All language subtitles for Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E01 (Baseball A Film By Ken Burns S01E01) (ENGLISH)

Brooklyn Eagle, 1846 In our sundown
perambulations of late through the outer

parts of Brooklyn, we have
observed several parties

of youngsters playing
bass, a certain game of ball.

Let us go forth a while and
get better air in our lungs.

Let us leave our close rooms.

The game of ball is glorious.

Walt Whitman.

In 1909, a man named Charles
Hercules Ebbets began secretly

buying up adjacent parcels
of land from the British.

In the Flatbush section of Brooklyn,
including the site of a garbage dump

called Pig Town because
of the pigs that once ate their

fill there and the stench
that still filled the air.

He hoped eventually to build
a permanent home for the

lackluster baseball team he had
once worked for and now owned.

The team was called the Trolley Dodgers,
or just the Dodgers, after the way their

devoted fans negotiated
Brooklyn's busy streets.

In 1912, construction began.

By the time it was completed, Pig Town
had been transformed into Ebbets Field,

baseball's newest shrine, where some of
the game's greatest drama would take place.

For the years to come,
Dodger fans would see

more bad times than
good but hardly care.

Listen to the southern cadences

In 1955, after more than
four decades of frustration,

Brooklyn would finally
win a world championship.

Only to know, just two years later,
the ultimate heartbreak, as their team

moved to a new city 3,000 miles
away, leaving an empty shell in Flatbush,

and an even emptier spot in
the soul of every Brooklyn fan.

...standing

at Fenway Park as Ted
Williams tips, probably for

the last time, in a Boston
uniform in this ballpark.

There's a drive to deep right...

...lines and fires,
Yastrzemski...

...0-1-0 delivery to
Fiske, swings, long drive,

left field, if it stays
there, it's gone.

Home run!

First thing about it, and this seems
so obvious that maybe we overlook it,

baseball is a beautiful thing.

It's more beautiful in an old park
that's asymmetrical and quirky.

But even, and I hate to say
this because it might encourage

them, but even in a dome
with artificial turf, it's beautiful.

The way the field fans out, the
choreography of the sport, the pace and

rhythm of it, the fact that that pace
and rhythm allows for conversation,

and reflection and
opinion and comparison.

It's a pastime,
something you do.

It's entertainment,
something you watch.

And it's a shared experience,
something you talk about and read about.

And that's marvelous.

But you can apply those same
three criteria to other things.

What makes baseball special is that it's
the best game that's ever been devised.

Music...

It measures just nine
inches in circumference.

Weighs only about five ounces and is
made of cork wound with woolen yarn covered

with two layers of cowhide and
stitched by hand precisely 216 times.

It travels 60 feet 6 inches from
the pitcher's mound to home

and it can cover that distance
at nearly 100 miles an hour.

Along the way it can be made to twist,
spin, curve, wobble, rise or fall away.

The bat is made of turned
ash, less than 42 inches long,

not more than two and three
quarter inches in diameter.

The batter has only a few thousandths
of a second to decide to hit the ball.

And yet the men who
fail seven times out of

ten are considered the
game's greatest heroes.

It is played everywhere.

In parks and playgrounds
and prison yards.

In back alleys
and farmer's fields.

By small boys and old men.

Raw amateurs and
millionaire professionals.

It is a leisure game.

A leisurely game that
demands blinding speed.

The only game in which
the defense has the ball.

It follows the seasons.

Beginning each year
with the fond expectancy of

springtime and ending with
the hard facts of autumn.

Americans have played
baseball for more than 200 years.

While they
conquered a continent.

Wared with one another
and with enemies abroad.

Struggled over
labor and civil rights.

And the meaning of freedom.

It's the game my father
taught me how to play.

It's a time I saw
things on a level plane.

Something was
rolling towards me.

And it said Spalding on it.

I picked it up.

Instinctually
would push it back.

And those days, those
summer days became fall days.

Became our Sundays
together with my brothers and I.

My dad whipping
off his wicked curve.

I just remember
how my hands hurt.

At first I was afraid of
the ball and his coaching.

You know, keep
your shoulder in there.

Don't bail out.

It's not going to hurt you.

You know, and that's
what I remember.

At its heart lie
mythic contradictions.

A pastoral game
born in crowded cities.

An exhilarating democratic
sport that tolerates cheating.

And has excluded as
many as it has included.

A profoundly conservative game that often
manages to be years ahead of its time.

It is an American odyssey that links sons
and daughters to fathers and grandfathers.

And it refines that.

It reflects a host of
age-old American tensions.

Between workers and owners.

Scandal and reform.

The individual
and the collective.

It is a haunted game in
which every player is measured

against the ghosts of
all who have gone before.

Most of all, it is about
time and timelessness.

Speed and grace.

Failure and loss.

Imperishable hope.

And coming home.

Here's the pitch.

It's a slow curve.

And the bat swings.

It's a long run.

It's in there.

Beller starts that wind-up.

Here's the pitch.

For the second strike.

Here's the pitch.

Swings on a low pass
ball for strike three.

And now comes up Joe DiMaggio.

He connects.

A long...

Paso pitches.

Williams swings.

There's a high drive.

Swing ground ball.

Third base side.

Brooks Robinson's got it.

Throwing from foul
ground toward first base.

It's fun.

That's what it is.

It's fun.

Baseball is more fun
than anything else.

You can watch
it and just love it.

You enjoy it.

I don't think there's anything
tremendously philosophical about it.

I don't think there's
anything metaphysical.

I just think it's so
much fun to watch.

You watch a player do something.

You watch a second baseman
go up in the air in a double play.

And he throws the ball.

And he's like a bird in flight.

And he's watching
to see what happened.

You see a first baseman take a bad throw
in the dirt and come up with it like that.

And sort of wander off the bag
as if there's no problem at all.

It's just delightful.

It looks easy.

When you see ball players at the stadium
or on television catching a fly ball,

it seems, this is what we
did when we were kids.

It's really, we could
be down there.

There isn't that much separating
me from Bo Jackson or George Brett.

I could be there.

I could do that.

You have the illusion.

Baseball fosters illusions.

Baseball fosters hopes.

Baseball inflates us.

Baseball lies to us seductively.

And we know we're being seduced.

And we don't complain.

The game's greatest figures
have come from everywhere.

Coal mines and college campuses.

City slums and
country crossroads.

A brawling Irish immigrant's son,
who for more than half a century,

preached a rough,
scrambling brand of baseball,

in which anything went
so long as victory was won.

And his favorite player, a
college-educated right-hander so uniformly

virtuous that millions of schoolboys
worshipped him as the Christian gentleman.

A mill hand who could neither read nor
write, and who might have been one of the

game's greatest heroes if
temptation had not proved too great.

And a flamboyant federal judge who first
helped save baseball from a scandal that

threatened to destroy it, and then
became an implacable enemy of reform.

A miner's son from Commerce, Oklahoma,
who made himself the game's most powerful

switch hitter despite 17
seasons of ceaseless pain.

And a tight-fisted Methodist.

A cross, one sports writer
said, between a statistician

and an evangelist, who
profoundly changed the game twice.

And there were those whose true greatness
was never fully measured because of the

stubborn prejudice that permeated
both the nation and its favorite game.

Two of baseball's best began life in rural
Georgia, a swift, savage competitor who

may have been the greatest
player of all time, but whose

uncontrollable rage in the end
made him more enemies than friends.

And another no less fierce competitor
who, because he managed to hold his temper,

made professional
baseball a truly national

pastime more than a
century after it was born.

And then there was the Baltimore saloon
keeper's turbulent son, who became the

best-known and best-loved
athlete in American history.

