Book Review: Major Leagues

[bedsitter23]

Major Leagues: The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present by David Pietrusza

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I ran across this referenced on the internet and had to hunt it down.

I am a big fan of Pietruszka’s political books and given the subject matter, I had to find this. It is out of print, but in 2019, that’s s pretty relative term. You can find anything.

Pietruszka might be best known as a chronicler of elections, but he is also a baseball historian. The level of detail in this book is intense, but at the same time, I know of no other book like this.

This book as the title suggests is a history of every organized major league. It is heaviest on the early years.

Some may think of Organized Baseball as an unfair monopoly that legally shuts out any competition. What is interesting is that it has been that way since the beginning!

It is difficult to picture baseball so young that the rules were in flux. In the description of various organizations, there is incomparable trivia such as the year, they tried 10 innings and 10 player lineups.

There is a level of detail here that probably no one would need, such as attendance lists at every Federal League organizational meeting.

It’s a small complaint as it is well worth the unique story Pietruszka has to tell. It is humorous to see where early baseball sprung up and that history might have planted teams in Covington, Kentucky, Altoona, Pennsylvania, Providence Rhode Island, Elizabeth, New Jersey, Rockford, Illinois, Troy, New York, Fort Wayne, Indiana and Keokuk, Iowa.

Baseball seemed to always try and put teams in smaller markets like Buffalo, Indianapolis and Newark, to name a few. It goes to show you need to have people to go to the game. In any case, baseball doesn’t have a modern day equivalent to The Green Bay Packers.

The National League squeezed out all competition, smartly making good decisions on alcohol and gambling, but also moving to be the only league worthy of being a true Major League. That the American League succeeded is all due to Ban Johnson. The National League and allied minor leagues (fearful of competition) had been always able to halt rivals. Johnson was driven to succeed almost obsessively. That helped him succeed as well as the fact the National League got stingy. He also played nice and tried to avoid same city competition with the NL until he could strategically do so.

Organized Baseball seemed to have the courts backing and so the Reserve Clause which said players could not leave the teams they were contracted with, was the rule for almost 100 years. That law seemed to favor baseball and that players who might try to jump were blacklisted means The Major Leagues never had competition.

The Federal League would be the biggest threat. After nearly 30 years of various unions and upstart leagues (or at least on paper and in the minds of ambitious would-be owners), it looked like they might succeed. Essentially coming up with the idea of free agency and able to lure some big names, they were truly a professional league. Often outdrawing their competition. It wasn’t so much that a third league meant diluted talent (though it did). The courts effectively closed the league when it said Baseball was exempt from the Sherman Antitrust Act. Eventually the weaker teams were gobbled up by the NL and AL, while the successful owners got a chance to buy into those two leagues.

Of note, The Mexican League invasion of the 1940s is fascinating and a bit obscure. The Pasquel Brothers were cousin to the Mexican President. It almost reads like a story out of a Banana Republic. The Pasquels threw enough money to lure 18 major leaguers. However, it ended up a nightmare where the League wanted to control every aspect of the players’ lives. It is interesting to note that several Negro League players played in El Liga, and certainly saw some positives in comparison to playing in the States. Organized Baseball banned the jumpers and the Americans who did jump sound almost like prisoners when they tell the press how “perfectly happy” they were. There is enough stuff here to make a movie, though it’s not a Hollywood ending as La Liga could not keep up with its ambitions.

Similarly, the Global League of 1969 would make a good movie (if it had a happy ending) Ambitious in scope to actually be a worldwide league (complete with Geisha Girls performing at "Halftime"), it’s a miracle that it actually launched, even for a couple of months.

Walter Dilbeck sounds like a larger than life character and a bit of a huckster. He would later try to partner with a disgraced Spiro Agnew to build a theme park. It ends up with both men claiming the other ripped him off.

Despite big offers to major leaguers and getting former commissioner Happy Chandler on board, the Global League sounded like a lot of hot n

That story ends with Japanese (and one American) baseball players trapped in Venezuela without money or resources, just lucky to get out of the country after appealing to the embassy, and Dilbeck in an Indiana jail

Though baseball doesn't have a credible threat in the 70s like the other three big sport, the book's epilogue finds the sport slowed by labor disputes. There is a talk of The Baseball League in 1989 with big names like sports agent Richard Moss and Bob Gibson. The League eventually draws Meshlam Riklis (now most known for GLOW wrestling and marrying Pia Zadora) and Donald Trump. Trump sees the league as viable with "a long term contract with a major television contract or a number of major networks." Once again, Organized Baseball moved to block the league (in this case signing huge deals with CBS and ESPN). As the book went to print, the League is still Moss's dream with Trump now out ("That's good for the group. You know his history.")

The book is dry in detail sometimes. Someone could take a few of these nuggets and make it a best seller. That said, I never found a book that tackled this subject and the level of detail is amazing.





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