A People's History of Baseball

4 Tearing Down the Walls

4 TEARING DOWN THE WALLS The civil rights movement on the left provided perhaps the most obvious, but by no means only, test of the owners’ status and independence. On the right, the owners were increasingly pressured as well, as, in the midst of the post–World War II boom, challengers from all over the political spectrum wanted in on America’s game and were less content than ever to sit on the sidelines and be dictated to by the self-appointed gatekeepers of American values. As a result of this pressure from all sides, but surprisingly, chiefly from people who in many ways were new and improved versions of themselves, the owners finally succumbed, ceding much of the status and glory they had worked so hard to achieve. Although the official date of death on the “owners-as-manor lords” tombstone is open to debate (likely candidates include December 23, 1975, the date of independent arbitrator Peter Seitz’s ruling granting free agency to Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally, effectively killing the unrestricted reserve clause; and July 12, 1976, the date of the first collective bargaining agreement granting the players free agency, among others), the seeds of the owners’ demise in status were planted years earlier, and in surprising ways. To make sense of it all, however, it helps to go back even further, to a time when the owners ’ might was seemingly limitless. Even then, as it turned out, although they were powerful storytellers, they were far less powerful in many other ways than they ever let on. In fact, the peak from which the owners would ultimately descend was reached early in their existence, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century and marked by the begrudging consolidation of the National and American leagues under the Major League umbrella. After a two-year struggle, commencing on January 28, 1901, when Ban Johnson shook the baseball establishment by declaring his newly christened American League “major” and the equal of the arrogant National in all manner of speaking, the Nationals reluctantly accepted Johnson’s American League into the fold, signing a peace agreement with the upstart league that doubled the number of Major League teams to sixteen. After the Baltimore franchise relocated to New York (to become the Highlanders and, eventually, the Yankees) in 1903, the Major League Baseball map was set: two leagues, sixteen clubs, ten cities. With this, the sixteen club owners pulled up the drawbridge and considered the matter of expansion, and the concurrent dilution of their power that came with it, closed . . . for good. For decades they were unbreakable if not unchallenged: despite the occasional threat to their supremacy, the Major Leagues of the late 1950s looked very much like the Major Leagues that existed nearly six decades earlier. Although a few teams had recently relocated (to Milwaukee, Baltimore , Kansas City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), the essence of the cabal that was Major League Baseball ownership remained unchanged. There were still sixteen clubs—no more. The tight ship remained united and closed to any and all outsiders. More important to these owners, the gameitselfremainedjust asit wasbackin 1876when theirforbearswrested it away from the players. Notwithstanding the minor annoyances of relocation , Major League Baseball was still an owners’ game. The players were a necessary inconvenience but little more; it was the owners who made nearly every decision relevant to the game. The players were subservient , a secondary concern in all areas, save for the nine innings or so they trotted on and off the field 154 times each season. The owners’ status as gatekeepers of America’s game seemed perpetual as their fraternity was so entrenched in the national consciousness that several of them were TEARING DOWN THE WALLS 109 household names: Topping, Webb, Wrigley, Stoneham, Crosley, Carpenter, Yawkey, O’Malley, and so on. Within twenty years, however, everything would change. By 1980, the game of the 1950s was virtually unrecognizable. By then there were twenty-six teams and, perhaps even more shocking to those who controlled the game only a few years earlier, it was now firmly the players’ game; the owners were still huffing and puffing but to no avail: the players had already blown the house down. Within a few years the players would be more popular than ever while most owners would be unrecognizable even to fans of their own teams. Just as was the case with the gentlemanly club...