I enjoy the game because it's
a beautifully designed game.

It's a beautiful game to watch.

But principally because it
makes me feel American.

It makes me feel
connected with this culture.

And I think there are only three things
that America will be known for 2,000 years

from now when they
study this civilization.

The Constitution, jazz
music, and baseball.

They're the three most beautifully designed
things this culture has ever produced.

I see great things in baseball.

It's our game.

The American game.

It will take our people out of doors, fill
them with oxygen, give them a larger

physical stoicism, tend to relieve us
from being a nervous dyspeptic set.

Repair these losses
and be a blessing to us.

One summer day in 1839 at Cooperstown,
New York, on the shores of Lake Otsego,

the local academy was playing a game
of town ball against Green's select school.

The rules of town ball were
so loose that every hit was fair.

And boys sometimes ran
headlong into one another.

That day, an academy player named
Abner Doubleday sat down and on the spot,

drew up the rules for a brand
new game and called it baseball.

Abner Doubleday would eventually
become a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg.

And his game would
become the national pastime.

Or so the legend has it.

Abner Doubleday really
was a distinguished soldier.

But he was at West Point,
not Cooperstown that summer.

Never claimed to have had
anything to do with baseball.

May never have even
seen a professional game.

Baseball's real history
is more complicated.

Baseball has nearly all the qualities
and the narrative that the country has.

It's competitive.

It's spirited.

It's got the joshing
and it's got the

intellectual side, the
great students of it.

But it's also got labor unions and
management and gimmicks and promotion and

venality and great public fools in
baseball and great public heroes and

self-serving people
and generous people.

And it has pride and
unity of town and of country

and it'll do for a figure
for the American system.

1744.

The ball once struck off.

Away flies the boy to the next
destined post and then home with joy.

Children have hit balls with bats
as long as there have been children.

But baseball's most direct
ancestors were two British games.

Rounders, a children's sport brought
to New England by the earliest colonists,

and cricket, a stately pastime divided
into innings and supervised by umpires.

By the time of the American
Revolution, there were many variations.

Boys played one version
or another in schoolyards

and village greens and
on college campuses.

1786.

A fine day.

Play ball in the campus.

But am beaten, for I miss
catching and striking the ball.

Princeton College.

Of all baseball's ancestors, town
ball was by far the most popular.

Under its rules, the
infield was square.

Eight to 15 men played on a
side, sometimes as many as 50.

The pitcher or feeder was
the least important player.

It was his job to lob
the ball to the striker

who could wait and wait
for the pitch he wanted.

The runner was out if the ball was
caught on the fly, or if he was soaked,

hit with the ball while
running between bases.

By 1800, town ball and its many
variations were played nearly every quick.

On their way back from the Pacific Ocean,
Lewis and Clark played a game of base with

the Nez Perce Indians as they
prepared to cross the Bitterroot Mountains.

In the 1830s, on the western frontier
of Missouri, ball was the favorite sport of

Joseph Smith, the founder of a
new religious sect called the Mormons.

But back east in Cooperstown, New
York, city fathers passed an ordinance

restricting play after merchants
complained about too many broken windows.

Meanwhile, in New York
City, they were starting

to play a brand new
version of the game.

There is the illusion that this connects
us on a straight line to our rural past,

our country past.

And we have an image somewhere
in the back of our minds of

fathers and sons or boys playing
baseball on a meadow somewhere.

The truth of the
matter is that baseball

was an urban game
almost from the beginning.

Organized ball was played
by men in cities near saloons.

In the 1840s, New Yorkers walked
and worked and lived at what was called a

railroad pace, where the thousands of
single men pouring into the city in search

of work, their crowded world centered
around boarding houses and saloons,

volunteer fire companies and
ward politics and baseball teams.

In September of 1845, as Americans now
claimed the right to overspread the whole

of the continent, a group of friends formed
the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club.

They were merchants, brokers, insurance
salesmen, a United States marshal,

a portrait photographer,
a dealer in cigars.

And they showed a lively
interest in improving the game.

Three balls being struck at and missed,
and the last one caught is a hand out.

If not caught, is considered
fair, and the striker bound to run.

Alexander Joy Cartwright.

Alexander Joy Cartwright was a volunteer
fireman and bank clerk working for Daniel

Ebbets, the father of the man who
would one day build Ebbets Field.

He helped establish the
Knickerbockers and codify new

rules that would show how
to change the game forever.

The infield would now
be diamond shaped.

Foul lines were established,
and the batter got

three missed swings
before he was called out.

Most important, runners would now
be tagged or thrown out, not thrown at.

It was now a more challenging
game, faster paced, American.

And to the Knickerbockers' great delight,
quite distinct from cricket, and rounders.

But there was precious little room to
play the new game in the crowded streets of

lower Manhattan, and the Knickerbockers
had to travel across the Hudson River to

Hoboken, New Jersey, and a
grassy area called the Elysian Fields.

They crossed the Barclay Street ferry
in a body, like unto the pilgrims of yore,

and marched up the country road on the
Jersey side, expecting here and there for

suitable grounds, until they reached
the Elysian Fields, where they settled.

Then they perfected their organization,
calling it the Knickerbockers,

which was the nucleus of the
great American game of baseball.

Seymour Church.

Twice a week we went over to
the Elysian Fields for practice.

Once there, we were free from all
restraint, and throwing off our coats,

we played until it was
too dark to see any longer.

I was a left-handed batter, and sometimes
used to hit the ball into the river.

People began to take an
interest in the game presently, and

sometimes we had as many as
a hundred spectators watching.

By the following spring,
the Knickerbockers

were finally ready to
take on another team.

On June 19, 1846, at the Elysian Fields,
they played against a group of cricket

players, in the first real
baseball game in history.

The Knickerbockers
lost, 23 to 1.

But their game spread
throughout the city.

By the 1850s, New
York was baseball man.

There were teams of doctors, teams
of teachers, teams of tradesmen.

Shipbuilders formed
clubs, so did firemen,

bankers, teamsters,
lawyers, even undertakers.

Meanwhile, the Knickerbockers
continued to refine their game.

The winning team was the
first to get 21 aces, or runs.

Soon changed to whoever was
ahead at the end of nine innings.

They standardized the
number of men who could play

on a side at nine, and
set the bases 90 feet apart.

That's so interesting that
it would come out 90 feet.

That somebody sat
down, Mr. Cartwright or

whoever, and said,
hey, it ought to be 90 feet.

It'd just sound like
a logical number.

The fact of the matter
is, in retrospect, if it

were 88 feet, the game
would be very different.

Think of the
plays at first base.

Think of the double plays that wouldn't
be completed on an 88-foot first base.

Gee, and second base.

If it were 94 feet, we'd be throwing
people out all over the place.

Batting averages
would drop remarkably.

So if 90 feet was something
somebody said, hey,

that's a good number, that
was a pick from heaven.

Alexander Joy Cartwright left Manhattan
and helped spread baseball westward,

across the Rockies, onto the California
Gold Rush, then all the way to Hawaii.

There he became a wealthy merchant,
but he never entirely lost interest in the

team he'd helped to form or
the game he'd helped lay out.

Honolulu.

Dear old Knickerbockers, I hope the club
is still kept up and I shall someday meet

again with them on the
pleasant fields of Hoboken.

Have in my possession the original ball
with which we used to play on Murray Hill.

Sometimes I have thought of sending
it home, but I cannot bear to part with it.

So linked in with
cherished home memories.

It is the American game.

That's just what it is.

And actually, it makes you me.

I'm 81, but I can feel like I'm 15 when I'm
talking baseball, I'm watching baseball.

