SHORT HOP - My Career In Baseball by David Driscoll

[Tib]

The only thing I can say right now is that things are going well in life, which leaves precious little time for writing. I have been on a Mark Twain kick lately, reading all of him I can get, and I was pleased to read that for all his novels there was a pronounced period of non-activity, usually in the middle. In some cases it was 2 years! Can you imagine putting Huckleberry Finn on the shelf for two years?

I'm not saying that Dave is going away for two years. I'm saying that I continue to make notes and prepare for the times I can write. I guess you could say I'm still writing in my head. I have the better parts of three chapters partially written, but I need time.

In other news, I have been completely and blessedly immersed in the active lives of my two boys (10 and 8) for the first time in a long time and that is worth a thousand Short Hops.

[Faroo6]

That's cool. Your boys will grow up while Dave is frozen in time. Spend as much time as you can with them.

[BrentBlades]

Okay I haven't travled down to the ITP boards in quite some time. But for whatever reason today I come down and decide to read this dyanasty report. I started reading at about 6AM this morning and after Chapter 20, I had to take a break as my eyes were about to pop out of their head. I'm back now to get back down to it for another good 5 hours I imagine.

Either way I wanted to take this time to tell you tib this is absoutly amazing, I knwo everyone has told you how great this has been to read, and while I can't add anything to that I just want you to know that I agree with everyone else. It's an amazing job...

I now know from reading this last page (to leave this commment) that the story is not finished yet and is taking a bit of a hiatus for a bit and I'm cool with that. I'd be lieing if I said I wasn't disappointed in knowing that I'll eventually come to a part of the story which is not the end, but there is no more to read. Either way take care of whatever you've got to do and just know that I along with countless others really enjoy and enjoyed, all the work that has put into this. This is truely amazing.

[blubbla]

I just stumbled onto this recently as well, and I'm very, very glad I did. It's one of the best reads I've ever seen. I hope that life at least gets you a little time to continue.

[canadiancreed]

hmmm was wondering wht happened to this

[WWBL Commissioner]

Here you go Tib, I'll bring it back to the front page. Now about the next chapter

[Faroo6]

Originally Posted by canadiancreed

hmmm was wondering wht happened to this

Dave didn't feel right sitting on the plane. Something just nagged at him. Then he heard it.

The right wing was engulfed in flames. Another explosion and Davey was headed to the roughest encounter of his life. The nose of the plane buckled like....well, like a plane hitting a mountain.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.


Dave never saw the light of day again.

But that's only because they went down in the artic during the dark months and then he died of hypothermia.
-------------------------

Ok so I've updated the ending a little bit to by Tib some more time. Seriously though this has to be one of the best dynasties on the board and we'll all still be waiting when it resumes.

[theski]

I have no idea if this has already been asked.

But as we have been reading the story of Dave and been given the background of the CBA, is there any way we could download the league file of the CBA?

If we could get a league after Dave's retirement or when he was with the squires I think that most people reading the story would love it even more.

I apologise if this has already been asked but having Dave as one of my ITP idols, i would like to play the same league he did.

[Tib]

Originally Posted by theski

But as we have been reading the story of Dave and been given the background of the CBA, is there any way we could download the league file of the CBA?

If we could get a league after Dave's retirement or when he was with the squires I think that most people reading the story would love it even more.

I apologise if this has already been asked but having Dave as one of my ITP idols, i would like to play the same league he did.

That is a great question. It is so great in fact that I don't have an answer for it. My plan (yes, I have a plan) is to post the full CBA and ABF statistics (career leader boards, Dave's stats, Squires' stats, etc.) as Appendices in the back of the book as if they were real. I think they would be a necessary "support pillar" for the "fiction as reality" setting of Dave's world.

As for the .lg file, I see no reason why I couldn't post it, but I'll probably wait until I'm done with everything before I do. Anyone who wanted to take a team in the CBA would just start where the story leaves off (somewhere around 2025). I use OOTP5 for the ABF and older CBA, which is no problem for most, but I use ITP for Dave's career and those files are interchangeable only with OOTP5. That's why I'll probably post statistics at the end.

Once again, thanks for the comments and hang in there, I'm workin' on it.

[jaxmagicman]

Originally Posted by Tib

That is a great question. It is so great in fact that I don't have an answer for it. My plan (yes, I have a plan) is to post the full CBA and ABF statistics (career leader boards, Dave's stats, Squires' stats, etc.) as Appendices in the back of the book as if they were real. I think they would be a necessary "support pillar" for the "fiction as reality" setting of Dave's world.

