Baseball has long occupied a large place among North
American sports. As early as the 1850s, sporting sheets
began to argue that “base ball” was uniquely “America’s
game,” and by the end of the 19th century it was the
most popular team sport in North America. Although
millions of young men (and a few women) played amateur or semiprofessional baseball, the professional
game soon became ascendant. In 1903 the National
and American leagues signed an agreement establishing the present structure of the professional game. Beginning in 1905, each season (except 1994 due to a
players’ strike) ended with a “World Series” between
the championship teams of the two leagues.
Baseball’s significance extends far beyond the playing field. Apart from sheer entertainment, references to
baseball and the employment of baseball motifs
abound in literature, music, painting, drama, politics,
and religion, indeed in nearly every facet of American
life. The game has given towns and cities, as well as occupational, ethnic, and racial groups, deeper emotional
existences. Baseball’s heroes have reflected some of
America’s most fundamental values. Finally, with its
capacity for quantification and its slow, deliberate
pace, both of which allow fans to collect and digest memories of the game’s past, baseball has possessed a
special power to connect past and present.
History
Modern baseball evolved from informal bat and ball
games, the roots of which can be traced to 17th- and
18th-century England. In the early 19th century, boys
played one or another of these games—called variously “old cat,” “one-old-cat,” “barn ball,” “town,”
“rounders,” “base,” and even “base ball”—on empty
lots, village greens, and cow pastures. During the 1840s
and 1850s two styles of play, the Massachusetts (favored in New England and southern Ontario) and the
New York games, competed for popularity.
A major turning point in baseball’s evolution came
in the 1850s, when New Yorkers, in particular clerks
and artisans living in impersonal boardinghouses and
experiencing profound changes in their lives and work,
organized dozens of formal “base ball” clubs. Led by
the Knickerbockers (formed in 1845), representatives
of these clubs wrote and revised the rules of play, appointed game officials, scheduled matches, and in 1858
created the first national association.
Deriving its name from the four bases that form a
diamond (the infield) around the pitcher’s box (later
called the mound), teams in the New York game consisted of nine players who used a leather-covered ball
and wooden bats. Teams remained at bat until three
outs were made; then the team that had been in the
field took a turn at bat.An inning consisted of one turn
at bat for each team and nine innings constituted a
game. Each time a batter or “striker” touched all of the
bases without being put out a run scored. The team
with the most runs after the completion of nine innings won.
New York’s central place in commerce and communications helped its form of baseball spread rapidly.
Tours by the famed Excelsiors of Brooklyn to upstate
New York and to Philadelphia and Baltimore in 1860 attracted attention across the continent to New York’s
game. In 1863, New York area teams first contended for
a self-proclaimed national championship, and, during
the same year, the Young Canadians of Woodstock
awarded themselves a silver ball for the first Canadian
championship. The U.S. Civil War (1861–1865) brought
together massive numbers of young men, which encouraged the sport’s growth; after the war veterans of
both the Union and Confederate armies returned home
enthusiasts of the game.
The early players comprised what contemporaries
called a “fraternity,” a term that implied that the ballplayers were members of a single brotherhood regardless of differences in club membership, ethnicity, social
class, or religion. The fraternity set itself apart from the
urban masses by establishing a special body of customs and rituals and by donning colorful uniforms
similar to the volunteer fire departments and militia
units of the day. Off the diamond, the early players frequently gathered to eat, drink, wager, talk, and even
dance.
League Formation
The early clubs initially neither charged gate fees nor
paid their players, but commercialism quickly entered
the sport. In 1858 fans paid 50 cents each to watch a
three-game championship series between all-star
teams from New York and Brooklyn, and in 1862 an
ambitious Brooklynite, William H. Cammeyer, built an
enclosed field and charged fans a fee to watch games
there. The “enclosure movement,” as the drive to build
fences around fields and charge an admission fee was
called, introduced a new era of baseball history that
heralded the beginning of professional baseball. To
take advantage of gate fees, teams began to play more
games, to embark upon long summer tours, to recruit
athletes on the basis of playing skills rather than sociability, and even to pay outstanding players.
