Brothers, all
September 11, 2013
JOHN MONGOMERY WARD
When I held forth here recently on the subject of soprano Geraldine Farrar and her baseball-playing father, Sidney, I mentioned that Sid had bolted from the National League in 1890 to play in the maverick Players’ League. That put Sid in the middle of a significant but largely forgotten epoch in the history of the national game.
The Players League was the offspring of the Brotherhood of Professional Base-Ball Players, which was in effect the first union organized by professional athletes. The brains behind the Brotherhood was John Montgomery Ward, who was an outstanding player for five teams over 16 years. He was best known as a pitcher, although he also played shortstop and second base. In 1880, he pitched the second perfect game in the National League, for the Providence Grays (there wouldn’t be another one for 84 years) and in 1882 he pitched the longest complete-game shutout in history, beating the Detroit Wolverines 1-0 in 18 innings. He also accumulated 2,104 base hits. He is the only player ever to win more than 100 games as a pitcher (164-103) and get more than 2,000 hits.
Ward’s plaque in the National Baseball Hall of Fame doesn’t mention the Brotherhood or the Players’ League
Ward graduated from Columbia Law School in 1885 and became the leader of an effort by players to negotiate improvements in the conditions of their employment, including an increase in salaries and an end to the “reserve clause” which provided that players who were under contract to one team were prohibited from negotiating with other teams when the contract expired. Ward organized the Brotherhood in ’85 but when it became clear after several years of negotiation that the owners were intractable, he launched the Players League.
About half of the players who had been National Leaguers in 1889 bolted to play in Ward’s league which offered profit sharing and did not have a reserve clause or a cap on player salaries. Sid Farrar, who had played for the Philadelphia Quakers in the NL bolted to play for the Philadelphia Athletics in the Players League. In fact, the Players League attracted most of the talent from the National League, but when revenues didn’t live up to expectations, the owners of the maverick teams surreptitiously agreed to sell their teams to the NL franchises, and the Players League folded after one season.
Major League Baseball ruled in 1968 that the Players League, short-lived though it was, had been a major league. So, among other things, the Buffalo Bisons’ record stands: they recorded the greatest opening-day winning margin by beating the Cleveland Infants 23-2.
Incidentally, the reserve clause remained in effect in Major League Baseball until 1975.
CharlesPaolino's Blog 
September 15, 2013 at 5:22 pm
The greatest delight here? The thought of a team named the Philadelphia Quakers. Just from curiosity, I went over to look at all the names of today’s major league teams. Pretty vanilla – no lawsuits lurking there that I can see, unless it might be the Pirates.
On the other hand, a search for minor league team names yielded more wonders than I can recount. Those folks know how to name a team! I don’t know if I’m more fond of the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs, the Richmond Flying Squirrels or the Montgomery Biscuits!
September 16, 2013 at 1:09 am
I’ve always been partial to the Toledo Mud Hens, an International League team that has been around since 1896. Because of the marshlands near its stadium, the team was originally called Swamp Angels, but the name eventually changed to reflect the American coot — a marsh bird — that was common to the area and was also known as a mud hen. Corporal Klinger, a character on the TV series, M*A*S*H, often referred to the Mud Hens, because he supposedly hailed from the Lebanese-American community in Toledo. The Mud Hens play in a stadium that also has an odd name: Fifth Third Field. That name was the result of the merger of two banks, forming the institution that now owns the naming rights on the Stadium.