As for the .lg file, I see no reason why I couldn't post it, but I'll probably wait until I'm done with everything before I do. Anyone who wanted to take a team in the CBA would just start where the story leaves off (somewhere around 2025). I use OOTP5 for the ABF and older CBA, which is no problem for most, but I use ITP for Dave's career and those files are interchangeable only with OOTP5. That's why I'll probably post statistics at the end.

Once again, thanks for the comments and hang in there, I'm workin' on it.

Can't wait!

[Tib]

Chapter 50

Goodbye, Soldier

My father told me that a determined path in life is like a boat in the water. When you move in a direction, any direction, two important things will happen: some people will climb on board with you and help you steer, and everyone else will fall into the wake you leave behind. I have found this analogy to be true, for the most part, but I have also found a third result.

In a lifetime spent in baseball I’ve met hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Most passed by the wayside like the ripples of a boat’s wake. People like Bradley Sing. Others were with me no matter where I went. People like Gwen and the Squires. Then there were people who appeared with a regularity that couldn’t have been coincidence. They came and went with a significance I didn’t fully understand until I sat down and tried to put my long tale onto paper. People like Lino Lopez and Steve McCammon. People like Dave Guevara and Clifford Tyler.

People like Theo Garner.

The loss to Baltimore was tough to take. I may have been young at the time, but it was not lost on me that I had been very close to a championship more than once. To be beaten like we were was difficult to reconcile, especially with the talent we had, but to be outmaneuvered by Theo Garner was worse. It seemed like Theo’s presence was imprinted on every significant event in my career. And the strange arrangement of having once been one of Theo’s players only for him to return as the GM of the team that eliminated me from the playoffs was nothing short of surreal. It was a head-shaker, to be sure.

But Theo’s presence was a formidable force, so I guess it’s understandable. Looking back, and especially today as I write this, I should have been more thankful to have him around than I was. As a young player, Theo was really the best thing for me, for all of us, though we didn’t realize it at the time. He showed me a game I was unfamiliar with. He showed me the baseball I thought I knew was nothing like the baseball I needed to know. He did more than teach me the game, he taught me how to act like a ballplayer. A professional.

At the time it seemed pointless, but I was eighteen and a lot about the adult world seemed pointless. Why should I polish my cleats with a t-shirt and not a towel? Why am I supposed to take five seconds to throw the ball back during warm-ups? Why do I have to have a bottle of whiteout in my locker? What difference does it make whether my pant legs hang down over my shoe tops?

Theo molded us. He guided, challenged, berated, praised, coerced and embarrassed us. He yelled, screamed, whispered, cajoled and bellowed. He woke us up from the dream we had been living and set us down in a new nightmare. He drove the warm thoughts of home from us and inserted images of chalk lines and shoe polish and broken fingernails and the frayed red seams of misshapen practice balls and dirty buses and chain link fences and dusty batter’s boxes and the lukewarm pot roast from all-night diners.

“Don’t ever let me see you snap your glove at a fly ball!” he would yell at our outfielders. “Your glove is a bottomless well, not a flyswatter!”

“Never argue strategy with a fan,” he would say on long bus rides through the pitch dark woods of the South. “Even if you’re right, you’ll still come off like an asshole.” He broke this rule himself many times.

But he also fought for us. He fought for us like no manager I’ve ever had. He may have insulted your parentage or ability, but God forbid anyone else tried it. That was his exclusive province. He was protective of us in that way. We were his guys and that was that. He was in the trenches with us and we knew it. We didn’t always know what he was trying to do, but we knew that whatever happened we were in it together.

Sure, some guys didn’t like the way he did things. They told him so, when they finally got up the courage. He relished those moments. I really believe that. Guys would march up and down the locker room, working themselves up, getting all their arguments in line, then bolt into his office and get in his face. He’d sit there with a snarly grin, taking it all in and loving every moment. I realized later that’s exactly what he was trying to do; get us invested in our own careers, get us personally involved in our games.

He was teaching us to fight for what had come to us so naturally all of our lives. He knew we needed that, and especially me. It may have been because I was a white first rounder from an upscale area. I don’t know. Theo sensed that I needed to find a real desire, a deep down desire – not just a wanting. Wanting is for kids. Only professionals know true desire.