Professional baseball benefited from urban rivalries. The success in 1869 of Cincinnati’s Red Stockings
in winning 54 games without a single defeat provoked
envy in other cities. In both Canada and the United
States, small businessmen, politicians, and civic boosters united to form joint-stock company baseball clubs.
The clubs usually expired after a year or two, but out of
the ruins of the old, new clubs frequently arose to replace them. From 1871 through the 1875 season, several of these professional clubs competed for a championship pennant sponsored by a loose confederation
known as the National Association of Professional Base
Ball Players.
Professional baseball entered another era in 1876
when William A. Hulbert (1832–1882), president of a
Chicago club, and Albert Spaulding (1850–1915), player,
manager, and soon-to-be sporting goods magnate, set
about organizing a replacement for the National Association. Determined that the league would become the
premier circuit of professional clubs representing only
the larger cities, the National League prohibited clubs
in cities with a population of less than 75,000 from
joining, required any club wishing to join the circuit to
have the approval of the existing clubs, and provided
each team with a territorial monopoly. By banning Sunday games, prohibiting the sale of liquor at ball
parks, and charging a 50-cent admission fee, the league
also sought without complete success to obtain the patronage of the middle class.
In the 1880s professional baseball shared in the nation’s booming prosperity. No fewer than 18 leagues
(including leagues with Canadian teams) appeared, although several expired after only a season or so. In
1882, the American Association, dubbed the “Beer Ball
League” because brewery owners sat on the boards of
directors of six of its clubs and it permitted beer to be
sold at games, challenged the National League’s hegemony over big league baseball. Beginning in 1884 and
ending in 1890, the National League champions met
those of the American Association in a post-season
“World Championship” series.
Professional baseball reflected the changing ethnic
composition of both Canada and the United States. Perhaps upon discovery that recent immigrants had limited entrepreneurial opportunities in more respectable
and less risky enterprises, a disproportionate number
of Germans, German Jews, and later the Irish could be
found among club owners. Likewise, an unusually large
number of German and Irish names appeared on late
19th-century player rosters, suggesting that these ethnic groups may have found in professional baseball a
means of upward social mobility. During the first half
of the 20th century increasing numbers of old-stock
players from the countryside and new ethnics from
southern and eastern Europe, as well as a few Native
Americans, entered the big league ranks.
Opportunities for African Americans in professional baseball were another matter. Although blacks
played amateur baseball from at least the 1860s on, as
early as 1867 the National Association of Base Ball
Players specifically excluded black clubs from membership, and the National League informally enforced a
“color ban”against blacks from its founding in 1876.Yet
a few blacks did play on racially integrated professional
teams in other leagues; in 1884 Moses Fleetwood
Walker and his brother Weldy played with Toledo in the
American Association. In the late 1880s and in the
1890s, the era when racial segregation became the rule
for much of the United States, white leagues ended
racially integrated baseball.
In the 1880s conflicts between the National League
franchise owners and the professional players escalated. They clashed in the first place over player drinking. The players resented restrictions on their personal
behavior and the player reservation system that had
been put into place in 1879. The reserve clause in contracts prevented players from offering their services to
the highest bidders. The players also believed that they
were not getting a fair share of baseball’s additional
earnings. Player grievances climaxed in the formation of a separate Players League in 1890. With three big
leagues competing for the loyalties of fans and the superior leadership offered by Albert Spaulding, the National League crushed the upstart league after only one
season. In 1891, the American Association also collapsed, leaving only a 12-team National League as a
major league circuit.
The National League drifted aimlessly through the
1890s, confronted with the absence of the popular
World Championship Series, the lack of superior teams
in the largest cities, and an economic depression. In
earlier times, the league had deliberately cultivated an
image of Victorian propriety, but in the 1890s it acquired a notorious reputation for brawling, both on the
field and in the stands. In 1900, Byron Bancroft (Ban)
Johnson (1863–1931), a former sportswriter and president of the Western League, mounted a challenge to
the National League. Johnson renamed his loop the
American League and began to raid National League
teams for players.
