1900-1910 Baseball
 Players Protective Association:
 Founded in 1900
 Originated from the Brotherhood of Professional
Baseball Players (1885)
 One of the first unions created by players who objected
the Reserve Clause
 Forced players to stay with one team at the owners
disposal
 Players had no say as to where they were traded/sold
 Ban Johnson
1900–1910
Baseball
Byron Bancroft Johnson:
-Created the American League in
1901
-Offered higher salaries and better
contract options
-Players like Cy Young, John
McGraw, and Nap Lajoie jumped
from the National League
-Cracked down on dirty play and
banned liquor from ballparks
-Baseball becoming a more
acceptable activity
1900–1910 Baseball

Immigration and Baseball:
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Baseball becoming a
reflection of the changing
ethnic composition of
America.
Many European immigrants
became club owners due to
limited entrepreneurial
opportunities in a less risky
environment.
A number of Northern and
Eastern European
immigrants played on teams
as a means for social
mobility.

Olaf Henriksen - Denmark
1900-1910 Baseball
 Alta Weiss:
 1907
 First Woman to Play Professional Baseball
1900-1910
Baseball
Take Me Out to the Ball Game:
“Take me out to the ball game,
take me out with the crowd. Buy
me some peanuts and cracker jack,
I don’t care if I never get back. Let
me root, root, root, for the home
team, if they don’t win it’s a
shame. For it’s one, two, three
strikes, you’re out, at the old ball
game.”
Jack Norwith
1907
 US Postal Service
Commemorative Stamp
2008
1910-1919 Baseball
 The First, First Pitch:
 William Howard Taft establishes the tradition of
throwing out the first pitch on April 14, 1910.
1910-1919 Baseball
 Player-Owner Relationships:
 Players were becoming increasingly frustrated with poor
conditions on and off the field.
 1912 – Players Fraternity created:

Attempted to negotiate better conditions, but quickly fell apart
 1912 – First Players strike:
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Detroit Tigers players struck over Ty Cobb’s suspension after
fighting with a fan
Tigers President, Frank J. Navin, hired scabs off the street to replace
his striking players
This and numerous other problems helped to increase the sense of
injustice within baseball, eventually leading to the Black Sox
Scandal
1910-1919 Baseball
 The Black Sox:
 Charles Comiskey, Owner of the Chicago Whit Sox,
paid extremely low wages and treated his players poorly
 Due to their poor treatment, players leaped at any
opportunity to earn more money
 A group of players including: Joe Jackson and Eddie
Cicotte, accepted money to throw the 1919 World Series
against the Cincinnati Reds
1910-1919 Baseball
 The Scandal:
 Multiple rumors and accusations led to the investigation of
eight players and their eventual trials
 During the investigation, both Cicotte and Jackson confessed,
although shortly after their confessions went missing
 Now, with no evidence, all eight players were acquitted
 Because of the evident problems, Federal Judge Kenesaw
Mountain Landis was brought in as the sport’s first
commissioner
 Unfortunately for the the players, Landis was not as forgiving
and banned all eight players for life
1910-1919
Baseball
“Regardless of the verdict of the
juries, no player who throws a ball
game, no player who undertakes or
promises to throw a ball game, no
player who sits in confidence with a
bunch of crooked players, and does
not promptly tell his club about it,
will ever play professional
baseball.”
 Federal Judge
Kenesaw Mountain
Landis
1910-1919 Baseball
 World War One and Baseball:
 Ban Johnson ordered his teams to learn close-order drills
 John K. Tener, President of the National League, stated “This
is a war of democracy against bureaucracy. And I tell you
that baseball is the very watchword of democracy.”
 With baseball now one of the leaders in the entertainment
industry, owners felt no reason to stop playing:
 This decision sparked a great deal of criticism across the
nation along with a drastic decline in attendance
1910-1919
Baseball
Players or Soldiers?
-Owners argued that baseball be
considered an essential industry so
that players could not be drafted
-Secretary of War Newton D. Baker
disagreed with this statement,
leading to the drafting of 227 MLB
players
-Three professional players were
killed in combat, one of whom was
Eddie Grant, former Captain of the
New York Giants
 Eddie Grant