This is it.

It does this and can
do this to any man.

It brings you back.

It may be truly said
that the year of 1856 was

the birth year of the
evolution of baseball.

It was then that we took note of the
possibilities of the game and saw in it a

lever which could be
advantageously used to lift

up athletic sports into
a desired popularity.

Henry Chadwick.

In 1856, a British-born music teacher
and enthusiastic cricketer named Henry

Chadwick saw the
Knickerbockers play the New York

Gothams and became an
instant convert to baseball.

Americans do not care to
dawdle over a sleek, inspiring

game all through the
heat of a June or July day.

What they do, they
want to do in a hurry.

In baseball, all is likely.

Thus, the reason for the American antipathy
to cricket can readily be understood.

Chadwick developed the box score,
wrote and edited the most popular player's

manual, and launched one of the
first baseball columns covering the

Knickerbockers and their challengers,
the Gothams, Eagles, Empire, Umpires,

Excelsiors, and Atlantics, in the
pages of the New York Clipper.

And he began keeping
comparative statistics so that he

could measure one player's
performance against another's.

Because we've been playing it
fundamentally the same way for so long,

the way that we can find the benchmarks
that cross generations and cross decades

is to be able to use these
statistics as if they were labels.

They aren't numbers.

300-hitter is not a number.

But 300-hitter is a tag that means
something today as it did in 1930,

as it did in 1890.

So the statistics become
a means by which we

can connect to the
permanence of this thing.

I can make that comparison with my father,
who could have made it with his father,

on that common
language of statistics.

On December 5, 1856, Sunday New York
Mercury referred to baseball for the first

time, somewhat optimistically,
as the national pastime.

Ball playing communicated such an impulse
to our limbs and joints that there is

nothing now heard of in our
leisure hours but ball, ball, ball.

I cannot prophesy with
any degree of accuracy

concerning the continuance
of this rage for play.

But the effect is good,
since there's been a

thoroughgoing reformation
from inactivity and torpitude.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

There were some 50 clubs in
the New York area alone by 1858.

And special trains ran out to Long Island
where onlookers saw the New York All-Stars

beat their Brooklyn
counterparts, and for the

first time were made
to pay for the privilege.

50 cents to the man
who owned the field.

In an attempt to keep control of their
game, the Knickerbockers and other

established clubs
banded together to form

the National Association
of Baseball Players.

They set down still more rules.

An umpire was given
the power to call strikes.

No one was allowed to
catch the ball in his cap.

Above all, baseball was to
remain an amateur's game.

No player was ever to be paid.

By the spring of 1861,
there were 62 member clubs

in the National Association
of Baseball Players.

Free blacks in northern cities
had established their own teams.

And Henry Chadwick was trying to start
a baseball club in Richmond, Virginia,

when the new season
was suddenly interrupted.

Virginia, April 3, 1862.

It is astonishing how indifferent
a person can become to danger.

The report of musketry is heard
but a very little distance from us.

Yet over there on the
other side of the road

is most of our company
playing bat ball.

And perhaps in less than
half an hour, they may be

called to play a ball game
of a more serious nature.

Frederick, Fairfax.

5th Ohio Infantry.

Soldiers in both armies played ball
whenever and wherever they could.

Just like boys, one
of them remembered.

If there was any transforming
incident in the history of

baseball, as in the history of
this country, it was the Civil War.

Play in the 1840s and 50s
was not for the middle class.

It was not for
the working class.

It was reserved for
so-called gentlemen.

Play became democratic
when it became portable.

It became a people's game.

We were playing ball between the lines
near Alexandria, Texas, when suddenly

there came a scattering fire of which
the three outfielders caught the brunt.

The center field was
hit and was captured.

The left and right field managed
to get back into our lines.

The rebel attack was repelled
without serious difficulty.

But we had lost not only our center
field, but the only baseball in Alexandria,

Texas.

Winter's

idleness and lack of
practice were evident.

With the war being over,
it is hoped that there will be

a renewal of interest in our
own purely national game.

Buffalo Express.

By the end of the Civil War,
baseball was the national pastime.

North and south, west and east.

Soldiers took the game
home with them, and it grew.

It's our game.

That's the chief fact
in connection with it.

America's game has the snap, go
fling of the American atmosphere.

It belongs as much to our institutions,
fits into them as significantly as our

Constitution's laws, is just as
important in the sum total of our history.

There's so much about the game that
appeals to the intellect and to the psyche.

The symmetry of it, the orderliness of it,
the justice of it, the fact that it throws

off other controls, it's
greater than time structures.

You know, in the other
sports you have time.

You have to play
against the clock.

And when the clock runs... When
the clock runs out, your chance is over.

No clock in baseball.

You play until you lose.

And if you can keep that rally alive,
if you can keep going, if you can keep

getting hits, you can
play until a week from now.

Nothing stops you.

There is no parameter
that makes it impossible

for you to perform
still more excellently.

In October 1867, as federal troops
enforced civil rights laws in the South,

the African American Pythian Baseball Club
of Philadelphia applied for membership in

the Pennsylvania Association
of Baseball Players.

They were turned away.

Two months later, the National
Association took up the issue.

If colored clubs were
admitted, there would in

all probability be
some division of feeling.

Whereas by excluding them,
no injury could result to anyone.

Despite the ban, the Pythians became
the first recorded all-black team to play a

white team, the Philadelphia City
Items, a group of newspaper men.

The Pythians won 27 to 17.

Their captain, Octavius Cato, was later
killed in the Philadelphia race riot that

started when blacks attempted
to exercise their right to vote.

The public, so far as it knew
of our playing, was shocked.

But in our retired grounds, we continued
to play in spite of a censorious public.

In 1866, at Vassar College, a group of
freshmen, with the support of a female

physician who thought
exercise for women essential

to good health, joined the
Abenakas baseball club.

Other colleges
soon followed suit.

They are getting up various
clubs now for out-of-door exercise.

They have a floral society,
boat clubs, and baseball clubs.

I belong to one of the latter, and
enjoy it highly, I can assure you.

Annie Glidden.

They did not play for long.

One day a student, while running
between bases, fell with an injured leg.

We attended her to the
infirmary with the foreboding

that this accident would
end our play of baseball.

Dr. Webster said that the public doubtless
would condemn the game as too violent.

But that if the student had
hurt herself while dancing,

the public would not
condemn dancing to extinction.

Sophia Richardson.

The teams were
soon forced to disband.

The game was considered far
too violent for young ladies to play.

Americans have always had a
wonderful aversion to excesses of honesty.

And baseball has always
been able to express that.

The sense in baseball
is that the reason they put

those four umpires out
there is to enforce the rules.

But if you can get outside the rules
and outside the umpires, it is a very

reasonable question to ask whether
you might not be allowed to do it.

One afternoon on the Brooklyn waterfront, a
boy named William Cummings, known to his

friends as Candy, noticed that he could
make a clamshell curve when he hurled it

through the air and began
to wonder if he might be

able to do the same thing
one day with a baseball.

In April 1867, now
pitching for the Brooklyn

Sears, Candy Cummings
tried out his new pitch.

I began to watch
the flight of the ball

through the air and
distinctly saw it curve.

A surge of joy flooded over
me that I shall never forget.

I said not a word, saw many a batter at
that game throw down his stick in disgust.

Every time I was successful, I could
scarcely keep from dancing for pure joy.

The secret was mine.

Candy Cummings.

Cummings' secret did
not remain his for long.

Though it was outlawed, everyone
started throwing the curveball.

Purists were appalled.

I heard that this year we at Harvard won
the baseball championship because we have

a pitcher who has
a fine curveball.

