The Book of Baseball Literacy: Second Edition

Chapter 6: Folklore, Literature, & Diversions

color line, color barrier

Just as slavery is a shameful part of America's past, so is the color line part of baseball's. In the early days of professional baseball, blacks played alongside whites in professional leagues throughout the country. Brothers Welday and Moses Fleetwood Walker even made it to the majors, albeit for a single season. The practiced reached a turning point in 1887, however, following an incident in which Chicago White Stockings' manager Adrian "Cap" Anson, one of baseball's first superstars, threatened to forfeit an exhibition game unless the opposing team's black pitcher was removed. Anson backed down when he learned that he'd lose his game money, but similar threats began to come from other managers, and teams began to drop their black players.

By 1895, baseball's color line had become entrenched, and blacks wishing to play professional ball were forced to join the loosely organized Negro leagues and play for substantially lower salaries and prestige. To hear baseball executives put it, however, no color line had ever existed. Before his death in 1944, commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had ruled baseball with czar-like authority since 1921, declared: "There is no rule, formal or informal, no understanding subterranean or otherwise, against black ball players in the majors."

As explanation for the absence of black players from major league rosters, owners claimed that they could find none who were qualified, and thus shifted the blame to the minor leagues: "Colored players have never been discriminated against in the major leagues," said Indians owner Alva Bradley. "They have simply never been able to get into the minor leagues to get the proper training for major league competition." The fact that the majors controlled the minor leagues shows just how hypocritical and illogical Bradley's argument was. And in any case, there are dozens of anecdotal incidents of baseball owners and managers blocked, either by the league office or by the other owners, from signing black men to play "organized" baseball. Bill Veeck, for instance, claimed he was barred from purchasing the Philadelphia Phillies in the early '40s when the league found that he planned to sell off all the team's regulars and re-stock the club with players from the Negro leagues.

In the 1940s, Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey changed everything. But even after Rickey signed Robinson to play for the Dodgers' Montreal farm team, doubters still existed. To mask their racism, however, they looked for other reasons to denigrate Robinson. In 1945, The Sporting News reported: "Robinson, at 26, is reported to possess baseball abilities which, were he white, would make him eligible for a trial with, let us say, the Brooklyn Dodgers Class B farm at Newport News, if he were six years younger." Of course, if Robinson had been white, he would have made it to the majors years earlier. Other doubters did not hide their racism. Before Robinson's first year in the majors, a number of Dodger players signed a petition asking Rickey not to promote Robinson to the big league club. Rickey ignored it. Then, during the 1947 season, rumors spread that the St. Louis Cardinals were threatening to strike rather than play against Robinson. National League president Ford Frick threatened back: Anybody who refuses to play against Robinson, he wrote, will be banned from baseball. They didn't strike, and they have denied ever discussing a strike. Either way, Frick's threat and Robinson's determination made the "great experiment" a success. The definitive study on the breaking of the color line is Baseball's Great Experiment by Jules Tygiel.

Recommended books available from Amazon.com:

Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy
by Jules Tygiel

Jackie Robinson: A Biography
by Arnold Rampersad

Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959
by Larry Moffi, Jonathan Kronstadt

Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Black Major Leaguer
by David W. Zang

Doubleday Myth

In 1905, famed sportsman and entrepreneur Albert G. Spalding decided to commission a study on the origins of baseball. Fervently patriotic, Spalding set out to prove that baseball was a uniquely American invention, not a descendent of the British games rounders and cricket, as was asserted by the legendary sportswriter Henry Chadwick. Instead of considering all the facts -- including the obvious similarities between baseball and those much older British games -- the Mills Commission report relied almost exclusively on the dubious testimony of a elderly mining engineer named Albert Graves, who claimed to have witnessed the day Abner Doubleday created the first baseball diamond in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. Never mind the fact that Doubleday, a famous Union general during the Civil War, had never discussed the sport he had supposedly invented in any of his diaries. Spalding wanted an American genesis, and he got one. Even today, the Doubleday Myth remains so pervasive that many fans, broadcasters, and players believe it to be true.

Gashouse Gang

The nickname for the Cardinals' teams in the 1930s, featuring such colorful characters as Frankie Frisch, Leo Durocher, Dizzy Dean, Pepper Martin, and Joe Medwick. With Durocher as the ring-leader and Martin, a utility infielder, as the clown, the Cardinals made themselves famous for scrappy play and childish pranks. Once, after a tough loss, player-manager Frisch called a team meeting where he lambasted his players with insults and profanity. Then he asked if anyone had any questions. Martin broke the heavy silence: "I was just wondering," he asked Frisch innocently, "whether I ought to paint my midget auto racer red with white wheels or white with red wheels." The tension broken, even Frisch smiled.

The first Gashouse Gang, according to author Paul Dickson, was a band of thugs who prowled the Lower East Side of Manhattan near a number of large gas tanks in the 19th century. The term came to be applied to the Cardinals because, according to one legend, they were a notoriously rough team that once played a game in against the Giants in soiled uniforms, reminding a New York writer of the famed thugs.

Knickerbocker Rules

The rules created by the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club of 1845, led by Alexander Cartwright and Daniel "Doc" Adams. For his part, Cartwright is in the Hall of Fame, where his plaque says that he was responsible for setting the bases 90 feet apart and establishing nine men per team and nine innings per game.

I have no idea where they made that up, because the actual Knickerbocker rules don't say anything about 90, nine, or nine. Rule #8 says that the game will "consist of 21 counts, or aces"--that means the first team to 21 runs. Rule #6 discusses the size of each team, but it doesn't give any actual numbers; it just says, "If there should not be a sufficient number of members of the Club present at the time agreed upon to commence exercise, gentlemen not members may be chosen in to make up the match"—basically, ringers are allowed if needed. And the part about 90 feet? Rule #4 does say that the distances from home to second and first to third should be 42 paces. If you assume three feet per pace, that calculates to 30 yards between bases, or 90 feet. At last! Something that's accurate about Cartwright's Hall of Fame plaque! Sorry, no. As author John Thorn has pointed out while debunking the Cartwright story in Total Baseball, a "pace" in 1845 was defined as 2-1/2 feet, not three. Thorn quotes Webster's 1832 and 1853 dictionaries to prove it: "Pace: The space between the two feet in walking, estimated at two feet and a half." Three feet per pace didn't get established until well into the 20th century, which means that the basepaths under the Knickerbocker Rules were actually about 75 feet long.

Some things that the Knickerbocker Rules did establish were the idea of foul territory, three strikes per out, and three outs per inning. Over the next 17 years, while Doc Adams, not Cartwright, presided over the Knickerbocker Club, he changed the rules to create a nine-inning game, 90 feet between bases, and a pitcher's box 45 feet from home.

Copyright 2009 David H. Martinez. All rights reserved.