Chicago Cubs Celebrate 150th Anniversary as Current Stars Battle Adversity

 

The Chicago Cubs are celebrating their 150th Anniversary--and coincidentally the anniversary of the National League--this season.  That's an almost unmatched record for any American professional sport team.  Only the Cincinnati Reds are older as an all-pro baseball club.  After a solid Pennant run last season and a returning core roster of some of the best players in Major League Baseball (MLB) avid fans expected a romp to the Playoffs.  Spectacular early success included two 10 game winning streaks.  But injuries, especially to pitchers, and an inexplicable team-wide batting slump plunged the team to the bottom of the National League Central during an epic losing streak.  The bats seem to be coming back with huge wins at home and romped over the Mets twice in a three-game winning streak.  Pete Crow-Armstrong, Ian Happ, Nicco Hoerner, and Dansby Swanson routinely dazzle with probably the strongest defense in the game and speed on the base paths.  It is a long climb back to the top, however.  But it would be prefect if the Boys could take home Championship rings to crown the anniversary season.

                         Chicago White Stockings--The First Champions of the National League, 1876.

On April 25, 1876 the Chicago professional baseball club known then as the White Stockings played their first game in the infant National League.

The club was founded in 1870 as the baseball craze swept post-Civil War America.  Like most such teams, it featured mostly local amateurs mixed with a handful of key paid players.  They played all comers including local rival teams and barnstormed to other cities to play the local favorites.  There were no leagues and the lowliest pick-up teams playing in dusty small towns competed with a handful of elite teams.

On February 2, 1876 the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs was formed at the invitation of The Chicago White Stockings.  Teams also included the Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Red Stockings, Hartford Blue Ducks, Mutual of New York, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings, and Louisville Grays.

Over that winter Chicago owner William Hulbert signed dissatisfied top players from the dominant teams in the pre-league era, Boston and Cincinnati.  He assembled a virtual all-star team including Albert Spaulding, Cap Aaronson, Ross Barnes, and Deacon White.

Spaulding pitched a 4-0 shut out at the old West Side Grounds over the Louisville in that inaugural contest.  The team went on to romp to the very first National League Championship with a record of 52-14.

Almost all of this 1880 Championship team was back for another romp to the crown a year later.  Cap Anson front and center. 

 

The club became the first professional baseball dynasty winning six National League pennants between 1876 and 1886, five of those under the leadership of Anson who became player-manager in 1880.

                            Chicago player/manager Cap Anson was not only the biggest star in early Major League Baseball but a major player in shaping the National Pass Time. 

In the 1890’s when the club had to rebuild under Anson with young players, the press hung a new nickname on them—the Colts.  When Spaulding, by then both a sporting goods tycoon and club owner, finally let Anson go as manager in 1897, they got a new name the Orphans.

Other informal monikers were tossed around in the newspapers until everybody seemed to settle on the Cubs in 1902 for a new batch of young players.  That squad evolved into a second Chicago dynasty with stars like infielders Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance and pitcher Mordecai "Three-Finger" Brown which won four pennants and two World Series titles over a five-year span, the last championship in 1908.

Chicago Cubs team logos over the years.

After that…well shall we say things tapered off for a few years with occasional rallies to pennants or the status of top contenders with a lot of colorful players thrown in.  Then the team won a thrilling World Series in 2016--their first Championship since 1908, rejuvenated the fan base, and became regular Division leaders 

The one that fans won't forget--celebrating a miracle in Cincinnati. 

Black Baseball's Birth, Bloom, and Bust

 

National Negro Baseball League founder Rube Foster with his Chicago American Giants.

On May 2, 1920, the first game between teams of the brand-new National Negro Baseball League (NNL) was played in Indianapolis.  The league was the brainchild of Rube Foster, a pitcher who had been managing Negro teams, semi-pro and professional since 1907.

The league was formed that February at a meeting held in a Kansas City YMCA.  The charter teams were the Chicago American Giants, Detroit Stars, Kansas City Monarchs, Indianapolis ABCs, St. Louis Giants, Cuban Stars, Dayton Marcos and Chicago Giants.  Foster’s own Chicago American Giants dominated the league in the early years, winning the first four consecutive championships.

