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Originally Posted by Tib
<center>SHORT HOP: INTERLUDE #3
A HISTORY OF THE CBA
From the American Baseball Federation to the Continental Baseball Association, 1881-2005
PART TWO: "Simple Democracy, Gentlemen"
Chapter Two: The Boom Leagues
ABF Expansion: 1904-1926</center>
Before the turn of the century the country was growing quickly. Cities expanded outward and upward; buildings got taller, streets got wider. The American middle class grew and baseball popularity grew with it. As traditional American endeavor shifted from a rural focus to an urban one, population increased, especially in the East. The owners in the ABF, with the possible exception of Nicholas Freeders, were solidly against the urbanization of baseball. Why? Because small-town teams were easy to manipulate. Teams in urban areas enjoyed an immense fan base and almost no local competition. The young talent coming from the farms and trades of the countryside was easily harvested by big-city teams. Eager young men were swayed by the glitter of the big city. Even in a growing nation, the ABF were determined to run the game to suit them. Prior to 1900 this was the American Way.
Things changed with the assassination of Warren Harding. For one thing, Teddy Roosevelt became president. Although he brought vivacity and a seldom-matched energy to the office, his populist policies were very much a worry for the ABF ownership. In short, the owners knew eventually they would have to do something about Teddy.
Two factors came together between 1900 and 1904 that stifled the owners’ chances to protect the ABF from Roosevelt’s anti-trust watchdogs: the success of smaller, regional leagues and the President’s own love of the game. Smaller leagues proved successful due mostly to the same factors that kept people coming to big city games: tradition, familiarity and competition. Fans liked good baseball games, at any level, and they would pay to see them. Fans also liked to identify with the players and local leagues provided an almost inexhaustible supply of local boys for fans to cheer. It was not uncommon to work with a man during the day and pay a quarter or fifty cents to watch him play that afternoon for the factory team, or the railroad company team, or the town’s team. The emergence of regional leagues like the Carolina Association and the Kentucky League were examples of the appeal and affordability of the game to the working class. Early successes like the Heartland League and the Dixie League lasted until the middle of the twentieth century.
Theodore Roosevelt was a well known champion of the “rigorous life”. Physical exertion, a hearty appetite and an enthusiasm for adventure were all factors in its appeal to the President. Roosevelt himself wrote that he never enjoyed watching the game as much as playing it, and of its parts he most liked “batting the ball”. But he did profess an interest in the more subtle battles taking place in the field; the position of fielders, the intimidation of batters, the continuous adjustments being made by all parties to gain the advantage at the crucial moment. Indeed, he wrote, it “was more like politics than any game I’ve yet to see”.
The President loved the game, but lamented that he had to travel to Baltimore if he wanted to see one of the ABF teams play. Additionally, he was not much of a Steamers fan, preferring to root for a team from the local Potomac League originally called the Emperors. When the Emperors learned of Roosevelt’s affection, they renamed themselves the Sentinels in 1902, after one of his famous speeches.
Thankfully for the Sentinels, and for the ABF for that matter, Roosevelt’s team was a good one. There were several players on that team coveted by many of the ABF franchises, but kept out of their reach by binding contracts. In 1904, when Theodore’s anti-trust legislation was creating unrest among the ABF ownership, it was a fairly easy concession to add the Sentinels to the ABF. It gave the ABF trust exemption, it rewarded two dominant local teams (the Pittsburgh Drillers were also added to balance the schedule), it expanded the game to two desirable markets and it voided the exclusivity clause in interleague contracts, adding regional stars to the league.
For the next two decades baseball structure was twofold. At one level the success and appeal of the ABF – baseball at its highest level of competition – and the proliferation and local appeal of “boom leagues”, numerous regional associations that enjoyed a burst of interest during a period of rapid growth. Local heroes popped up overnight. Young men seeking their fortune in the big city were told not to forget “the tools of Success: their bat, ball and glove”.
There are many, many stories about the boom leagues. A great many future ABF Hall of Famers came from small local associations, including Rolf Niewenwerth, Jeremiah Braun, and Spider Lucas.
In 1920 expansion came again, but this time it was not prompted by politics but by people. As the population moved west they took the game with them. Granted, baseball already had a strong foothold in the Frontier League states, but populations were growing in other states as well, most notably Pennsylvania and Ohio. To this end the ABF offered to “buy” the competition rights to two highly competitive Ohio teams, the Cincinnati Barons and the Cleveland Hammers. This entailed the ABF making a “donation” to the governing league and the league releasing the team in question the following year to resume play in the Federation. This was the protocol authored by Will Voss to govern league expansion and put an end to the “team raiding” of earlier days.
During the 20’s ABF baseball continued to grow, with an added bonus: continuity. The league was 40 years old now and many of its earliest fans were teaching their children about the game. Fans bases included two or three generations now. Because of this widespread interest in baseball, boom leagues increased at a record pace. Almost any area that could field four teams created a boom league. There were economic factors at work here as well. Professional baseball organizations were exempt from anti-trust laws, and while most associated this with the ABF exclusively, the exemption extended to all organizations. Thus, it was good for local economics to have a team in a boom league, however small. Team revenues could be redistributed for the public good. Unfortunately, expenses could be hidden by unscrupulous politicians, dirty money could be laundered by organized crime, and any manner of shady dealing could be obscured by filtering it through a league. Federal officials first noticed the problem in 1923 when a tax audit of the Long Island Baseball Association revealed the patronage of several underworld figures. In fact, the Islip Breakers were owned not by a person, but by Fellini Imports, a company run by mob boss Antonino Scarpacci. This was the first recorded instance of corporate ownership of a baseball franchise.
The ABF had a new problem: federal interest. Most boom leagues were clean, but the dirty ones were creating the same lawlessness and corruption that existed back in the 1870’s when the Association began. There were two ways to handle this problem; distance the ABF from dirty leagues or find a way to clean up the game and benefit from it. Well, money spoke just as loudly in 1923 as it does now. The ABF owners did not want to leave so much money on the table and walk away. Thankfully, League Justice Hanford Rittenauer, Will Voss’ protégé, knew about the situation and knew what to do.
It involved a complete restructuring of the ABF that took two years. Rittenauer voided the “patronage” contracts the ABF had with any boom league associated with tax evasion, money laundering or organized crime. Rittenauer added two new divisions, the Central League and the Mid-West League. He restructured team alignments and invited four new teams to join. He designed new mandatory monetary policies to keep federal investigators away. The result was a four-division, 16-team league. The Frontier and New England Leagues retained their names, but were now simply divisions of the whole. Added to the league were the Texas Marshals (who became the Dallas Marshals), the Milwaukee Wolves (the strongest team north of Chicago), the Chicago Comanches (who played on the city’s blue collar South Side) and the Atlanta Generals (the pride of the Dixie League).
With the ABF restructuring the era of the boom leagues reached its zenith. There would always be regional leagues; baseball was baseball, after all. But the ABF had grown even stronger and larger and richer through the 20’s. Now there were no leagues powerful and wealthy enough to challenge it. In fact, no one could imagine anything powerful enough to affect the ABF’s hold on the American Pastime.
Next Interlude: Part III: Depression and War, 1927-1949
Chapter One: "A Sad Day for Us": The Depression Years, 1927-1940
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