I am further instructed
that the purpose of the

curveball is to deliberately
deceive the batter.

Harvard is not in the
business of teaching deception.

Charles Elliot, President
of Harvard College.

January 9th, 1868.

Somehow or other they
don't play ball nowadays

as they used to some
eight or ten years ago.

I don't mean to say that they don't
play it as well, but I mean that they don't

play with the same kind of feelings
or for the same objects they used to.

They say that ball matches have come to
be controlled by different parties and for

different purposes than those
that prevailed in 1858 or 1859.

Pete O'Brien.

What must be the contempt
for those who would degrade

our great national game
and make it a business?

When such becomes the
case, farewell to baseball.

The excitement which is at present
attendant on these contests will cease.

Then the game itself will
gradually but surely die out.

Philadelphia City Item.

The public will happily pay 75 cents
to a dollar fifty to go to the theater.

And numbers prefer
baseball to theatricals.

We must make the
games worth witnessing and

there will be no fault
found with the price.

A good game is
worth fifty cents.

A poor one is
dear at twenty-five.

Harry Wright.

Harry Wright eats baseball, breathes
baseball, thinks baseball, dreams

baseball, and incorporates
baseball in his prayers.

Cincinnati Enquirer.

Harry Wright, a former center fielder
for the Knickerbocker Baseball Club,

believed there were big
profits to be made in baseball.

And in 1869 he
assembled the very first

professional team, the
Cincinnati Red Stockings.

Only one of Wright's Red Stockings
actually came from Cincinnati.

Most were young New
Yorkers, 19 or 20 years old.

Wright drilled them in the fundamentals,
insisted they be silent and business-like

on the field, and dressed them
in knickers and running speed.

And for the first time,
to the shock of the

baseball community, he
paid each player a salary.

The highest paid was Harry's brother
George, the shortstop, who received a

considerable sum of
fourteen hundred dollars a

season, seven times the
average working man's wage.

The Red Stockings
finished their first season with

a record of sixty-five
wins and not a single loss.

They also managed
to turn a profit for their

investors, one dollar
and thirty-nine cents.

The city that had once prided itself
on the stockyards which inspired its

nickname, Porkopolis, had become
the baseball capital of the country.

And the Red Stockings spread the
gospel from New York to San Francisco,

traveling on the just completed
Transcontinental Railroad.

Every magnate in the country
is indebted to this man, Harry

Wright, for the establishment
of baseball as a business.

And every patron for furnishing
him with a systematic recreation.

Every player is indebted
to him for inaugurating

an occupation by which
he gains a livelihood.

And the country at large for adding
one more industry to furnish employment.

That's sporting life.

The Red Stockings
seemed unbeatable.

They won twenty-seven
straight the next season, too.

And then, they came to the Capital Line
grounds in Brooklyn to face the Atlantics,

the best team in the East.

And the toughest.

Before twenty thousand
paying spectators, Cincinnati

and Brooklyn fought to a
5-5 tie over nine innings.

It was the most exciting game
anyone could ever remember.

Under the rules, Harry Wright
could have settled for a tie.

But he decided to risk his
record and try something new.

Extra innings.

At first, the gamble
seemed to pay off.

Cincinnati scored two runs
in the top of the eleventh.

But then, with two Atlantics
on base, the Cincinnati

first baseman, Charles
Gould, made a bad throw.

By the time it was all
over, Brooklyn scored

three runs, and Cincinnati
had been beaten.

June 14th.

Telegram to the
Cincinnati commercial.

Atlantics eight,
Cincinnati seven.

The finest game ever played.

Our boys did nobly, but
fortune was against us.

Though beaten, not disgraced.

Harry Wright.

Cincinnati was devastated.

With their winning streak over, fans
stopped going to Red Stockings games.

Investors withdrew their support,
complaining that with attendance down,

the players' salary
demands were unreasonable.

Finally, the team was disbanded.

Harry Wright moved on.

At the invitation of a band of New England
promoters, he took the best of his Red

Stockings to Boston, where they became
the most successful team in the country.

By moving his stars from city to
city, the Sporting Times later said,

Wright had set new
prices on their muscle.

Baseball is business now,
and I'm trying to arrange

our games to make them
successful and make them pay.

Irrespective of my feelings
and to the best of my ability,

if I should fail, then I will
try and do better next time.

Harry Wright.

For the professional teams and leagues
that now sprung up all across the country,

winning and the profits it promised was
fast becoming the most important thing.

But outside the big cities, baseball
remained a game, not a business.

When we heard of the professional game
in which men cared nothing whatever for

patriotism but only for money, games
in which rival towns would hire the

best players from a natural enemy, we
could scarcely believe the tale was true.

No kinsman boy would anymore give aid and
comfort to a rival town than would a loyal

soldier open a gate in
the wall and march in.

Clarence Darrow, Kinsman, Ohio.

August 10th, 1874.

I was catcher for the Hartfords
and Cherokee Fisher was pitching.

He is a lightning pitcher and
very few could catch for him.

On that occasion, he delivered
as wicked a ball as ever left

his hands and it went through
my grasp like an express train,

I fell insensible to the ground but was
quickly picked up, placed in a carriage,

and driven to my hotel.

The doctor who attended me gave me a
hypodermic injection of morphine but I had

rather died behind the bat
than have had that first dose.

My injury was only temporary but from
taking prescriptions of morphine during my

illness, the habit grew on me and
I am now powerless in its grasp.

My morphine pleasure has cost
me eight dollars a day at least.

I was once catcher for
the Mutuals, also for the

Atlantics, but no one would
think it to look at me now.

Tom Barlow.

The aim of baseball is to
employ professional players

to perspire in public for
the benefit of gamblers.

The New York Times.

By the mid-1870s, a man could make a good
living playing baseball, but some found

they could make an even better
living throwing games for gamblers.

Speculators trading on inside information
had taken over much of the professional

game, just as they had taken
over many other institutions.

Cornering the gold market, ruining the
stock market, defrauding the stock market,

and the government,
creating huge monopolies.

As the country approached
its centennial celebration,

public faith in its national
pastime began to fade.

Henry Chadwick, who had struggled so
hard to promote baseball, now found himself

crusading against corruption
in the game he loved.

Baseball has fallen.

Yes, the national game
has become degraded.

At certain match games, large amounts of
money changed hands among the spectators.

A noted New York club is said to
have sold the results of a match.

Barked chins and broken
fingers may be easily mended, but

a disfigured reputation may
never be entirely repaired.

Once more, abandon the bat, boys,
if you cannot keep the game pure.

On February 2, 1876, at Manhattan's Grand
Central Hotel, a group of club owners,

eager to tighten their control of
the game, restore its respectability,

and most of all to ensure greater
profits, started a new association.

They called it the National League
of Professional Baseball Clubs.

It is ridiculous to pay
ballplayers $2,000 a year,

especially when the $800
boys often do just as well.

William Hulbert.

William A.

Hulbert, a ruthless coal
magnate who owned the Chicago

White Stockings, became the
National League's president.

He immediately took steps to revive
the reputation of the professional game.

Players were forbidden
to drink on the field or off.

No beer was to be
served on the grounds.

Ticket prices were set at 50 cents, and
no games were to be played on Sundays.

Above all, power was to be
invested in the owners, not the players.

It's not that the owners came
in for entirely bad reasons.

There were, you know, the
questions about gambling

in the game and other
seedy aspects of it.

They wanted to clean it up.

But that's as much a historical
cover story as it was a reality.

It was a real opportunity.

To further solidify their control, the
owners added a reserve clause to the

contracts of the five
best men on every team.