Blacks had been playing organized baseball since at least the early 1870s.  Most clubs were amateur or had one or two paid players on the team.  Local and regional leagues came and went.

In the days of virtual apartheid in sports, only a handful of Blacks played on White teams.  Oberlin College players Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Welday were signed with the minor league Toledo Blue Stockings and stayed with the club when it moved up to the old American Association, a short-lived Major League in 1884.  A few other players who could pass or who claimed to be Native American or Hispanic also briefly played.

Black and white teams sometimes met in off-season exhibition games.

United States Postal Service first class stamps honoring the Negro Leagues and Rube Foster.

In 1885 the first all-pro Black team, the New York based Cuban American Giants was organized.  It played in local eastern leagues and barnstormed, mainly in the South until it was dissolved after the 1899 season.  Famously, they twice beat white major league teams in exhibitions.

From the turn of the 20th Century to the formation of Foster’s league, Black professional baseball was most famous for barnstorming—touring the country, most small towns, and taking on all comers.

Although the roster of teams changed, the NNL was concentrated mostly in the Midwest and Boarder South.  In 1923 Eastern professional teams organized as the Eastern Colored League (ECL).  From 1923 through ’27 the two leagues held their own World Championships.  The ECL folded in early 1928 but re-emerged with most of the same teams in 1929 as the American Negro League.

Neither league, however, could survive the Depression.  By 1932 both were out of business, although Black minor leagues like the Negro Southern League continued to operate.  Some of the stronger teams in the defunct majors continued to play, reverting to the barnstorming model.

A second league operating as the NNL opened in the 1933 season.  It struggled but climbed back to a major league status.  In 1937 the competing Negro American League (NAL) was formed leading to another annual championship series and All-Star games, known as the East-West Games.  It was in these leagues that legendary Black ball players rose to national prominence.  The level of play was so high that white professional teams began to wish they could recruit from it.  But the color bar seemed insurmountable.

In the 1940s and '50s the Kansas City Monarchs were the dominant team in the Negro Leagues with some of the most legendary stars including some who finally helped break the color barrier to play in MLB.  This is their team in 1942.

In 1947 the NAL absorbed the NNL.  From then on, it was the only remaining Black major league.

When Branch Rickey and the Brooklyn Dodgers finally broke the color line by putting Jackie Robinson on the field in 1947, it spelled eventual doom for Black baseball.  It took a few years, but by the mid-1950’s virtually every Major League team was stocking up on Black players, either from the NAL or signing them directly.  Black fans followed the best players to the Major League parks.  The NAL sputtered out of existence after the 1960 season.

Satchel Paige at his 1971 induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Several players including Robinson who got their start in the Negro League were enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  But it was not until 1972 that the hall inducted a player who spent most for his career in Black baseball—the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige who was brought up to the Majors long past his prime briefly by Bill Veek and the Cleveland Indians.

This diamond at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City features 12 life size bronze statues of Negro League greats including Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, and Buck O’Neil.

Black baseball got its own shrine in 1990 when the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was founded.  In 1997 it moved into a permanent home in a complex it shares with the American Jazz Museum at 18th and Vine Streets in Kansas City, Missouri.

 

Once the Champion Chicago White Stockings Couldn’t Draw Flies in Troy

 

Almost all of this 1880 Championship team was back for another romp to the crown a year later.  Cap Anson front and center. 

My beloved Chicago Cubs have had an exciting season this year with a stellar roster that seemed invincible until the All Star break.  Since then key injuries have taken their toll as did an inexplicable extended team batting slip.  Pitching, spectacular defense, and base path daring-do kept the team in the playoff race.  They secured a National League Wildcard slot but have struggled to nail down the top spot which would assure all first round games would be played at home.  But no matter what the most loyal fans in baseball not only packed Wrigley Field but turned out in big numbers on the road sometimes even out numbering the home teams wherever they went. 

That perspective makes todays baseball yarn even more of a head scratcher.

On September 27, 1881 the Chicago White Stockings (now known as the Cubs) played a game before the smallest “crowd” in their long history—12.  Probably also the smallest crowd for any Major League regular season game.  Which was strange.  Under legendary player/coach Cap Anson the Chicago Nine had been the top professional team for some time and dominated the early seasons of the National League.  On that Tuesday afternoon in Troy, New York, the team was coasting to another championship with an eight game lead.