The first time I faced him down was like a rite of passage. Every time after that was a mark of my growth, like sharp black lines on a doorjamb. When he was done with me he kicked me out of the nest, shipping me to a place where I could grow some more, someplace where I had to do things on my own, without guidance, where I could fly for the first time. I resented it at the time, as I have written. Now I know why he did it.

We didn’t part on good terms. Those terms didn’t improve either, as we ran into each other here and there around the country. He seemed to want to talk to me, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Even when I saw him for the last time at that card show in Cleveland we couldn’t muster a normal conversation. There was something between us and I was never quite sure what it was until I started to write this book.

There was always distance with Theo. He maintained an emotional moat around himself. There was so much banter and bravado from him all the time, after a while you weren’t sure if his quiet bus stories were a reflection of the real him or some calculated move to elicit a specific reaction. It was like he couldn’t function without some kind of tension in the room, like he did his best thinking during arguments, so he made sure to argue with everybody. Theo Garner held the world at arm’s length.

Seeing him drunk that night in Hinesville was the closest I ever got to seeing what was really inside him. That night he wasn’t angry, arguing, hard-smoking, strip club patronizing Theo Garner. He was just another human being who had a dream that slipped away. Maybe I saw what he had kept from everyone for so long: That he was human. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t talk to each other.

But what I saw the summer of 2010 was a remarkable accomplishment. For Theo to go from manager of a big league franchise to the Hinesville Gents in less than two years, well, many would see that (as Jimmy Caliel of the New York Trumpet wrote) as “one of the most tragic and well-deserved declines in sports”. But then to get hired on (as a favor, it turned out) to scout for Baltimore, then become Head of Scouting Ops, then GM in less than five more is amazing. Then to make two crucial trades down the stretch and make the playoffs, amazing. Then to have his one great gamble, the recently injured Don Cally, beat the team he was traded from, well, many would call that (as Russ West wrote in the Dallas Tribune) “a stunning and historic turnaround”. Then to win the CBA Championship the same year, well, many would call that (as Yed Bakesian wrote in the Washington Sentinel) “one of the most incredible success stories of the last fifty seasons”.

But you know what? It was just Theo.

Anybody who spent any time with him would tell you, as I’m telling you, that all that stuff: the ups and downs, the struggle, the fights, the arguments, the arrests, the fiasco with Terry Ruddy, the time he called Kellinger to fight for me – putting his career on the line to do it – all of that was only Theo being Theo. A lot of people have asked me if Theo was always like that. “Like what?” I would say. “You know”, they would say, “an asshole.” “No,” I would reply. “Sometimes he sleeps.”


Theo Garner died this week. Four days ago, to be exact. He had a massive heart attack at his desk right before a game. That’s right, before a game. At 77, CBA baseball was done with Theo, but Theo wasn’t done with baseball. He had quite a winding path to his final resting place, fired as he was by Baltimore, then re-hired, then quitting altogether. He tried retirement but it didn’t work, and why would it? He was Theo; he couldn’t sit still when there was talent out there still to find. His bad knees and his slowly increasing weight made it impossible for him to travel as a scout, so he took a job as head baseball coach at Pasadena City College, not 10 miles from where I grew up.

I hadn’t seen him in nearly ten years, but I went to the wake. There weren’t many people there. That didn’t surprise me, and it wouldn’t have surprised Theo. But there were a lot of other people who hadn’t seen Theo for years. Dave Guevara was there. Lance Wilderman was there. Pete Thompson was there. James Jaffe was there. Steve McCammon was there. And his players at PCC were there. All his players spoke.

From all accounts, he remained unto his death the same Theo I have described here. One of his pitchers spoke about seeing Theo rumble toward the mound at him after he walked the bases loaded and brought the tying run to the plate. “I thought he was going to kill me,” he said. “But he just glared at me. I said, ‘Sorry, coach.’ He said, ‘Don’t be sorry. That was the gutsiest performance I’ve seen in two years. Now give me the ball and let your teammates win this thing for you.’ It made my entire year, him saying that.”

So my story takes a detour in this chapter. It wasn’t intended. It wasn’t part of the plan. I wasn’t really thinking of jumping forward to the present like this, but it couldn’t be helped. Once again Theo Garner has appeared in my life and challenged me to think, to face things, to redefine what I desire. Even death could not stop his influence on my life.

He has become for me the embodiment of the third result I described at the beginning of this chapter. He may have been in my life for a far shorter time than most others, but I am feeling his influence more strongly now than perhaps I ever have. After the wake I walked up to Steve. I extended my hand.
“Dave Driscoll. Shortstop.”
He paused for a moment and I wasn’t sure what would happen. Then he took my hand.
“Steve McCammon. Catcher,” he said. “I’ve heard of you.”
“I’ve heard of you, too,” I said. “Good to meet you.”
“Good to meet you, too,” he replied.

