The Golden Decade of Major League Baseball

Imagine baseball without the colorful uniforms, huge stadiums, million-dollar sponsors and uniform numbers. Imagine a time when there was no expansion, no divisional play, no playoffs or even World Series. This was what major league baseball was like in the early 20th Century. Only a handful of cities fielded real teams and several cities ended up having rival clubs in two different leagues. The American League was in its infancy and had come out of the minors attempting to bring pro baseball back to several empty cities. The National League had been around since 1876 but had since then expanded and contracted before settling on a limit of eight teams.

In 1899 the National League, usually referred to now as the "Senior Circuit", decided to contract itself due to financial and ethical problems. A few of the owners had owned and operated two teams and had been raiding their own franchises to make one or the other a powerful lineup. Several owners decided that this was ruining the quality of play in some cities and thus voted for contraction. As the league approached the 1900 season there was trouble on the horizon. A rival league was coming into the picture, and the N.L. owners were unaware of the consequences.

Ban Johnson, the leader and primary mover of this league, had been thinking about moving his "minor" league, the Western League as it was called, to major league status. As the Senior Circuit dropped four franchises in 1899 he saw an opportunity to get his wish. Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington and Louisville had all been able to field teams and produce somewhat moderate crowds, so his view was that they could do so again. The renaming of his circuit to become the American League seemed logical, in reference to the old defunct and semi-successful organization, the American Association. Johnson, with the agreement of the other owners, decided that the year 1901 would be their first as a major league. The rivalry was on!

The decision was made early on that major markets had to be added in order to make the league fiscally sound. Baltimore, Cleveland and Washington were included because of their earlier existence in the National League, but Louisville was a smaller market. It was decided that the three previously announced cities would field teams along with the existing and upcoming markets in Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. The league would seek out unhappy National League players and offer competitive contracts to man their teams. This of course would create a pricing war in their competition with the National League.

One of the first and best players to jump leagues was Nap Lajoie, future Hall of Famer and popular batting star. Others began to follow, including pitching legend Cy Young and player coach for Boston, Jimmy Collins. At first it appeared that the N.L. owners were not overly concerned with the raids on their teams, but that opinion was soon to change. When 1902 opened, the American League had "stolen" several hundred players and had fielded adequately sound teams to compete.

In these early years the great teams of the National League were the Pittsburgh Pirates, the New York Giants, and the Chicago Cubs. In that first decade of the century, the Bucs and Cubs both won four pennants and the Giants won two. These were the teams of such greats as Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke, Tinkers, Evers and Chance, and the great manager and former player John McGraw. A bit of irony occurred when the American League permitted the Baltimore franchise to move to New York, angering McGraw enough to move to the rival New York Giants. The war between the two leagues was covering quite a bit of ground.

The American League not only decided to move the Orioles franchise but also decided that Milwaukee (the early day Brewers) was not a big enough market. A position of direct competition was found in the city of St. Louis, giving that town two teams. As the franchises settled in for the long haul, the cities of Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, New York and Philadelphia found themselves each fielding two teams, limiting the number of markets that would celebrate major league play. It is hard to imagine today that many of today's markets did not have teams.

The war took a new twist in 1903 when the owner of the successful Pittsburgh Pirates, Barney Dreyfuss, and the owner of the Boston Americans or Pilgrims, as some called them, agreed to play for a "World" Championship which would become the World Series. With one flinch in the year 1904 the series has been played every year since except for the controversial year of 1994. In that first series Boston provided the baseball universe with proof that the Junior Circuit was capable of playing with the Senior Circuit by defeating the favored Pirates 5 games to 3, a format that was soon changed from best of nine to a best of seven.

John McGraw and Giants ownership refused to commit to the series in 1904 but returned to the fold the following year, winning the championship over the Philadelphia Athletics. The next year proved a shocker when a low-hitting lineup, the Chicago White Sox, defeated the all-powerful crosstown Cubs, 4 games to 2, sending tremors all through the Windy City. The Cubs, however, rebounded the next two years to win two World Series in a row, and unfortunately for Cubs fans, their only two victories in their long history.

These were also the days of the great Ty Cobb, who would play in three straight series but never see his Detroit Tigers win. The Cubs would beat them twice, and then the Wagner-led Bucs would beat them for their third loss in a row. Cobb would go on to win twelve batting titles while Wagner would win eight. They are argued by many as the greatest hitters in baseball history.

As the decade ended the rivalry between the two leagues had become somewhat more civil and more businesslike. The franchises settled down and did not move until the 1950s, a half century of steady and consistent play in a handful of cities. The American League would take over a dominance over the National League that they have never really relinquished. Even the All Star game annually is a Junior Circuit dominance, with one exceptional period of success for the Senior Circuit.

This dominance has been mostly created by one rich and successful franchise, the New York Yankees. It is hard to believe that it took the Yankees (then known as the Highlanders) twenty years to even win a pennant. Also remember that they were originally the Baltimore Orioles. The Browns in St. Louis eventually took their place, moving to Baltimore in the fifties and reclaiming the "Orioles" nickname. Such were the days when Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia ruled the fresh new league.

Those days are only recalled nowadays in record books and almanacs, with most baseball fans not even familiar with how the two leagues started. Fresh in the minds of the founders in those days was the idea that baseball could be played in more than a handful of cities. Today's baseball is similar but different to that of the early Twentieth Century. New teams and new records have replaced those of the early days, and the players make hundreds times more money than they did back then.

It still is worth looking back and seeing a bit of the pictures and statistics that made up those younger days, when baseball was fresh and undisturbed. Oh yes, there were still problems such as gambling and dirty play, but this was way before the era of steroids and enhanced play. We can still reminisce, can we not? The innocence is worth the effort.

Sources:

Thorn, J, Palmer, P, (1993). Total Baseball, Third Edition, HarperCollins Publishers, New York.

Gillette, G, Palmer, P, (2008). The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Sterling Publishing, New York.