 

Chicago player/manager Cap Anson was not only the biggest star in early Major League Baseball but a major player in shaping the National Pass Time. 

Perhaps it was because the Troy Trojans—you didn’t expect any other nickname did you—were a lousy team.  They struggled in 5th place and finished the season 39-45, 17 games behind Chicago.  But the White Stockings were so laden with talent that they were a draw everywhere, even when the host teams were certified mopes. The Trojans would be disbanded after the next losing season.  More than half of their players jumped to a brand new franchise in New York City, the Gothams—later known as the Giants.

 

The hapless Troy Trojans, soon to go out of business.

Perhaps the low attendance was due to the weather.  My attempts to ascertain conditions that day in Troy have been unsuccessful.  But it can get a mite nippy and/or rainy and raw in Upstate New York.  My guess is that is what kept the crowd below the combined number of players on the field.

The Cubs would go on to have their own attendance problems, even in beautiful Wriggly Field when they seemed mired in particular futility in the early 1950’s.  But they have gone on to become one of the most successful teams in baseball in terms of selling tickets.  Home games have routinely sell out.  Compared to the nearly empty stadiums you see on television for some teams—looking at you White Sox—they are the envy of baseball.

Oh, by the way, back to that game in Troy—the White Stockings won 10-8.

 

A Shock to the System—The Bitter MLB Strike of 1981

Note—Major League Baseball (MLB) recently reported that at the All Star Break attendance was up 9% over 2022.  So was television, cable, and streaming viewership and was topping pre-pandemic levels.  “Baseball is Back” crowed gloating press releases.  The success was credited to the new rules this season, including the time clock, which have shortened game time and encouraged more action on the diamond.  Maybe, but exciting playoff races and an emerging new generation of superstars also play a part.  So does relative labor peace which has not disrupted regular season play.  An owner’s lock-out in 2021 scrubbed most of Spring Training and delayed the season openers about a week.

On July 31, 1981 a strike against Major League Baseball (MLB) ended after the loss of 713 games—38% of the regular season.  Negotiations between the owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBA) were so bitter that MLB negotiator Ray Grebey and Players Association representative Marvin Miller refused to shake hands and pose with each other for a customary bury the hatchet photograph.  Each would have rather buried a hatchet in the other’s skulls.

The relationship of Baseball to its employees had been bitter almost from the very beginning of the National League.  Owners regarded players as virtual chattel bound indefinitely by iron-clad personal service contracts that forbad players from seeking higher pay at other teams.  The result was an abnormally low pay scale which kept all but a handful of stars in near poverty and gave the stars not much more.  Angry players sporadically struck individual teams without success, usually the so called ringleaders were banned for life from the sport.

As a result, the Players’ League was formed in 1890 with most of the National League’s top stars.  Although the league had a successful season, it was under-funded and collapsed sending most of its players back to the NL with their tails between their legs and worse off than ever.  Would-be rivals of the NL like the American Association, American League, and Federal League took advantage of player discontent to lure stars to their start-up challengers.  Only the AL survived and was eventually accepted as a peer by the NL and absorbed into the entity that became Major League Baseball.

The short-lived Federal League offered players an escape from from bondage to the National and American Leagues.  It's collapse indirectly let to the Supreme Court case which ruled that Major League Baseball was exempt from the provisions of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act handing unprecedented power to owners over players.

The fallout of the Federal League collapse left the players in worse shape than ever.  The owners of the former Federal League franchise in Baltimore attempted to purchase an MLB franchise.  They were not only rebuffed, but they were also blackballed.  They had the same result when they tried to obtain a franchise in the International League, then the top level of the minor leagues which fed players into the Bigs.  The Baltimoreans sued in Federal Court charging that MLB constituted an illegal Trust in restraint of trade.  They had one a big victory at the Circuit Court level which was overturned on appeal.  Eventually the case found its way to the Supreme Court in 1922 where, in what may have been the worst ruling since Dred Scott, the Court held that that baseball “was not the kind of commerce” that Federal law was intended to regulate.  Alone of all American industries, Major League baseball was handed a golden exemption from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

While the case was winding its way slowly through the courts, members of the stellar Chicago White Sox team chaffing under the notoriously tightfisted rule of Charles Comiskey demonstrated how damaging to baseball the players’ resentment could be.   The team, or at least key members of it, accepted a bribe from gambler Arnold Rothstein to throw the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.  The resulting Black Sox Scandal nearly derailed the game as the National Pastime.

