2. 1900-1910 Baseball1900-1910 Baseball  Players Protective Association:  Founded in 1900  Originated from the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players (1885)  One of the first unions created by players who objected the Reserve Clause  Forced players to stay with one team at the owners disposal  Players had no say as to where they were traded/sold

3. 1900–1910 Baseball  Ban Johnson Byron Bancroft Johnson: -Created the American League in 1901 -Offered higher salaries and better contract options -Players like Cy Young, John McGraw, and Nap Lajoie jumped from the National League -Cracked down on dirty play and banned liquor from ballparks -Baseball becoming a more acceptable activity

4. 1900–1910 Baseball1900–1910 Baseball  Immigration and Baseball:  Baseball becoming a reflection of the changing ethnic composition of America.  Many European immigrants became club owners due to limited entrepreneurial opportunities in a less risky environment.  A number of Northern and Eastern European immigrants played on teams as a means for social mobility.  Olaf Henriksen - Denmark

5. 1900-1910 Baseball1900-1910 Baseball  Alta Weiss:  1907  First Woman to Play Professional Baseball

6. 1900-1910 Baseball  US Postal Service Commemorative Stamp 2008 Take Me Out to the Ball Game: “Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack, I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root, for the home team, if they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out, at the old ball game.” Jack Norwith 1907

7. 1910-1919 Baseball1910-1919 Baseball  The First, First Pitch:  William Howard Taft establishes the tradition of throwing out the first pitch on April 14, 1910.

8. 1910-1919 Baseball1910-1919 Baseball  Player-Owner Relationships:  Players were becoming increasingly frustrated with poor conditions on and off the field.  1912 – Players Fraternity created:  Attempted to negotiate better conditions, but quickly fell apart  1912 – First Players strike:  Detroit Tigers players struck over Ty Cobb’s suspension after fighting with a fan  Tigers President, Frank J. Navin, hired scabs off the street to replace his striking players  This and numerous other problems helped to increase the sense of injustice within baseball, eventually leading to the Black Sox Scandal

9. 1910-1919 Baseball1910-1919 Baseball  The Black Sox:  Charles Comiskey, Owner of the Chicago Whit Sox, paid extremely low wages and treated his players poorly  Due to their poor treatment, players leaped at any opportunity to earn more money  A group of players including: Joe Jackson and Eddie Cicotte, accepted money to throw the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds

10. 1910-1919 Baseball1910-1919 Baseball  The Scandal:  Multiple rumors and accusations led to the investigation of eight players and their eventual trials  During the investigation, both Cicotte and Jackson confessed, although shortly after their confessions went missing  Now, with no evidence, all eight players were acquitted  Because of the evident problems, Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was brought in as the sport’s first commissioner  Unfortunately for the the players, Landis was not as forgiving and banned all eight players for life

11. 1910-1919 Baseball  Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis “Regardless of the verdict of the juries, no player who throws a ball game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player who sits in confidence with a bunch of crooked players, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.”

12. 1910-1919 Baseball1910-1919 Baseball  World War One and Baseball:  Ban Johnson ordered his teams to learn close-order drills  John K. Tener, President of the National League, stated “This is a war of democracy against bureaucracy. And I tell you that baseball is the very watchword of democracy.”  With baseball now one of the leaders in the entertainment industry, owners felt no reason to stop playing:  This decision sparked a great deal of criticism across the nation along with a drastic decline in attendance

13. 1910-1919 Baseball  Eddie Grant Players or Soldiers? -Owners argued that baseball be considered an essential industry so that players could not be drafted -Secretary of War Newton D. Baker disagreed with this statement, leading to the drafting of 227 MLB players -Three professional players were killed in combat, one of whom was Eddie Grant, former Captain of the New York Giants