SHORT HOP: Interlude #5, Continued
"A Despicable Accomplishment"
The Players Strike, 1950
Freeders’ speech was to become the biggest blemish in an otherwise stellar career as an owner. In his attempt to clarify the owners’ stance an already contentious situation, to diffuse the bomb, so to speak, Freeders accidentally set it off. Though undeserved, Freeders became a symbol of forces aligned against the Player and the focus of the players’ fury.
The fact that the speech came during the off-season was seminal. Had it come during the season, the players might not have had time to get organized. But in November there was often nothing for players to do but give Rotary speeches and read the newspaper, where a transcript of the speech appeared the next day. That journalists, a group who traditionally supported players over owners, gave an owner a standing ovation only added to players’ feelings of persecution and fueled the players’ wrath.
Their response was immediate, incendiary, and unrepentant. Of the six or seven players who were the anonymous leaders for unionization, it is thought at least five contributed to the response printed four days later in the
Trumpet. The players who contributed to the article have never been positively identified, but there is no question now who put the players’ thoughts and feelings onto paper: Ernest V. McGovern.
The ensuing battle over Freeders’ speech, and the war for a players’ union, was an ugly conflict filled with accusations, arguments, and diatribes fought mostly in the press. From November 1949 to January 6th, 1950 it was a war of words. But in early January, after taking a Christmas break, representatives for the players met in New York and initiated a strike vote. The players approved a strike with a 96% vote and February 26th came and went without a single player reporting for spring training.
It was the first significant work stoppage in ABF history. In 1920, the players walked out of spring training for three days to protest the overall poor conditions of the league’s winter venues. The official schedule was not affected and the players went back to train after receiving assurances from the Board of Directors that conditions would improve.
In 1927 the situation was more serious. Large gaps in player compensation caused the players to push for established league minimum salaries to offset the huge difference between the big stars and the journeymen. The owners invoked the Release Clause and the players threatened to form a union and sue the league. Baseball continued, but both sides were preparing for conflict. The players even formed the Association of Baseball Professionals, though it was an association in name only and contained but 35 members. Black Monday and its immediate impact ended any hope of a sustained union.
But in 1950 things were different. The country was prospering. The economy was strong and getting stronger. There wasn’t going to be another Black Monday. Spring training facilities were the least of the players’ worries. This time, the difference was philosophical. The Release Clause was a way for a team to keep its stars. It was effective in baseball’s early days, and up to around 1925. If fact, it could be argued that without it, the 1915 Baltimore Steamers would never have won the Championship.
But social tides were turning in 1950. The War and its huge price had convinced the world that a man’s freedom was his greatest advantage. Civil right protests in the Deep South were making national headlines. Set against the lessons of the Holocaust and in light of the horrific incidents in Jackson, Mississippi, the Release Clause seemed like slavery all over again. The players called for the “abolition” of the Release Clause. The owners cried economic hardship. All of a sudden it was 1860 again.
The Players’ Strike lasted 36 days. In the end, the Federal Government had to step in. On April 2, 1950, the United State Senate Committee on Labor and Welfare issued a ruling in favor of the players, granting them a Temporary Relief Order and suspending the “use or material influence of the Release Clause pending Judicial Review”.
The season began, but under a dark, dark cloud. Many players held out, waiting for the results of the judicial review. The newly formed Professional Baseball Players’ Association quickly established a general account to help players whose pay was suspended by their teams. It operated much like the General Fund the owners had been using for years.
When the Review was made public, it only added to the PBPA’s growing strength. The players had won on all counts. The Release Clause was dissolved and players were bound now only by the lengths of their contracts. The owners cried foul, with Chicago owner Joseph Beklis calling the Players’ Strike “a despicable accomplishment”. The owners appealed, claiming the legal status of professional baseball exempted them from not only anti-Trust legislation, but gave them the right to negotiate contracts without stipulation. The Review board agreed in principle, but added “except in the case of a restriction of basic vocational freedom, such as is afforded to all independent solicitors, to work when, where, and for whom he wishes, according to and in compliance with established Federal Law.”
Without the Release Clause to help them, owners were pinned between economics and social responsibility. They had no recourse but to re-structure contracts or risk losing their stars to their new enemy: Arbitration. What’s more, what the players gained in freedom they lost in loyalty. After 1950, the widening gap between the owners and players became a chasm.
The Players’ Strike of 1950 had one other unanticipated result. The liberal language of the decision dissolved the Release Clause “in all instances of use, professional or otherwise.” This, it turned out, applied to Negro baseball as well. In short, all professional players, regardless of color or salary, were free to pursue the best terms for employment they could find. This didn’t mean much for black players in 1950; everyone simply assumed the decision was meant for whites. What’s more, the Negro Baseball League was alive and well in twenty cities. It was not reliant on white baseball at all.
But it did mean something to forward thinking owners like Nathaniel Freeders, who had been so vilified during the Strike he retreated to his estate north of Detroit and was now seldom seen. Like his groundbreaking father before him, Freeders had an idea that was going to change the game forever and which wouldn’t have been remotely considered even a year earlier. Ironically, it was the dissolution of the Release Clause and the establishment of a players’ union that made this idea possible. Nathaniel Freeders was going to do the unthinkable.
He was going to hire a black man to play baseball for him.
Next up: Chapter 51 (asap)