth College. is governed, in large part, through His scholarship focuses mostly on consti- collective bargaining agreements be- tutional law, legal history, and civil rights, tween players and owners. With the with occasional teaching and writing for- skyrocketing of player salaries after ays into sports law and history.