It required that each play
only for his current employer

and reserved his services
for the following year.

At first, few complained.

To be reserved was to be sure
of a job for the coming season.

Those who did complain that the reserve
clause smacked of slavery were fired,

then blacklisted.

For the first time in the
history of the game, the

players would serve the
interests of the owners.

For the next 100 years, the
professional game would be

dominated by those who owned
the field and supplied the ball.

Players would
simply be employees.

It is not known whether the
players have been dissipating,

keeping late hours, and
having a jolly time generally.

But tight or sober, they
should realize the fact that

they've run afoul of the most
humiliating set of reverses.

The Louisville Courier-Journal.

After a spectacular early
season in 1877, the Louisville

Grays of the new National
League lost seven games in a row.

Players bobbled the ball, seemed to slow
between bases, swung suspiciously wide.

The Grays lost the pennant.

Afterwards, some were seen wearing
fancy clothes and diamond stickpails.

An investigation revealed that gamblers
had bought off four players, including one

of the National League's greatest
pitchers, the popular Jim Devlin.

When confronted with the
evidence, Devlin confessed.

I was introduced to a man named McCloud
who said when I wanted to make a little

money to let him know,
was to use the word sash

in telegraphing and he
would know what was meant.

We made a contract to
throw a game in Indianapolis.

Received $100
from McCloud for it.

I gave it to my wife.

The magnitude of the conspiracy
stunned the baseball world.

The Louisville Grays suspended the accused
players who claimed they had only done it

because their owners had
failed to pay them their wages.

Devlin was brought before National
League president William Hulbert.

Devlin was in tears.

Hulbert was in tears.

I saw Hulbert take a $50 bill and press
it into the palm of the prostrate player.

And then I heard him say, that's
what I think of you personally.

But damn you Devlin,
you are dishonest.

You have sold a game
and I can't trust you.

Now go and let me
never see your face again.

For your act will not be
condoned so long as I live.

Albert Goodwill Spalding.

Despite their pleas
for forgiveness, Hulbert

banned all four players
from baseball forever.

For five years, Jim Devlin haunted the
corridors outside meetings of the National

League club owners hoping
somehow to be reinstated.

Desperate, he wrote to Harry Wright,
still the most respected man in the game.

Mr. Harry Wright, dear sir, as I
am deprived from playing this year,

I thought I would write
you in the way of looking

after your ground or
anything in the way of work.

I don't know what I am to do.

I can assure you, Harry,
that I was not treated right.

I am honest, Harry,
you need not be afraid.

The Louisville people made
me what I am today, a beggar.

I have not got a stitch of
clothing or has my wife and child.

I am dumb, Harry.

I don't know how to
go about it so I trust you

will answer this and
do all you can for me.

So I still close by sending you and George
and all the boys my very best wishes,

hoping to hear from you soon.

I am yours truly, James A.

Devlin.

Harry Wright did nothing.

Devlin got a job as a
policeman in 1880, but

died of consumption
just three years later.

His early death, said a
Louisville newspaper, was

an instructive example of
the fruits of crookedness.

The National League had
survived its first scandal.

Baseball has these absolutely unique
sounds, the sounds of spring, of summer.

I can remember a shortstop, I don't
remember his name now, but I used to pitch

and he used to call out, and it
would sort of drift out across the fields.

You know, the sound of the ball against
the bat is absolutely extraordinary.

It brings back, I don't know any
American male that doesn't hear that in the

springtime and get called
back to some moment

in the past or summer
days in the past.

Despite growing professionalism,
the pure game survived

in thousands of small
towns all across the country.

Sam Crawford, who would one day become
one of the best outfielders in the game,

first played on a traveling town
team from Wahoo, Nebraska.

I remember when I made my first baseball
trip, a bunch of us from around Wahoo made

a trip overland in a wagon
drawn by a team of horses.

I think there were 11 or 12 of us, and we
just started out playing from town to town.

One of the boys was a coronet
player and when we'd come

to a town, he'd whip out
that coronet and sound off.

People would all come out
to see what was going on.

And we'd announce that we were the Wahoo
team and were ready for the ball game.

Every little town out there
on the prairie had its own

ball team and ball grounds
and we challenged them all.

It wasn't easy to win those
games as you can imagine.

Each of those towns had its own umpire,
so you really had to go some to win.

We were gone
three or four weeks.

We'd take up a collection at
the games, pass the hat, you

know, and that paid our
expenses, or some of them anyway.

One of the boys was the cook, but
all he could cook was round steak.

We'd get 12 pounds for
a dollar and have a feast.

We'd drive along the country roads and if
we came to a stream, we'd go swimming.

If we came to an apple
orchard, we'd fill up on apples.

We'd sleep anywhere,
sometimes in a tent,

lots of times on the
ground, out in the open.

If we were near some
fairgrounds, we'd slip in there.

If we were near a barn, well...

Sam Crawford, Wahoo, Nebraska.

In 1878, more than eight million
bats were sold in the United States.

And players often rode to the ball field
in painted carriages, singing team songs.

Men who were crazy about
baseball were called Bugs and Cranks.

Women who shared their
excitement were Cranklets.

Later they would be called Fans, short
either for baseball fanciers or fanatics.

Everybody had a team.

At Orting, Washington,
the Fats took on the Leans.

In Kansas, crowds watched the Mother
Hunters, men playing in women's clothing.

Under guard at Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, Geronimo's

Chiricahua Apaches
played ball against the U.S.

Army and won.

Whalers, frozen in at Herschel Island
above the Arctic Circle, played too,

naming their teams the
Hoodlums, Walruses, and Blubbers.

At some games, a keg of beer stood just to
the side of third base for encouragement.

Any man who made it to third
was entitled to a dipper full.

When the University of
Illinois played Northwestern,

Illinois Rooters fired
blanks into the air.

Much more convenient than
yelling, the campus paper

said, and has a better
effect on the visiting team.

And when the Princeton Tigers beat Yale,
their fans roared right onto the field.

It says, I think that at Root,
we're children, or we'd like to be.

And the best of us keep
as much of that childhood

with us as we grow into
adulthood, as we can muster.

And the most creative, the
most happy, the most fortunate

of us are those who don't
lose the sense of play.

And even after we're past the point of
being able to actually play the game with

any skill, if we love it,
then it's like Peter Pan.

We remain boys forever.

We don't die.

Baseball is the very symbol, the outward
and visible expression of the drive and

push and the first struggle of the
ranging, tearing, booming 19th century.

Mark Twain.

In 1882, owners of Midwestern clubs left
out of the National League established a

league of their own, the
American Baseball Association.

Its games cost just a quarter.

Its teams played on Sundays.

And its ballparks sold liquor.

The new Beer and Whiskey
League had bigger, rowdier crowds.

The stands filled with working men
and immigrants, not the middle-class

native-born fans who
followed the National League.

It was baseball's heyday.

Competition flourished.

Play improved.

Attendance skyrocketed.

And huge wood and iron grandstands
were built in all the big cities.

The two leagues staged
an end-of-the-season

championship for fans who
could not get enough baseball.

In 1882, William Hulbert died.

And control of the National League and
his old team, the Chicago White Stockings,

passed to his
second-in-command, A.G.

Spalding.

The magnet must be a
strong man among strong men.

Everything is possible
to him who dares.

Albert Goodwill Spalding.

The railroads had
Commodore Vanderbilt.

Big steel had Andrew Carnegie.

Big oil, John D.

Rockefeller.

Baseball had Albert
Goodwill Spalding.

He had been the finest
pitcher of the 1870s.