Theo Garner is buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Burbank, California. The Baltimore Steamers paid for the funeral. His plot is at the bottom of a gracefully sloping hill, right near busy Forest Lawn Drive. It’s not near a path or road; you have to walk a ways if you want to see him. Typical. Theo always made you work a little harder. But it is near a chain link fence, and that should make him feel at home.

[theski]

Excellent!

A great return and at your top form!

[Y0DA55]

So, because of the layoff and me forgetting characters, I was completely confused as to the significance of the last exchange. But then I looked back at the character list in post #483 and realized that I knew this guy pretty well. Then I looked back at the last chapter to remember how that ended...

and then I was floored.

Throughout this whole post, I was wondering why you would jump to the present like this. Now it all makes sense. Bravo to this!

Now I just hope for less than a 7 month wait until the next chapter arrives.

[mikev]

In all honesty...

this is the best baseball story that I've ever read.

[Faroo6]

awesome return chapter.

[blubbla]

Welcome back.

[Rasmuth]

simply stated, Awesome.

[Tib]

Back for the next installment! It's been too long since we had a glimpse of the History of Pro Baseball, and I've been working hard on tying up some of the many strings between the WWII installment and the end of the ABF in 1965.

As it turned out, I really needed to explain why the players went on strike in 1950, what the ramifications were, and how it affected the league forever. I had to do this or the history of the integration of baseball wouldn't carry the weight it was supposed to, not to mention put Cliff Tyler's experience and life in better perspective.

So while I write CH. 51 of Short Hop, here's something to chew on.

[Tib]

SHORT HOP: Interlude #5

The History of Pro Baseball

PART FOUR: The Players' Strike of 1950

“A Very Real Threat”
Prosperity and Discrepancy, 1946-1949

Post-war America ran with the same energy and efficiency with which it won the war. From manufacturing and construction to homemaking and advertising, America resumed its frenetic pace and growth, doubling its gross national product in less than ten years. American families, kept apart for so long by the darkness of war, bloomed in the new sunlight of peace and grew across the nation. It is said of the post-war decade that America’s two greatest products were cars and children.

As for cars, the rise of the interstate freeway gave wings to the dreams of thousands who migrated to the West Coast looking for new opportunities, new business, and new horizons to conquer. American business grew at a rate not seen since the industrialization of the mid 1800’s. It was like the nation wanted to give all its hardworking men, veteran or not, a steady job. The new affordability of houses and cars made it possible to travel, to explore, and to settle where one wanted. Jobs were everywhere. Children filled up neighborhoods faster than they could be built. America was not only on the rise, it was bursting with renewed potential. It marched onward with the confidence that comes from victory.

Baseball enjoyed renewed enthusiasm and record attendance during the late 40’s. After so long without its stars, fans flocked to ballparks to see them play once again. And after so long without profits, the owners were ready to welcome them. Over the next five years America endeavored to re-stitch the torn seams of the game, pulling together pre-War memories and present day dreams like two oblong bits of white leather, uniting them with crimson threads of hope and opportunity.

Some stars returned, some did not, but like the increasing numbers of children born to post-War families, children destined to carry on the legacy of the war generation, new stars emerged, new heirs to the legends off the past. Vince Micellini took over where Quinn Burkholter left off. Bill “Boomer” Birch replaced Hal Crumrie. Kevin Monaghan was the new power hitting catcher in Chicago. Fans embraced them. Owners pampered them. For a while it seemed like everything was going to be rebuilt as it had been. But with these new stars came something else: awareness.

1947 was the year teams began to show significant profits again. Since the scare of 1932 and the thinning of its ranks during WWII, baseball had shown resilience but little else. That baseball even existed was a victory in itself. 1947 was the first year since 1926 all teams showed a profit – a remarkable accomplishment. Public enthusiasm went up, attendance numbers went up, new stadiums went up, and profits went up. The only things not going up, it seemed, were player salaries.