To resurrect the tattered reputation of the game, the owners appointed Federal Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis as the Tsar-like Commissioner of Baseball.  From the owners point of view Landis was the perfect candidate.  He had won national acclaim for heavily fining Standard Oil of Indiana for attempting to fix freight rates, and was a rabid opponent of unionism, Socialism, and radicalism in any form.  He had presided over World War I and Red Scare era trials of dissidents handing out draconian sentences and frequently stretching the law to do it.  He presided over the trial of 101 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) leadership for sedition, sending all to prison for long terms.  He was also a devoted baseball fan who had maneuvered to avoid an earlier attempt to challenge organized baseball on anti-trust ground in a 1914 suit brought by the Federal League.  Most significantly he was the presiding judge at the Federal trial of the disgraced White Sox players.

A proven anti-labor union buster and the presiding judge in the Blsck Sox Scandal trial Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was picked as the powerful first Commissioner of Baseball.  He was the owners' creature from the beginning.

Although Landis theoretically represented the interests of all baseball, including players and fans, in fact at least on issues surrounding player salaries, working conditions, and ability offer their services freely to any team, he was steadfastly the owners’ man.  He ruled the game until his death in 1944 blocking all reform.

It wasn’t until Landis was dead and Ford Frick was Commissioner that players tried to form their first organization since Landis crushed the National Baseball Players Association back in 1922.  In 1952 the MLBPA was formed with highly respected Cleveland Indian pitcher Bob Feller as its first—and as it turned out—only President.

Under Feller the MLBPA attempted to function as a professional association advocating for improved conditions attempting to set up programs for retired and destitute members.  However, the owners flatly refused to deal with them or modify any of the terms of employment that bound players to the whim of the teams that literally owned them. 

In 1959 the organization decided it was time to get more aggressive.  It eliminated the executive presidency and brought in a professional Executive Director to lead it.  They really took the plunge to becoming a real labor union seven years later in 1966 when Marvin Miller, a former United Steelworkers economist, lead negotiator, and business agent was brought on board.

Miller meant business and set about to make the MPBLA one of the strongest unions in America.  Broadcaster Red Barber would later categorize him with Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson as one of the most important figures in modern era baseball.  Certainly, he shook things up.

In just two years Miller obtained the first collective bargaining agreement with the owners which raised the minimum pay—usually for rookies and journeymen utility players—for the first time in twenty years from $6,000 per season to $10,000.  That won the players’ undying loyalty and built unshakeable solidarity.

Next, in 1970 Miller won arbitration.  Previously when a player and his owner failed to reach agreement on terms for a new contract, the dispute would be referred to the Commissioner, the owner’s creature, who naturally tended to always side with them.  Arbitration took it to an independent arbiter who picked between the two sides final offers.  Increasingly the arbitrators found for underpaid veteran players.  And the owners seeing that they had a lot to lose in the winner-takes-all system became more flexible in their negotiations.  Salaries for veteran players started to rise.

Arbitration paid off in a big way in 1974 when Oakland A’s owner Charles Finley refused to honor a contractual agreement to pay a $50,000 insurance premium for his star pitcher Catfish Hunter.  The arbiter ruled that Finley had thus voided the contract and allowed Hunter to become a free agent.  The pitcher then was able to sign with the New York Yankees for a then astonishing 5-year, $3.5 million contract.  That whetted the appetite of plays for effective free agency.

Curt Flood and Players Association Executive Director Marvin Miller.

Curt Flood had famously sued MLB with the support of the players union claiming that the reserve clause which kept the “owning team” in control of a player for a solid year after his contract was up, meaning that the player could be kept from playing with any team without the original team’s consent, was an anti-trust violation.  The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the admittedly shaky ground of the anti-trust provision.

After the victory with Hunter, Miller encouraged two other players, Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally to play out the succeeding year without signing a contract. Then both players filed grievance arbitration. The players won the arbitration with a ruling that both had played out their obligations to their teams and were free agents.  The notorious reserve clause was dead, and the era of free agency was ushered in.

