“New Life in the Old Game”
Baseball’s Rebirth, 1966-1972
The socio-economic impact of restarting baseball cannot be underestimated. After the demise of trust in the old league and its economic structure, the CBA knew it must embody the best of principles and commit to a new way of presenting professional baseball to the country. The planning was done. What the league needed, and what the public waited to see, was to implement a new incarnation of the national game that made things better.
To this end, owners approved a large slate of new rules and regulations, starting with economic autonomy for each team, a restructuring of divisions based on geographic area (to reduce travel expenses), bylaws created to provide recourse for Union and individual player grievances, and the highly contentious proposal for an expansion draft.
In the early spring of 1966, during the busiest weeks of preseason training, the CBA finalized articles of incorporation, initial franchise payment structures, and the official schedule. It was a frenetic time, and owners’ days were filled from dawn to dusk with planning meetings, team and budget meetings, and league and union meetings. Teams submitted economic forecasts to the league office, conducted press conferences, and planned travel. General Managers engaged on the usual trade and contract negotiations, though preseason trade activity was down during this first spring as teams fought to maintain roster consistency in the face of so many other changes and requirements. All this under the shadow of a planned expansion draft. During all conversations with the media, owners’ responses were conspicuously similar. This was “a new era” full of “new possibilities” forged with a “new commitment to competitive equity”. They were going to ‘put new life in the old game”.
Considering the ABF ruling, players welcomed the new league, but were understandably skeptical. They didn’t want the same problems and issues disguised as a new way of doing business. The Fund was gone, never to return, but players burned by owners’ self-serving economics in the past were wary of the new system. Many believed owners simply wouldn’t operate the league unless they could tip the scales with a significant and secret stash of money somewhere. Rumors of a secret Fund circulated in the early months of 1966. Players’ responses were also conspicuous. “We’ll see,” they all said.
Add to this the proposal for an expansion draft, a special draft of “unprotected” professional players from existing rosters by expansion teams for the purpose of helping them be more competitive more quickly. Players, though vindicated by the ABF ruling, remained suspicious of owners. Up to this time, teams joining the league brought their own rosters with them, sub-par though the talent may be in comparison to the bigger league. Team records in those first few seasons were typically dismal, but established rosters were less costly, enabling owners to amass greater profits in the early years and eventually compete to sign stars. These several years of struggle were the price paid for entry into the very profitable ABF. But now, stung perhaps by the reprimand they just received, owners proposed an expansion draft to reinforce the idea of equity so important to the players. To many players this was nothing more than another attempt to manipulate them.
After struggling to win better control over the forces that decided their professional careers (and personal lives), players were asked now to risk their futures for the sake of balance. In the end, despite the new “visibility economics”, players were simply not willing to place their futures into the owners’ hands again. The owners cried foul, reminding the Union that, according to the proposal, existing contracts would remain in force to be honored by the acquiring team, and that the new economic structure of the league would ensure no team defaults on any in-force contract. The league sent the Union what came to be known as the Penny Papers, a packet of drafts and spreadsheets in support of the proposal which outlined costs and projections down to the penny. The owners also reminded the Union that teams still had the right to negotiate trades, and an expansion draft was simply an open-ended trade agreement involving every player on every roster. It was, they said, nothing more than a very large trade block clearing house. This description did not make the players any happier. In time, players began requesting no-trade clauses in their contracts, inspired, they said, by the Penny Papers.
But nothing like a no-trade clause existed in 1966. Players had no recourse, except to strike, but it would have been fruitless. As proposed, the expansion draft did not violate federal law or the existing labor agreement. The players, the taste of champagne still on their lips, were compelled to accept this bitter pill.
Ultimately, the expansion draft was less compelling in reality than in speculation. Grumblings still came from players, especially those claimed by the four new teams, but rosters were not “decimated”, and veterans were not “discarded”, as the Union forecasted. Contracts remained in place. The Scouts and Lumberjacks even offered small bonuses to draftees to ease the cost of relocation. Certainly, there were some disgruntled players, forced now to change teams for no other reason than they were no longer a priority, but that was nothing new, and it was better than being out of baseball. Compared to the major changes being undertaken, the draft was almost a formality.