Players suffered through the Depression right along with the owners. Players stuck with the game because they loved it, but also in support of the owners. Players recognized that, like the armies oversees, everyone wins or loses together. Players recognized the threat to the game. As a result, the players felt strongly that it was time they saw some of the new money coming into the game. But now, when the owners finally had some money to give, they were overlooked yet again. The irony here is that the owners successfully defeated two previous attempts by the players to unionize, in 1920 and again in 1927. Had the players succeeded in ’20 or ’27, the subsequent lessons learned from years of battling owners for money might have been remembered in 1947. There is no question the players would have been in a much more powerful position.

But they were not. Without central leadership the players lacked an information system that could have kept them informed of the state of baseball as a whole. They knew the owners had money, but they were unsure how to get it. By defeating unionization, ABF owners kept salary negotiations on a case by case basis. As a result, only the stars of the league were making significant salaries.

There had been grumblings about player compensation for some time, as far back as 1940, when New York’s Ernie McGovern, a fair-minded and amicable man, took his private frustration public in the New York Trumpet. McGovern said he was concerned that some of his teammates might lose their homes because they hadn’t yet received the pay increases stipulated in their contracts with Marner Bowen, Admirals owner and grandson of club founder J. Walker Bowen. He lamented that his attempt to persuade Bowen to honor his commitment fell of deaf ears.

He was also bold enough to criticize the Release Clause, saying it was not a “release” clause at all, but a “Restraint Clause”, and putting a restriction on a player’s right to earn his worth in a free market economy was unconstitutional. This was not a new stance or an unanticipated argument; the restrictions of the Release Clause were well known to players and well-used by owners for decades. Up to now it had not received such a serious and public challenge of its validity, a validity that had gone virtually unquestioned and was of immense importance to the owners’ profitability.

Six weeks later Ernie McGovern was out of baseball. The players were furious, but in the end the fear of joblessness brought by the Depression (and the absence of a union) was still with them and they were silenced. They would remember, however. Ernie McGovern would return to haunt the owners a decade later.

The truth was, after nearly twenty years of struggle, declining profit and in some cases near bankruptcy, no owner was willing to endure any challenge from players – players who should thank them for their comparatively high salaries, their fancy houses and their notoriety. The owners felt they were the ones who took the risk, lost the most money, suffered the greatest setbacks and worked the hardest to insure the security of their franchises. “If the players wish to apply themselves to other businesses than baseball, thinking they may receive a higher wage, let them do it,” said Philadelphia Rebels president Sam Lansdale in 1946.

So the stage was set for a conflict nearly a decade before the actual strike occurred. The owners’ message was made clear with the dismissal of Ernie McGovern: Don’t complain. Be thankful you have what you do, because we can take it away at a moment’s notice.

There were attempts to reconcile both sides before an impasse was reached. Detroit president Nathaniel Freeders, son of Nicholas Freeders, in a November 1949 speech to the Baseball Journalists of America, explained the owners’ position this way:

“It’s not a question of worth. I’m sure many owners are with me when I say we appreciate and value our players. Without them there would be no league, no one to inspire millions of people every day, to be the living dreams for thousands of young men. It’s not a question of power. We, the owners, do not conspire to send out the Ernie McGoverns of the world, to silence someone just because they are opposed to us. We are not slave drivers. We do not coerce players to play for us. We pay them generously, compared to the lot of the average working man. We provide the security of contracts when we are under no obligation to do so. We rebuild our own stadiums. We assume the risks of poor performance, economic downturn, injury and natural disaster.

“I say again: It’s not a question of worth. It’s a matter of equity. Who bears the most risk in the business of baseball? We do. And now, after fifteen years of Depression and war, we have – baseball has – reached a level of security few industries can claim. Ask yourselves, gentlemen, if baseball is now on better footing than in 1932. I think you will all agree it is. Ask again if the lot of the Player is better now than in 1932. Of course it is. None of our players is destitute or in need. They are not starving. How have we harmed them, as so many have claimed? We provide the means for them to pay every bill that comes to their comfortable homes. And now, when our struggling teams are ready to pay the last creditor, when as a league we are finally ready to grow as we have never grown, to become economically healthy again, we must endure challenges to our character from dissatisfied players.

“Equity, gentlemen. I contend that balance has been achieved under the current system. A players’ union would upset that balance, which has been 60 years in its establishment. It would do immeasurable damage to the game we all love. We owners take the current push by the players for collective bargaining as a threat, a very real threat, to the safety of the game. If baseball as we know it is to survive the next decade, unionization must be put aside. Baseball is healthy again. Let us take a moment, at least, to enjoy it.”

Freeders received a standing ovation. The players’ response, written anonymously and sent to the New York Trumpet four days later, was not so kind.

[Tib]

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)