In 1903, the leagues signed a pact agreeing to recognize each other’s reserved players and established a
three-man commission to oversee all of professional
baseball. The agreement protected the reserved rights
of minor league teams to their players, but provided
that at the conclusion of each season the majors could
“draft” players from the franchises of the minors at set
prices. Although the National Agreement of 1903 did
not provide for a championship series, in 1905 the
leagues agreed upon a mandatory postseason World
Series.
The Golden Age
The first half of the 20th century may have been baseball’s Golden Age. The game gained in acceptability
among all social groups; in 1910 William Howard Taft
established the tradition of the president of the United
States opening each season by throwing out the first
ball.“Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” written by vaudevillian Jack Norworth in 1908, soon became the game’s
unofficial anthem. Between 1909 and 1923, the major
league teams went on a stadium-building binge; great
civic monuments of steel and concrete replaced shaky,
wooden structures. Minor league baseball grew from
13 circuits in 1903 to 51 leagues in 1950.
Baseball exploded in popularity at all levels. Twilight leagues and Sunday School leagues sprang up
across the continent. Boys grew up reading baseball fiction, learning the rudiments of the game, and dreaming of one day becoming diamond heroes themselves.
Newspapers carried detailed accounts of games, as well
as stories about the game during the off season (Hot
Stove League). Beginning in the 1920s, radio began to
broadcast play-by-play descriptions of games.
In the meantime the game experienced fundamental changes on the playing field. Long ago, pitchers had
stopped gently tossing the ball to the hitters with a
straight arm and underhanded; a gradual relaxation of
the rules permitted overhanded pitching in 1884, and
in 1887 the hitters lost the privilege of asking for a
pitch above or below the waist. In 1893 the league
adopted the modern pitching distance of 60 feet, 6
inches (18.44 meters). Offensive and defensive tactics
slowly grew more sophisticated.
Beginning in the 1860s, infielders inched away from
their respective bases and managers began to place
their quickest man at shortstop. In the next decade, a
few catchers donned masks and fielders put on gloves.
At first, the skin-tight gloves (with the ends cut off to
improve throwing) were used exclusively to protect the
hands from the sting of the ball. In the 1890s with the
extension of the pitching distance, teams turned more
to bunting and the ingenious hit-and-run play.
The first two decades of the 20th century came to be
known as the “deadball era,” or the “era of the pitcher.”
The adoption of rules providing for counting the first
two foul balls as strikes (National League in 1901 and
American League in 1903), increasing the width of
home plate from a 12-inch (30 centimeters) square to a
five-sided figure 17 inches (43 centimeters) across in
1900, and allowing the application of spit to the ball by
pitchers, along with the appearance of big, strongarmed pitchers and the conservative tactics of managers resulted in an age of extraordinarily low offensive
output. Except for John “Honus” Wagner (1874–1955)
and Ty Cobb (1886–1961), the major stars of the day
were such pitchers as Cy Young (1867–1955), Christy
Mathewson (1880–1925), and Walter Johnson
(1887–1946). Long-time field managers John J. McGraw (1873–1934) of the New York Giants and Connie
Mack (1862–1956) of the Philadelphia Athletics also
occupied much of baseball’s public limelight.
For unknown reasons, the 1920s witnessed a sudden reversal in offensive production. Traditionally, the
surge in hitting has been attributed to the introduction
of a more resilient ball, using more balls per game, outlawing the spitball in 1920, and the growing popularity
of “free swinging” by the hitters. Recent research emphasizes the importance of George Herman “Babe”
Ruth (1895–1948). Led by the free-swinging Ruth, batting averages, scoring, and home runs soared.While repeatedly leading the league in home runs, Ruth himself became the game’s preeminent hero. With Ruth’s rise
from lowly origins, his enthusiasm for the game, and
his towering home runs, no other player in baseball
history so won the awe and adoration of baseball fans.
During the Golden Age, great dynasties, most in the
larger cities, ruled major league play. From 1900 to
1969, when the leagues were divided into divisions,
New York City franchises won 41 pennants. Beginning
with Ruth’s arrival in New York, the Yankees became
synonymous with success; they won 29 flags in 39
years. In general, franchises located in larger cities
drew more fans and commanded larger revenues; they
were thus better able to purchase superior players from
other big league clubs or minor league franchises. Only
the St. Louis Cardinals, led by their astute general manager Wesley “Branch” Rickey (1881–1965), who created
a system of developing new talent through the ownership of minor league teams (the farm system), seriously contended with the Yankee dynasty.
