# America's National Game/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV.
1875-80
IT IS the purpose in this chapter to consider events leading up to the organization of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, an alliance which, through many trials and discouragements, has successfully weathered all the storms that have beaten about its head during thirty-five years of all kinds of weather, and which stands to-day the honored pioneer Major League in Base Ball history.
The seasons of 1873 and 1874 had been characterized by an increase of the abuses and evils which the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players had inherited from the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players. It may be possible that had the professional management been in control of affairs at the beginning of organized Base Ball things might have been different. We have, however, to deal with things as they were, not as they might have been. And they were "rotten." Gambling, in all its features of pool selling, side betting, etc., was still openly engaged in. Not an important game was played on any grounds where pools on same were not sold. A few players, too, had become so corrupt that nobody could be certain as to whether the issue of any ​game in which these players participated would be determined on its merits. The occasional throwing of games was practiced by some, and no punishment meted out to the offenders. Years before, one Wansley, convicted of selling a game between the Eckfords and Mutuals, had been reinstated "in good standing." Liquor selling, either on the grounds or in close proximity thereto, was so general as to make scenes of drunkenness and riot of every day occurrence, not only among spectators, but now and then in the ranks of the players themselves. Many games had fist fights, and almost every team had its "lushers." The effect of this condition was exactly what might have been expected. A game characterized by such scenes, whose spectators consisted for the most part of gamblers, rowdies, and their natural associates, could not possibly attract honest men or decent women to its exhibitions. Consequently, the attendance fell away to such a degree that the season of 1875 closed with bankruptcy facing every professional club in the country.
It was at this time in the fortunes of the American game that Mr. Henry Chadwick, with true prophetic vision, drew the following pen picture of existing conditions in the official publication of 1873, which he was then editing:
"When the system of professional ball playing as practiced in 1872 shall be among the things that were, on its tombstone—if it have any—will be found the inscription, 'Died of Pool-Selling.' When professional playing was first inaugurated, the first obstacle presented in its slow progress to a reputable popularity was 'revolving' (a term used to designate contract jumping). This evil, however, soon disappeared when the system was governed by official authority emanating from a regular organization of professional clubs. In its place, however, an evil of far greater magnitude has sprung up, and ​the past season's experience stands forth as affording unmistakable evidence of the fact that the greatest evil the system of professional ball playing ever encountered or is likely to encounter is that arising from the pool-selling business inaugurated in 1871. The cause of its introduction was a very loose system of arranging wagers on the games, there being constant disputes arising from the want of some reliable depository of the stakes of the betting class. To remedy this, the pool-selling system was introduced, with the sole view of putting an end to the quarreling and bickering incident to the 'betting exchange' business which had previously prevailed. Unfortunately for the professionals, this pool-selling innovation has proved more damaging in its results than any one dreamed of, the evils before existing in the betting-mart being trifling in comparison. Before pools were sold on games, it was only by a rough and unreliable estimate that any idea of the amount bet on a match could be ascertained, except in such cases of individual investments where a man would bet $1,000 or more in place of $25 or $50 on a match. But now the amount of money pending in a contest on which pools have been sold can be known to the interested few to a dollar, and hence the temptation to fraudulent arrangements for losing matches for betting purposes becomes so great as almost to be irresistible. Since the introduction of pool-selling at Base Ball matches, pools amounting to over $30,000 have been known to be sold on a single match, and it has been in the power of parties knowing the aggregate amount of money invested, and who also knew which club the larger amount was invested on, to so manipulate things as to make the contest terminate just as the special 'ring' of the day desired it should. What benefit therefore pool-selling yielded in supplying a regular responsibility in the payment of bets in the place of the previous loose way of staking money was more than offset by the great temptations to fraud the knowledge of the amounts invested on the favorite club afforded and which the pool business admitted of. But, aside from the special evil of the system referred to, the very existence of the betting mart on the ball field has been found to be demoralizing in the extreme. Where this system of open betting exists, it is characterized by a suspicion of foul play by the contesting nines whenever either glaring errors or one-sided scores mark the playing of the game. Besides, during the contest, the class of fellows who patronize the game simply to pick up dollars by it, indulge in the vilest abuse and profanity in their comments on those errors of the play which damage the chances of winning their bets or pools. In fact, in every way likely to affect the interests of professional ball playing, is the pool-selling business an evil, and one, too, that has done more to lower the status of professional ball playing and to bring into question the honesty of the professional class than half a dozen such exposures of fraud as the Wansley case of 1865."