He learned his baseball from
Harry Wright, who had paid

him $1,500 a year to pitch
for the Boston Red Stockings.

In 1876, he left Boston for
Chicago, lured by William

Hulbert's offer of a $500
raise and 25% of the gate.

But Spalding had still
bigger things in mind.

At age 27, he stopped
pitching entirely to become

a full-time promoter
of baseball and himself.

With $800 borrowed from his mother,
he opened a sporting goods business.

Soon, he was manufacturing all the
baseballs used in the National League.

He then began making bats and uniforms,
managing to persuade club owners that

every position should
have its own distinctive garb.

The result was chaos.

The team looked like a Dutch bed
of tulips, a Chicago sports writer said.

And the experiment
was quickly abandoned.

Like other captains of industry,
Spalding crushed or bought out his

competitors, becoming the largest
sporting goods manufacturer in the country.

Spalding Sporting Goods,
its proprietor said, is

converting all America
to the gospel of exercise.

Spalding ran his team and his empire from
the private box he built for himself on

Chicago's Congress Street grounds,
fitted out with a gong to summon servants,

and a new invention, a
telephone, to keep track

of all his enterprises
while he watched the game.

Newspapers called him
the baseball messiah.

Only one continent now remains to be
subjugated by the American baseball bat.

Australia surrendered after a three
weeks campaign of great brilliancy.

Asia was met and
overcome at Colombo.

Africa sent her forces up
the Nile, only to be overcome

and brought to terms in the
shadow of the Great Pyramid.

At the end of the 1888 season,
Spalding led his white stockings and a

pick-up team of all-stars
on a round-the-world tour

to spread the gospel of
the great American game.

We are up at breakfast early as we are
to start at 10 o'clock for the pyramids.

After breakfast and secured for the party,
the ball players in uniform as for the

first time the Sphinx is to
witness a game of baseball.

After lunch we have photos taken at
the Sphinx and then proceed to play our

historical game of ball with
about 200 Arabs for an audience.

They took more interest in the game than
the average Englishman and did not once

refer to it as the old game
of rounders, you know.

In March, the tour
arrived in England.

The verdict of the spectators
is almost universally

against it as a competitor
with our national game.

And in our own individual judgment,
it has so many inherent defects that it

has not the slightest pretensions to
be considered superior to, even if it is

equal with, our own juvenile
amusement rounders.

On the basis of which
it has been modeled.

When the tour got back
to New York, there was a

banquet served in nine
innings at Delmonico's.

Theodore Roosevelt attended.

Mark Twain spoke.

And when the president
of the National League

came to the convention, guests and players
alike chanted, no rounders, no rounders.

In the end, Spalding lost
money on the tour and baseball

failed to catch on anywhere
his teams had played.

On many summer day, I played
baseball starting at eight in the morning,

running home at
noon for a quick meal.

These were times when
my head seemed empty

of everything but baseball
names and figures.

I could name the players
who led in batting and

fielding and the pitchers
who had won the most games.

And I had my opinions about who was better
than anybody else in the national game.

Carl Sandburg.

By the 1880s, newspapers and magazines
and now baseball cards printed up to help

boost the sale of cigarettes brought into
the homes of young boys a generation of

baseball heroes they would
never get to see in person.

Pete Browning, the old gladiator of the
Louisville eclipse, had a lifetime batting

average of 343 and was
the idol of Kentucky fans.

One day in 1884 he
broke his favorite bat.

After the game an
apprentice woodworker named

Bud Hillerick offered to
make Browning a new bat.

The next day Browning
went three for three.

Thereafter he would
use no one else's bat.

It was the first Louisville slugger and
Browning would eventually own more than

200 of them to each of which he
gave a name taken from the Bible.

Roger Connor of the New York Giants
was the era's greatest home run hitter.

He smashed 138
during his career.

A record which would stand
until Babe Ruth came along.

Denton True Young was
an ungainly out of place farm

boy when he came to the
Cleveland Spiders in 1890.

Even his teammates
took to calling him Si short

for Cyrus because he
seemed so country fun.

But Si Young held the
Chicago White Stockings

to just three hits to
win his first game.

And then went on to win 510
more before he was through.

A record never even
approached by any other pitcher.

Si came to stand for Cyclone.

Mike Kelly was the trickiest
player who ever handled a baseball.

There was nothing
he would not attempt.

Baseball rules were
never made for Kell.

The most popular and
most notorious star of the

19th century was Michael
Joseph King named Kelly.

The sure handed catcher for
the Chicago White Stockings.

He was so skilled at stealing
bases he once stole six in a

single game that he inspired a
popular song Slide Kelly Slide.

He sometimes cut across
the diamond skipping

second altogether when
the umpire was not looking.

Kelly drank as hard
as he competed.

Once A.G.

Spalding put Pinkerton
detectives on his trail and

accused him of having
been in a saloon at 3 a.m.

drinking lemonade.

Kelly was indignant.

It was straight
whiskey, he said.

I never drank a lemonade
at that hour in my life.

Kelly and other carousing
Chicago players were widely

blamed for losing the
championship to St. Louis in 1886.

That winter an exasperated
Spalding sold Kelly

to Boston for the
unheard of sum of $10,000.

Chicago fans were devastated but Boston
fans were so delighted they presented

their new star with a house
and a carriage drawn by

two white horses in which
to ride to the ballpark.

I love King Kelly.

I just love King Kelly.

One of the great stories my favorite is a
day when he was sitting on the bench and

the time was that if you
wanted to substitute for

a player all you had to
do was announce yourself.

So a foul ball comes in the direction of
the bench Kelly stands up, yells out Kelly

now catching for Boston catches
the ball and it's reported as an out.

This is the trickster this is the villain
this is the fool he is also a great,

great player he is all the wonderful
archetypes of baseball wrapped into one

and he also managed
to drink himself to death

and that's also an
archetype alas, in baseball.

I was a natural born kicker then
upon making trouble for others I had an

instinctive dislike both to study and
work and I shirked them whenever the

opportunity offered Cap Anson His real
name was Adrian Constantine Anson but

those who cheered him for 27 years knew
him first as baby then as Cap and finally

as Pop he was the greatest player of his
century Anson played every position but

pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics
then joined Spalding's Chicago White

Stockings and became first baseman
and captain he batted over 300 for 20

consecutive seasons drove in 1,700 runs
and was the first man ever to accumulate

3,000 hits Chicago fans loved Anson
but his players did not he was too stern a

taskmaster for that imposing bed
checks levying $100 fines for beer drinking

insisting they report for a new early
season workout he called spring training

but they admired him for the skills
he taught them and his overwhelming

determination to win Cap Anson
was the symbol one writer said

If anywhere in this
world the social barriers

are broken down,
it is on the ball field.

There, many men of low
birth and poor breeding

are the idols of the
rich and cultured.

The best man is
he who plays best.

In view of these facts, the
objection to colored men is ridiculous.

If social distinctions
are to be made, half

the players in the
country will be shut out.

Better make character
and personal habits the test.

Newark Cole African-Americans,
freed from slavery by the Civil War and

filled with hope for a better future and
freedom, soon found themselves prisoners

again of white prejudice in
the North and of Jim Crow laws

in the South that segregated
every aspect of their lives.

Even games of
baseball at an orphanage.

But freed blacks
fought for freedom.

They formed their own baseball
clubs in cities north and south.

One of Frederick Douglass' sons
played for a team in Washington, D.C.

And more than 50
blacks played professional

baseball alongside whites
during the 1870s and 80s.

But it was never easy.

Ball players do not burn with the
desire to have colored men on the team.