Ruth’s Homeric feats during the 1920s helped to
counter the negative effects of the Black Sox Scandal of
1919. Although a court acquitted eight Chicago White
Sox players for fixing the 1919 World Series, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944), the newly appointed commissioner of baseball, banished them
from organized baseball for life. The scandal also
sparked the 1921 reorganization of baseball. The new
National Agreement gave sweeping powers to a single
commissioner to suspend, fine, or banish any parties in
baseball who had engaged in activities “detrimental to
the best interests of the national game.” Although Landis (who served until 1944) rarely used his vast powers
to discipline the team owners, he employed them
widely against the players. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme
Court further strengthened major league baseball by
exempting it from federal antitrust laws in Federal Base
Ball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League of Professional B.B. Clubs and American League of Professional
B.B. Clubs, 259 U.S. 200.
The Great Depression and World War II dealt powerful blows to professional baseball. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, the establishment of an annual All-Star game between the best players in the two
leagues (beginning in 1933), the introduction of night
baseball with electric lighting at Cincinnati in 1935,
and the founding of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,
New York, in 1936, all failed to draw crowds to games.
The big leagues even considered closing down during
U.S. participation in World War II (1941–1945), but
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, believing big league
play would be good for morale, urged that baseball
continue. With many of the best players drafted into
the armed forces, the quality of play suffered.
Fearful that major league baseball might be discontinued during World War II and aware of the popularity of women’s softball, Philip K. Wrigley (1894–1977),
chewing gum magnate and owner of the Chicago Cubs,
organized the All-American Girls Baseball League in
1943. While women had played versions of baseball
and softball on college campuses and occasionally on
barnstorming teams since the last quarter of the 19th
century, ball-playing by women experienced a sharp
growth in popularity during the 1930s and 1940s.
Stressing a combination of feminine beauty and masculine playing skills, the league initially prospered in
mid-sized, midwestern cities. Reflecting the postwar
trend toward at-home diversions and the return to a
more restrictive conception of femininity, the league
folded in 1954.
Race Relations
The war years also represented a turning point in baseball’s race relations. Excluded from white leagues since
the 1880s and 1890s, African Americans carved out a
separate baseball sphere. In the late 1880s the black
barnstorming Cuban Giants (formed in 1885) booked
some 150 games a season, but barnstorming reached
its heyday in the first half of the 20th century. Barnstorming black teams played other itinerant black
teams, town teams scattered across North America and
the Caribbean basin, and occasionally, during the off
season, “all-star” big league white teams. While skill
levels were high among the barnstormers, showmanship, which often entailed the employment of black
stereotypes, was a fundamental part of the barnstorming game. The founding of the Negro National League
in 1920 ushered in another era of professional black
baseball, and teams frequently combined barnstorming with league play. League baseball reached the
height of its popularity in the early 1940s. For more
than two decades, Leroy “Satchel” Paige (1906–1982), a
pitcher, was the star attraction of black baseball.
Despite substantial opposition from fellow club
owners, in 1945 Branch Rickey, the general manager of
the Brooklyn Dodgers, signed Jackie Robinson
(1919–1972), a multisport African American star at the
University of California at Los Angeles and a player in
the Negro National League, to a contract to play with
the Dodgers’ Montreal farm club in 1946. The next year,
amidst great fanfare, Robinson joined the parent team.
Given baseball’s distinction as the “national pastime”of
the United States, the game’s racial integration had vast symbolic importance. If the racial wall of the national
game could be breached, it seemed manifest to many
that other barriers to blacks should be removed as well.
Yet the entry of Robinson into the big leagues failed
to herald the end of racial bigotry in baseball. Racial
integration proceeded slowly; it was 12 years before the
last big league club, the Boston Red Sox, finally employed a black player. Integration was uneven. In 1959
the National League had twice as many blacks as the
American League. Finally, studies consistently found
that blacks had to outperform whites to make team
rosters and that blacks were commonly the victims of
“stacking,”that is, more frequent relegation to “noncentral” playing positions such as the outfield or first base.