​As shown heretofore, there was no stability in the fabric of the organization. A club standing well at the front in one season's race for the pennant would be out of the game the following year. There was no tie to bind the clubs in a bond strong enough to hold them together. The game had loyal friends and true, many of them, who were willing to back it with time and money; but a single season was usually quite sufficient to satisfy any capitalist who was willing, temporarily, to act as "angel," that the emissaries from the lower regions had control of the sport and that Base Ball, under then existing conditions, was only a hole in the ground into which he might pour his wealth as water, without hope of possible recovery.
What, then, was the matter? It was quite evident that the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was no better equipped to deal with the situation than had been its predecessor. The abuses that had played havoc with the old association were not only continued, but were rapidly increasing in numbers and strength under the new organization. It was not conceivable that the men who were depending upon the game as a means of obtaining a livelihood were desirous of deliberately wrecking it. Nor could it be imagined that those who year after year met in convention and roundly denounced the outrageous practices that had attached themselves to Base Ball were dishonest in their clamor against those wrongs. All were agreed that the game must be reformed. But how?
About this time it began to be apparent to some that ​the system in vogue for the business management of the sport was defective; that means ought to be adopted to separate the control of the executive management from the players and the playing of the game. The idea was as old as the hills; but its application to Base Ball had not yet been made. It was, in fact, the irrepressible conflict between Labor and Capital asserting itself under a new guise.
The experiment of business control of Base Ball by the men who played the game had been tested under several administrations of the National Association of Base Ball Players and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. No further evidence of the inability of ball players, whether amateurs or professionals, to manage both ends of the Base Ball enterprise at the same time was needed than was presented in conditions apparent to everybody—and especially in the overdrawn bank accounts of those who had undertaken to finance the sport.
Now, this picture of the situation as it was carries with it no reflection whatever upon the business acumen or executive ability of ball players as individuals. Scores of those who have won fame on the diamond have also won fortunes in business. But no ball player, in my recollection, ever made a success of any other business while he was building up his reputation as an artist on the diamond. The two branches are entirely unlike in their demands. One calls for the exercise of functions differing altogether from those which are required in the other. No man can do his best at ball playing unless his whole soul is in the effort. The man whose whole soul is absorbed ​in the business of playing ball has no soul left for the other business—just as important in its way—of conducting the details of managing men, administering discipline, arranging schedules and finding the ways and means of financing a team.
And so there came a day in the fall of 1875 when certain men—to be spoken of more personally later on—desirous of the success of the national game, determined upon a reorganization on lines differing entirely from those that had previously obtained. They proposed an organization that should draw a sharp line of distinction between the terms "Club" and "Team." Heretofore Base Ball Clubs had won and lost games, matches, tournaments, trophies. Henceforth this would be changed. The function of Base Ball Clubs in the future would be to manage Base Ball Teams. Clubs would form leagues, secure grounds, erect grandstands, lease and own property, make schedules, fix dates, pay salaries, assess fines, discipline players, make contracts, control the sport in all its relations to the public, and thus, relieving the players of all care and responsibility for the legitimate functions of management, require of them the very best performance of which they were capable, in the entertainment of the public, for which service they were to receive commensurate pay.
This then was the germ, yet in its chrysalis state, that was incubating in the minds of devotees of the game—some of them players and some not—during the closing hours of the life of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, in 1875.
​Just here a word should be spoken in justice to the memory of the man who for the greater part of its existence was President of the National Association of Base Ball Players. Robert Ferguson was not only one of the best ball players of his time, but he was a man of sterling integrity and splendid courage. He knew all about the iniquitous practices which had become attached to the game as barnacles to a ship, and he was sincerely desirous of eradicating them. But he lacked the essential qualifications of a reformer. It was written and widely published at the time, that, upon occasion of one of the notable contests in which the club that he headed as captain-manager was engaged, he went among the members of the gambling fraternity, who, as usual, were practicing their nefarious calling on the grounds, and, in the presence of a great throng attracted by the vehemence of his language and actions, berated the gamblers with fierce invective, charging them with having conspired to debauch the honor of his players, and threatening them with personal chastisement if they did not at once desist.
Had Ferguson at this time been surrounded by men such as later on took control of the game, much of humiliation might have been spared to players in coming years, and the game itself would never have suffered the disgrace that came to it from failure to act along sane lines at this important juncture.
The trouble with Ferguson—as with many other players in those days—was not lack of intelligence, courage or integrity; but, rather, a want of diplomacy. He was no master of the arts of finesse. He had no tact. He ​knew nothing of the subtle science of handling men by strategy rather than by force. Could it have been possible to eliminate gambling by physical demonstrations, Robert Ferguson would have cleared the Base Ball atmosphere of one of its most unsanitary conditions at that time; and this was true of many other well meaning but inefficient leaders in those days of the game's early evolution. It was this fact that later on made it very clear that there must be a separation between the playing and business ends of the sport; that no man could be a success in both offices at the same time; that the manager must be equipped to manage, while the player need only be qualified to play the game.