It is, in fact, the
deep-seated objection to

Afro-Americans that gave
rise to the feet-first slide.

The Buffaloes had a
Negro for second base.

He was a few shades
blacker than a raven, but was

one of the best players
in the Eastern League.

The players of the opposing team made
it a point to spike this brunette Buffalo.

They would tarry at second
when they might easily make third,

just to toy with the sensitive
shins of the second baseman.

The poor man played
only two games out of five.

The rest of the time he
was on crutches, sporting life.

In 1884, the son of a black Ohio
clergyman, Moses Fleetwood Walker,

became the first African-American
to make it all the way to the majors.

Walker joined the Toledo Blue
Stockings of the American Association

as a catcher and immediately
ran into a wall of bigotry.

The Irish pitcher, Tony
Mullane, ignored Walker's signals

because he said he wouldn't
take orders from a black man.

Cap Anson himself tried to have
Walker ejected from an exhibition game,

threatening not to play if they
didn't get that nigger off the field.

Anson only backed down
when he realized he'd

forfeit his pay if he
really did walk out.

At one game, the Toledo
manager received a letter.

Said to be from 75 years old.

He was one of the only five
determined men who threatened

to mob Fleet Walker if he
dared make an appearance.

Walker kept playing.

His brother, Welday,
joined the team for a time.

1887 signaled the
beginning of the end for

black Americans in
organized white baseball.

When it seemed likely that the New
York Giants would hire the black pitcher,

George Stovey, Cap Anson made it
clear that neither he nor any of his white

stockings would ever play a team
on which blacks were welcome.

Just why Adrian C.

Anson was so strongly opposed to colored
players on white teams cannot be explained.

His repugnant feeling toward colored ball
players and his opposition with his great

power and popularity in
baseball circles hastened the

exclusion of the black
men from the white leagues.

Sol White.

Rather than face a revolt by Anson and
other white players, the National League

owners made a gentleman's
agreement to sign no more blacks.

The minor leagues followed
suit, formally declaring

that black players would
no longer be welcome.

Almost overnight, Moses,
Fleetwood, Walker, and all the other

black players disappeared
from organized white baseball.

A few years later, the United
States Supreme Court itself

would rule that racial
segregation was legal everywhere.

It would be 60 years before another
black man played in the major leagues.

If I had not been quite
so black, I might have

caught on as a Spaniard
or something of that kind.

My skin is against me.

But foul them.

You see a guy hit the
ball out of the ballpark,

a grand slam home run
to win a baseball game.

See, and that same guy
can come up tomorrow in that

situation and miss the
ball and lose the ball game.

It can bring you up here, and don't
get too damn cocky, because tomorrow,

it can bring you down there.

See, but one thing about it though,
you know it always will be a tomorrow.

You got me today,
but I'm coming back.

Baseball is good, an honorable
profession, a great challenge.

It has blessed me, I blessed it,
and it has blessed our country.

Branch Rickey.

He was born on an Ohio farm in 1881
and named Wesley Branch Rickey for John

Wesley, the founder of
his family's Methodist faith.

He was a pious, hardworking boy who
memorized scripture, taught himself Greek,

Latin, and algebra,
and promised his mother

never to drink or swear
or violate the Sabbath.

But he was mad about baseball.

Learned to play in the backyard with
a ball stitched by his mother, followed

every move of the Cincinnati Reds, and
became a good enough catcher with the

Duck Run Ohio team to
consider a professional career.

Still, the game was not a proper
livelihood for a God-fearing young man,

and so he abandoned
baseball to teach school

for $40 a month in
Turkey Creek, Ohio.

But Branch Rickey would one day become
what one sports writer called the most

original mind and the best organizer
the game has ever produced.

And in 1947, he would
help make baseball, in truth,

what it had always claimed
to be, the national pastime.

1889.

If I cannot get my release, I
must protect myself in another way.

I'm over 40 and my fielding ain't
so good, though I can still hit some.

But I will say this, no man is going
to sell my carcass unless I get half.

Deacon White,
Pittsburgh Alleghenies.

There was a time when the National League
stood for integrity and fair dealing.

Today it stands for
dollars and cents.

Once it looked to the elevation of the
game and an honest exhibition of the sport.

Today its eyes
are on the turnstile.

Players have been bought, sold, and
exchanged, as though they were sheep

instead of American citizens.

John Montgomery Ward.

New York Giants second baseman
John Montgomery Ward was a rarity among

players, a graduate of
the Columbia Law School.

And in an age when workers everywhere
were struggling to win their rights,

he was willing to take on the
club owners on their own terms.

Ward publicly denounced the reserve
clause, which now kept every player from

deciding for himself where
he wished to play, and forced

him to accept whatever wage
his owner was willing to pay.

There is now no
escape for the player.

If he attempts to elude the operation
of the rule, he becomes at once a

professional outlaw, and the
hand of every club is against him.

Like a fugitive slave law, the reserve
clause denies him a harbor or a

livelihood, and carries him
back bound and shackled

to the club from which
he attempted to escape.

We have, then, the curious
result of a contract, which

on its face is for seven
months, being binding for life.

John Montgomery Ward.

At a meeting in New York City,
Ward helped found the brotherhood of

professional baseball players,
It was the players' first attempt to

organize, and they were determined
to abolish the hated reserve clause.

But Albert Goodwill Spalding and the
other owners would not give an inch.

In 1889, they tried further to consolidate
their power by setting an absolute salary

cap of $2,500, then
added insult to injury by

charging the players
rent for their uniforms.

It was the last straw.

With the help of several
would-be owners, Ward and the

brotherhood started a rival
league, the Players League.

At first, the new
league did well.

56 top players defected to its teams
and brought their fans with them.

I am for war without quarter.

I want to fight until
one of us drops dead.

From this point on, it will
simply be a case of dog-eat-dog.

And the dog with the bulldog
tendencies will live the longest.

Albert Goodwill Spalding.

Spalding fought back by mounting
costly lawsuits, lowering ticket prices,

scheduling games to coincide with the
Players League, and by threatening to

blacklist any man who dared play for the
enemy, while simultaneously trying to lure

the new league's biggest
stars back with bribes.

King Kelly turned down $10,000.

I need the money, he told Spalding,
but I can't go back on the boys.

The Players League
defiantly held out.

But three big leagues, the National
League, the Players League, and the old

Beer and Whiskey League,
simply proved too many.

Attendance dipped
dangerously low for everyone.

Finally, despite his
own precarious financial

position, Spalding
made one last gamble.

Feigning a self-confidence he did not
feel, he demanded unconditional surrender.

The Players League could
not hold out any longer.

By the end of the 1890 season, the
league had lost more than $340,000.

More than its
investors could endure.

The new league collapsed.

John Montgomery Ward's
brotherhood was crushed.

And the reserve clause
remained firmly in place.

The players were even more
powerless than they had been before.

Albert Goodwill Spalding's National
League swallowed up both its rivals.

And now, swollen to 12 teams, held a
monopoly on Major League Baseball.

The Players League is deader
than the proverbial doornail.

When the spring comes and the grass
is green upon the last resting place of

anarchy, the national agreement will
rise again in all its weight and restore to

America, in all its purity,
its national pastime.

The great game of baseball.

Albert Goodwill Spalding.

The great lesson in sports
is supposed to be that you not

only learn the elation of
winning, but you learn how to lose.

There's a lot of emphasis on that
in the British attitude towards sports.

And Americans have it too.

But there's something very
American about being a poor loser.

Refusing to shake
the other fella's hand.

He says he's a scoundrel.

He always was a scoundrel.

And he's even more than a
scoundrel now that he's beat me.

There's something
likable about that in people.

