Good Historical Research

[Buster Cherry]

Been playing some games from the early 20th century and I noticed that the three Pennsylvania teams don't play any games on Sunday. This is good historical research on the part of the developers. At the time the state of Pennsylvania had Blue Laws which prohibited Sunday baseball. These laws weren't changed until the early 1930's. Rumor had it at the time that A's owner Connie Mack and Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss doled out some well-placed bribes to a few state legislators to get those laws repealed.

[joefromchicago]

OOTP's schedules are based on the published schedules or on the lists of games that were actually played, so I suppose that's good research, although those sources are easily available. Pennsylvania wasn't the only state with blue laws that prevented Sunday baseball. Most of the states on the eastern seaboard and in the south had them. Those laws were repealed by the 1930s, with Pennsylvania being the final holdout in the major leagues.

The NL initially prohibited Sunday baseball even in those places where it was legal. In part, the league wanted to portray itself as morally upright at a time when professional sports in general were looked upon by much of the public as somewhat disreputable. In addition, banning Sunday games helped to keep out the riff-raff (i.e. the working classes), whose only day off was Sunday. The NL finally relented as one of the conditions for the merger with the AA in 1892 (the AA had permitted Sunday baseball).