The Troubled Years
In the second half of the 20th century, baseball entered
more troubled times. After an initial resurgence of attendance in the late 1940s, crowds declined during the
1950s. The growth of sprawling independent suburbs
and the appearance of television encouraged a larger
trend away from inner-city and public forms of leisure
to private, at-home diversions. Unlimited telecasts of
big league games damaged minor league attendance
and support for semiprofessional baseball. In the
1950s thousands of semipro teams folded and minor
league baseball became a shell of its former self. The
major leagues fared only somewhat better. Average
game attendance remained below the 1948–1952 seasons until 1978, and even after that lagged behind the
population growth of the metropolitan areas served by
big league clubs. Baseball’s television ratings were also
weak, falling to about half that of regular season professional football games. Ironically, the rapid growth
of Little League baseball (founded in 1939 and composed of preadolescent boys) after World War II may
have seriously damaged attendance at all other forms
of baseball.
Big league baseball responded to the postwar woes
in several ways. Reflecting changing population centers
and the advantages of air travel, several franchises, led
by the Boston Braves moving to Milwaukee in 1953, relocated, and the number of franchises expanded from
two eight-team loops in 1960 (the same as it had been
since 1903) to 28 teams in two leagues of six divisions
by 1994. Big league baseball became a truly international sport when it planted franchises in Montreal
(1969) and Toronto (1977); both Montreal and Toronto
had fielded teams for 55 and 78 years, respectively, in
the powerful International League. Frequently abetted
by subsidies from local governments, baseball also entered a new stadium building era. Efforts to capitalize
on media, especially television, were only partly successful. Large disparities in media revenues between
small and large city franchises endangered the game’s
financial stability.
The empowerment of the players added to the woes
of the owners.With the appointment in 1966 of Marvin
J. Miller as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association (which had been formed in
1956), the players won a series of victories over the
owners. The right to salary arbitration (1972) and free
agency (1976) triggered a cycle of escalating salaries;
average annual salaries soared from $29,000 in 1970 to
more than $1 million in 1992. Efforts by the owners to
stem the effects of arbitration and free agency resulted
in a seven-week strike in 1981 and a strike at the end of
the 1994 season, closing down the World Series and delaying the start of the 1995 season.
The Divisional Era
Baseball in the divisional era (1969–present) witnessed the demise of team dynasties. During the 1980s,
only 3 of 26 clubs failed to capture at least one divisional flag, and teams in smaller cities won just as
many, indeed overall more, flags than the cities in the
largest metropolitan areas. The major leagues implemented an amateur draft in 1965, which allowed franchises to draft (in reverse order of their standings in
the previous season) the rights to unsigned amateur
players, thus reducing the longstanding recruiting advantages of richer franchises. Also, women and men
with vast financial resources became big league owners; they were less concerned than their more impoverished predecessors about earning profits from baseball. Finally, free agency—the right gained by veterans
in 1976 to sign with any franchise—may have encouraged rather than discouraged competitive balance.
A new style of play also characterized the divisional
era. The hitting revolution of the 1920s had encouraged
an emphasis on the home run; in the 1940s and 1950s,
the stolen base nearly disappeared as the game featured slugging at the expense of finesse, but in the divisional era dazzling speed and specialized pitching
joined sheer brawn. Aided by the expansion of new talent by including players of African and Hispanic descent, the stolen base returned to baseball. All earlier
stolen base records fell. As managers turned increasingly to relief pitchers, the number of complete games
hurled by one pitcher dropped from about seven in ten
at the beginning of the century to about one in ten in
the divisional era.
Baseball Perseveres
Although baseball in the second half of the 20th century no longer occupied the dominant position among
North American sports that it had once enjoyed, it persevered remarkably. The game seemed to fulfill needs
to establish connections with the past. During the
1980s and 1990s, major and minor league attendance
increased and an auxiliary culture of baseball memorabilia flourished. Baseball books, especially those of a
historical nature, far outsold those on any other sport,
and, in 1994, Ken Burns turned to baseball as the subject of the most monumental historical television documentary ever made.
—BENJAMIN G. RADER