It's bad sportsmanship, though.

Baseball was mighty
glamorous and exciting to me.

But there's no use in blinking at the fact
that at that time the game was thought by

solid, respectable
people to be only one

degree above grand
larceny, arson and mayhem.

And those who engaged in it were
beneath the notice of decent society.

Connie Mack.

The ballplayers, they were
from the fringe of society.

These were not educated men.

These were not men who
knew how to hold a cup of

tea with just two fingers
and stick out three.

And the kind of game that they played
suited the kind of people that they were.

Two teams dominated the 90s.

The Boston Bean Eaters
and the Baltimore Orioles.

Boston, led by Billy
Hamilton and Hugh Duffy,

pioneered what would
be called the inside game.

But the Orioles perfected it.

Sacrifice bunts, squeeze
plays, double steals.

They fought and
struggled for every run.

They were mean, vicious,
ready at any time to maim a

rival player or an umpire
if it helped their cause.

The things they would say to
an umpire were unbelievably vile.

They broke the spirits
of some very fine men.

I've seen umpires bathe
their feet by the hour

after they spiked them
through their shoes.

In an era of dirty baseball, the
Orioles delighted in being the dirtiest.

Managed by the outfielder
Ned Hanlon, known as Foxy Ned,

the Orioles were one of the
greatest teams ever assembled.

Dan Brewthers, the
broad-shouldered first baseman, was

the greatest power hitter
of the 1880s, bettering 314.

In 14 seasons.

Wee Willie Keeler in right field was
the game's preeminent place hitter.

Asked for the secret of
his success, he answered,

keep your eye clear and
hit them where they ain't.

He once managed at least
one hit in 44 consecutive games.

The shortstop was Huey Jennings,
known for his distinctive yell as E-Yah.

In 1896, he hit
.401, stole 70 bases.

And set a record
in his specialty.

He managed to get hit
by pitched balls 49 times.

Between seasons,
he practiced long.

They were the ones who
devised the famous Baltimore chop.

They would intentionally hit down on the
ball, hoping to get a large bounce which

would give the runner time to
make it all the way to first base

before the shortstop or second
baseman could even field it.

They would... opposing
teams to combat this would...

would flood the area in front of home
plate, so that when they hit down for the

Baltimore chop, the ball
would just stop there, and the

catcher would pick it up
and throw the guy out at first.

It was an entire set of strategies,
tactics, and most importantly,

attitudes, which I
think that story reveals,

that really defined
baseball at the time.

The toughest of the toughs.

And an abomination
of the diamond.

A rough, unruly man.

He uses every low and
contemptible method that his

erratic brain can conceive
to win a play by a dirty trick.

He was, in George Bernard
Shaw's words, the one true American.

When Shaw came to this country
and he met McGraw, he said, this is it.

This is what America is about.

He was a man who controlled
his own destiny and attempted

to control the destiny of
anybody who came near him.

The most pugnacious Oriole of them all
was the third baseman, John Joseph McGraw.

McGraw was born in Truxton,
New York, the first of eight

children of an Irish immigrant
railroad worker and his wife.

He was a slight, eager 11-year-old
whose proudest possession was his battered

baseball ordered from the Spalding catalog
when diphtheria struck his village in 1884.

One by one, he watched
as first his mother and

then four of his
brothers and sisters died.

His father took out his grief and anger
on his son, beating him so often and so

mercilessly that at 12, he feared
for his life and ran away from home.

He supported himself at odd jobs until
he won himself a place on the Olean,

New York
professional team at 16.

And never again, willingly
took orders from any man.

Young McGraw at third
base was a tower of strength,

but he spoiled his good
work by acting like a rowdy.

He's too hot-tempered to be
allowed around without a guardian.

These tough mugs
who want to fight on all

occasions should be
chased out of the business.

He batted .321 or better over nine
consecutive seasons and stole 436 bases.

Although he was short and weighed barely
120 pounds, he tripped opposing runners on

the base paths, blocked
them, spiked them, and

rarely complained when
they did the same to him.

We'd spit tobacco juice on a spike
wound, he remembered, rub dirt in it,

and get out there and play.

Mayhem seemed to follow
John McGraw wherever he went.

When he got into a fist fight with the
opposing third baseman in Boston in 1894,

both benches empty.

Fans began brawling.

Someone set the stands on fire.

And the entire wooden ballpark and 170
neighborhood buildings went up in flames.

John McGraw would stay
in baseball for more than 40

years and become one of
the game's greatest managers.

But he never stopped fighting,
never stopped savaging umpires,

and was always willing to
do just about anything to win.

The Orioles' combination
of trickery, ferocity, and skill

won them three National
League pennants during the 1890s.

Their rivals, the Boston
Bean Eaters, took five.

Baltimore and Boston
were wildly successful.

But the two teams so overwhelmed their
competition that baseball crowds dwindled

dangerously for those
clubs in other cities that

never seemed to rise
above 11th or 12th place.

To many fans, the long season,
one of the game's great strengths,

now seemed pointless.

Then, a national
depression cut further into

profits, and the owners
slashed players' salaries.

Clergymen and the newspapers
denounced the rowdyism

and scandal that followed
the game everywhere.

And the owners seemed
incapable of doing anything.

By the end of the 19th century,
the professional game was in trouble.

Laborers leave the shade and quiet of a
shop for the sun and fury of a ball ground.

They stand and they
exercise for hours.

They attest that they mean
to be men and not machines.

Athletic games carry men
back to their days of childhood.

A home base in all of them,
as there is, literally, in baseball.

He was a sour old man.

And I liked him.

I mean, he lived with us.

But he was out in the backyard
throwing a ball when I was a little kid.

He was smoking his pipe.

And he said, do
you like baseball?

And I said, yeah, yeah.

He said, what do you play?

And I said, I'm a shortstop.

And he said, that's
what I used to play.

And I said, you used to play?

And five, oh, years or
so later, I found a, the

local paper did a
50-year anniversary thing.

And there was a reprint of a
game that he'd played in in 1892.

And it said, Watts.

His name was Fred Watts.

Shortstop.

And he had two hits.

And I thought, my grandfather
played baseball in 1892.

So it's part of your existence.

It's part of our heritage.

There's a very peaceful thing.

It was created and played
in pastures and meadows.

There's grass.

There's outdoors.

There's everything that
people thought was American.

And feel about America.

You'd get in a ballpark.

And it's the wonder of holding your dad's
hand, walking through that dark tunnel,

and seeing a huge open space
where men play the little boys' game.

You think about it.

What is there in your life, besides your
love of family, maybe, that carries all

the way through, from almost your earliest
recollections till the day you die,

and you care about it
in one way or another?

There are very, very few
things that make that list.

We come to things at various
times in our lives when we

can comprehend them, when
we have an interest in them.

But we have a child's interest in baseball,
in my case, from the time I was five.

I can't imagine never
having an interest in baseball.

So it will be one of the few
things in my life that I have

cared about, in one way or
another, all the way through.

By 1900, Walt Whitman and Alexander
Joy Cartwright and Harry Wright had died.

Baseball had grown
from a children's game to a

brawling pastime for big
city workers to an industry.

And the names and
deeds of its greatest heroes

had become familiar in
every American home.

But now, jealousy and greed among
the owners, who held a monopoly on Major

League Baseball, threatened
to destroy all that they had built.

The public was turning to other sports,
where the amateur spirit had not been lost.

It would take a new generation of baseball
players, stars who would come to represent

the best and the worst of the new 20th
century, to rescue the national pastime.

By 1900, Ty Cobb and Casey Stengel
and George Herman Ruth had been born.