Baseball In 1889

"National League players planned revolt as the crowds swelled, hoping to take advantage of baseball's growing popularity. The season became, as one sportswriter said, something approaching a Lobster-Frankenstein nightmare."--BOOK JACKET.

The 1889 baseball season is unique in the history of baseball. Both leagues--the veteran National League and the upstart American Association--featured thrilling pennant races that were not decided until the final day of the season. There was excitement off the field as well; the players' union (known then as "the Brotherhood") sowed the seeds of the most ambitious player revolt in baseball history. This work presents accounts from the major newspapers of each of the four teams' cities--the New York Times, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the Boston Herald, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch--to capture the day-by-day excitement of the 1889 pennant race and the passion that the press and public had for baseball. The National League race pitted the world champion New York Giants against the Boston Beaneaters--teams that accounted for 10 Hall of Famers and three players that spearheaded the player revolt. The American Association race was just as exciting and even more controversial, as team presidents Chris Von der Ahe of the St. Louis Browns and Charles H. Byrne of the Brooklyn Bridegrooms hated each other passionately and Von der Ahe often clashed with his own players.

No other sport can begin to compare to the rich history and statistical record of baseball. It is part of what makes the game so alluring. In “Moments in Baseball History,” Mark R. Brewer examines twenty-two memorable games and the player at the center of that game. It should prove a feast for baseball fans.

From Major League Baseball's inception in the 1880s through World War II, team owners enjoyed monopolistic control of the industry. Despite the players' desire to form a viable union, every attempt to do so failed. The labor consciousness of baseball players lagged behind that of workers in other industries, and the public was largely in the dark about labor practices in baseball. In the mid-1960s, star players Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale staged a joint holdout for multiyear contracts and much higher salaries. Their holdout quickly drew support from the public; for the first time, owners realized they could ill afford to alienate fans, their primary source of revenue. Baseball's Power Shift chronicles the growth and development of the union movement in Major League Baseball and the key role of the press and public opinion in the players' successes and failures in labor-management relations. Swanson focuses on the most turbulent years, 1966 to 1981, which saw the birth of the Major League Baseball Players Association as well as three strikes, two lockouts, Curt Flood's challenge to the reserve clause in the Supreme Court, and the emergence of full free agency. To defeat the owners, the players' union needed support from the press, and perhaps more importantly, the public. With the public on their side, the players ushered in a new era in professional sports when salaries skyrocketed and fans began to care as much about the business dealings of their favorite team as they do about wins and losses. Swanson shows how fans and the media became key players in baseball's labor wars and paved the way for the explosive growth in the American sports economy.

After the 1889 baseball season, the players of the National League, furious over their treatment by NL owners, decided to secede from the National League and start their own rival league, the Players League. Their league lasted only one season, but its formation remains one of the seminal events in understanding the trajectory of nineteenth-century baseball. Why is this true? By learning why the players of the NL elected to strike out on their own, we gain insight into some of the critical issues facing the game in the late 1880s, particularly the relationship between team owners and their players. However, that's not all. Had a few things gone differently, the Players League might have succeeded. Had it done so, the entire history of major league baseball would have been vastly different. Therefore, understanding the motivations of the players gives us a glimpse of both what was, and what might have been. Put simply, baseball history in the 1890s is incomprehensible without knowledge of the 1890 Players League and how it began.

The first biography of one of the most adventurous and influential figures in baseball history.

Helms Hall of Fame's brothers William M. and Andrew B. "June" Rankin lived exciting lives covering sports for papers like the New York Sunday Mercury, New York Herald, New York World, Brooklyn Daily Eagle and New York Clipper from 1870 to 1930. Playing for amateur and semiprofessional Rockland County (N.Y.) clubs in the mid-1860s through early 1870s, the brothers developed into baseball writers and editors. Often working with Henry Chadwick, called the Father of Baseball, the brothers became authorities on the sport, writing histories of clubs and players, and scoring for the early New York and Brooklyn clubs. June went on to cover boxing as it transitioned into a gentlemen's sport, football as it emerged on college campuses, and golf through the formative years of the USGA and PGA. He also wrote two baseball books. Filled with sporting details, this book sets the brothers into a period of great changes in the world of American sports.