Playing Tough: The World of Sports and Politics

1. Early Baseball and the Urban Political Machine

William Magear Tweed ran New York City’s Tammany Hall in the 1860s when amateur baseball flourished in the metropolitan area. His Mutuals baseball club prospered in no small measure because Tweed placed all the ballplayers on the city’s payroll with no-show jobs. Freed from the responsibility of earning a living, the ballplayers could concentrate on perfecting their skills in playing America’s new team sport. Library of Congress Of course, we can’t pay you. That would be against Base Ball Association policy and, as New York’s Commissioner of Public Works, I would never break the rules. —William M. Tweed The appearance of law must be upheld, especially when it’s being broken. —William M. Tweed [ 1 ] Early Baseball and the Urban Political Machine The nineteenth century in America was a time of explosive population growth, remarkable technological change, and a di sastrous civil war. At the same time, in this period of upheaval the men and women of this country created a uniquely American culture. European immigration and domestic migration dramatically increased the population density of urban centers. The Industrial Revolution added a manufacturing sector to an essentially agrarian economy, and American-made goods became available to the world. Completing the business left unfinished at the founding of the nation, the Civil War solidified a union of states at a significant cost. More than 2 percent of the population, 620,000 li ves, were lost on the nation’s battlefields. Amidst all this change, uproar, carnage, and social transformation, the country created a culture that, for the first time, was distinctively American. That dominant culture—its music, arts, social habits, cuisine, and folklore—also included activities that filled newly found leisure time. For the first time, nineteenth­ -century Americans enjoyed hours each week that could be devoted to play and entertainment, a pleasure not possible when work filled every day but Sunday from sunrise until sunset. One activity of this new indulgence was a uniquely American sport, one filled with “vim, vigor [and] vitality,” as Albert Spalding later wrote in America’s National Game. It was baseball, born 22 Playing Tough shortly before midcentury and soon played nationwide. It was baseball that would capture the attention of the nation and reflect the dynamism of America. The nineteenth century also gave birth to new forms of political governance, and these were directly related to meeting the needs of the surging urban population. The American political system, as ordained in the constitutions of the United States and each of the states, contemplated periodic democratic elections in which citizens freely selected their leaders. The legitimacy of governmental power under this political compact rested on “the consent of the governed,” as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence in the eighteenth century. Public officials, elected for limited terms of office, would periodically seek a reaffirmation of their governance power by the electorate, which would then hold them accountable for their actions. This original and elementary version of American politics, of course, was never quite accurate, although it remained a c ompelling myth. It was just as reliable as the fable constructed later that in 1839 a nineteen-year-old Abner Doubleday had invented the national game of baseball on Mr. Phinney’s dirt field in bucolic Cooperstown, New York. Democracy was the privilege of only a few in America. In fact, about ten percent of Americans, white male landowners, were entitled to vote in t he early decades of the nation. More than fifteen percent of the inhabitants were slaves, half were women, and the remaining males were landless. None could vote. In some states, there were religious and literacy tests that barred many others from voting. In some states, “heretics,” Jews, Quakers, and Catholics did not enjoy the privilege of political participation. Thus, in fact, the “consent of the governed” meant the consent of those few white Christian men who held a property stake in the country and thus could be counted on to exercise democracy in the best interests of the nation. America’s game—baseball—was equally enveloped in f able. Abner Doubleday , later to become a Civil War general who commanded Union troops at Fort Sumter, was attending the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1839, the year when he was said to have conceived of the “national game.” In fact, Doubleday’s family had moved away from Cooperstown the...