With victory after victory under his belt, Miller was cordially hated by the owners, but they seemed powerless against the union.  These years were punctuated with short work stoppages—strikes in 1972 which lasted 13 days and in 1980  plus two spring training two lockouts, in 1973 and 1976.

So, the table was set for an epic confrontation in 1981.  The owners sought protections from the effects of free agency.  In particular, they sought compensation for losing a free agent player to another team—a player selected from the signing team’s roster not including 12 protected players. The union held that any form of compensation would undermine the value of free agency.

With negotiations at an impasse the union Executive Board set a May 31 strike deadline.  This was extended while a union complaint of unfair labor practices was heard by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  Finally, on June 15 the players walked out.

Owners were stunned when most of the sporting press and fans seemed to take the side of the players.  They could not believe that they were not viewed as beloved community leaders instead of as flinty hearted capitalists.  A Sport Illustrated cover screamed “Strike! The Walkout the Owners Provoked.”

These two New York Post stories reflected the heavy economic impact of the strike and the disappointment of fans.

But as the strike wore on, fans became restless.  And cities took a big economic hit.  An estimated $146 million was lost in player salaries, ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and concession revenues. The players lost $4 million a week in salaries while the owners suffered a total loss of $72 million.

Faced with the possible loss of the entire season a compromise, which most considered favorable to the players, was finally reached.  Teams that lost a premium free agent could be compensated by drawing from a pool of players left unprotected from all of the clubs rather than just the signing club and players agreed to restricting free agency to players with six or more years of major league service.  Miller had never really wanted unlimited free agency anyway fearing that a glut of players on the market would drive compensation down.

                Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher Luis Tiant reads about the end of the strike.

Play resumed with the delayed All Star Game in Cleveland on August 8.  Because the game was moved from its traditional mid-week slot to a Sunday, a record attendance of 72,086 led owners to hope that fans would return to the game.  They were wrong.  Bitter fans stayed away in droves through the rest of the season and TV and radio audiences shrank.  Newspaper letter columns were filled with fans declaring that they were done with the game.  It took some years for the game to recover from fan disillusion.

Some of that disillusion was stoked by the slapped together play-off system used to determine teams for the World Series.  The leaders of the first half of the season would face the leaders of the second half of the season in a playoff.  In case the same team won both halves, it would face the team with the second best record.  But the system produced anomalies.  The Cincinnati Reds of the National League West and St. Louis Cardinals of the National League East each failed to make the playoffs despite having the two best full-season records in the National League that season.  On the other hand, the Kansas City Royals made the postseason despite owning the fourth-best full-season record in their division and posting a losing record overall.

Miller retired in 1982 but the union he built remained strong.

The MLBPA continued to frustrate the owners, particularly when they successfully proved in court that the owners and Commissioner were in collusion in attempting to circumvent the free movement of players under free agency.  The collusion may also have affected the outcome of both the regular season series and World Series of 1985, ’86, and ’87.  Owners were fined a staggering $64.5 million and had to compensate players for losses related to multi-year contracts and lost bonuses which eventually cost them another $280 million.

There was a one day strike in August of ’85 and owners locked out player for early spring training in 1990.

In 1994 players struck on August 12 wiping out the rest of the season and the World Series.  The strike only ended the next spring when a U.S. District judge issued an injunction restoring terms and conditions of the expired agreement. That traumatic event did even more damage to baseball.

Eventually, fans came back and baseball also bounced back from the steroid scandal that damaged the reputations of stars like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Clemens. 

Since then, contracts have been renewed despite some bluster.  The union remains strong.  Baseball remains the only sport without an effective salary cap.  Player incomes and team profits are at an all-time high.  Meanwhile the other major American sports—Football, Basketball, and Hockey have all had substantial labor turmoil—largely due to weak unions.

The Baseball Hall of Fame's Twitter announcement of the election of Marvin Miller in December 2019 on his eighth appearance on the ballot.

And what of Marvin Miller?  He died on November 27, 2012 in New York City at the age of 95.  Owners successfully fought repeated efforts to put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame despite his undisputed impact on the game until a re-organized Modern Baseball Era Committee finally elected him in December 2019, his eighth appearance on the ballot.  He was slated to be inducted with the  Class of 2020, but the ceremony was delayed a year by the Coronavirus.