 |
J. Palmer
O’Neil, “Pirate King” and President of the Pittsburgh Pirates, chasing an
elusive championship.
Pittsburgh Press,
July 26, 1891, page 1. |
Most popular
accounts of the origin of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ nickname trace the name to a
decision of the board of arbitration for baseball handed down on Valentine’s
Day, 1891. The decision gave some love
to Pittsburgh, while denying it to the City of Brotherly Love,
Philadelphia. The board had approved a
contract (second-baseman, Lou Bierbauer, had signed with the National League’s
Pittsburgh club) over the protests of the Philadelphia Athletics of the
American Association (the second major league at the time).
 |
| Philadelphia Inquirer, July 16, 1891,
page 3. |
Bierbauer
was not under contract with Philadelphia; they claimed the exclusive right to sign
him under baseball’s “reserve rule,” a critical clause of the National
Agreement governing the business relationships between the League and the
Association.
Under the “reserve rule,”
teams could effectively lock-up the exclusive rights to most of its players
indefinitely, reducing players’ ability to pick and choose where they might
play or to negotiate higher rates of pay.
Pittburgh and Bierbauer, on the other hand, argued that the Athletics
did not comply with the administrative formalities necessary to put his name on
their “reserve list.”
An Association spokesman
at the hearing is said to have shouted, “The act of the Pittsburgh Club is piratical,”
inspiring the new nickname.
[i]
The popular
story, however, is incomplete. While someone may have said something along
those lines during the hearing, it would have been unlikely to result in the
name “Pirates,” as applied to Pittsburgh alone.
The same board handed down the same decision, in favor of a different
team, on precisely the same facts, the very same day; Boston’s National League
team had signed first-baseman Harry Stovey, who was likewise claimed by Philadelphia
under the “reserve rule”, despite (arguably) not having complied with the necessary
formalities.
A
contemporary report of the decision accused Boston and Pittsburgh equally of “piracy”:
The Association men were incensed at this breach of faith,
and when President Thurman, their member of the National board, voted against
them and with the League, sustaining the piracy of the
Boston and Pittsburg clubs, their rage knew no bounds.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 22,
1891, page 24.
Bierbauer and Stovey were a piece of the story, but only a
prelude. The name “Pirate” did not
become permanently attached to Pittsburgh until a few weeks later, and then
only after Pittsburgh had gone on a cross-country signing spree, signing four “contract
jumpers,” players who were already under contract with American Association
teams. And there was no shortage of "pirates" in baseball at the time.
Ironically, a week before Pittsburgh signed its first "contract jumper," the
American Association withdrew from the National Agreement in retaliation for
the Bierbauer and Stovey decision, and set sail on a self-proclaimed course of
piracy of its own against the National League.
A special from Washington says: “We are pirates now,” remarked Secretary Kalbfus[ii] of the Association Club
of this city, to-day, “and have hoisted the black flag against the National
League for the good of base-ball.
Our sole regret is that matters progressed so far that we signed a
number of players for this season since the abrogation of the national
agreement by the American Association will throw a number of players on the
market. It is only a question now as to
the salary to be paid, and we can go into the League
ranks and pick out their men by making them good offers.
The Cincinnati Enquirer,
February 21, 1891, page 2.
One week later, a newspaper in an American
Association city described the entire National League as “Piratical”:
 |
| St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
March 1, 1891, page 24. |
And one year earlier, the National League and American Association accused
a third league, the Players’ League, of piracy:
There is enough material lying around among the records of
the musty past to furnish editorial ammunition for a whole winter’s campaign;
and we’ll not be sparing in its use of the necessity arrives to defend the
citadel of honest, legitimate, professional base ball against piracy and socialism.
The Boston Globe, November 4, 1889, page
5.
The Players’ League was a short-lived experiment (it lasted only one
season, 1890) organized by many of the biggest star players of the day, for the
purpose, in large part, of breaking the “reserve rule” in order to increase
players’ salaries and control over the game.
The fallout from the turbulent 1890 season carried over into the
off-season, creating the conditions and circumstances under which Pittsburgh
would become the “Pirates.”
The full story features enough comedy, drama and excitement to fill a Gilbert
& Sullivan opera – crossing an icy lake in winter, false whiskers and disguises
to avoid the police on an interstate train, a dragnet, an arrest, a kidnapping,
and a seven-year lawsuit for false imprisonment. And at the precise moment O’Neil became the
“Pirate King,” the name came, appropriately enough, straight out of a Gilbert
& Sullivan opera – The Pirates of
Penzance.
The “Pirate King”
On March 3,
1891, J. Palmer O’Neil, President of Pittsburgh’s National League baseball
franchise, attended a meeting of National League executives held in Parlor F of
New York City’s Fifth Avenue Hotel. One
of the items on the agenda was whether Pittsburgh could keep its four “contract
jumpers.” Critics called it “piracy,”
but the players claimed that the American Association breached the contracts
first, by withdrawing from the “National Agreement” in protest over the
Bierbauer-Stovey decision two weeks earlier.
As O’Neil
emerged from the meeting victorious, the contracts approved and his aggressive tactics
vindicated (at least as far as the National League was concerned), an anonymous
bystander serenaded him with lines loosely borrowed (the original had only one
“to be”) from a familiar song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s popular operetta, The Pirates of Penzance:
“It is, it is a
glorious thing,
to be, to be a pirate king.”
The New York World, March 4, 1891, page
3.
As reports
of the meeting and the song circulated, J. Palmer O’Neil soon became known
throughout the country as the “Pirate King”:
The report of the deal submitted by the
“Pirate King” was not unanimously accepted by the League . . . .
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 5, 1891,
page 22.
And by
extension, his subjects became “Pirates” – the Pittsburgh Pirates:
It would be funny, indeed, if J.
Palmer O’Neil’s Pirates and Cincinnati’s Reds should be found at the
head of the procession pushing for big honors.
Pittsburgh Daily Post, April 20, 1891,
page 6.
The Pirates’
synonymous nickname, the “Buccaneers,” even appeared in print before the team
returned home from spring training.
 |
| Pittsburgh Daily Post, April 20, 1891,
page 6. |
The more
expressive moniker, the “Gay Buccaneers,” never quite caught on.
[iii]
 |
| Pittsburgh Daily Post, May 2, 1891, page
6. |
By opening
day in Pittsburgh, local sportswriters and fans alike admired their “Pirate
King” and his “piracies”:
. . . the “Pirate King’s”
forces and the forces of the chieftain of the West commenced hostilities.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 23, 1891,
page 6.
Every pedestrian, from the banker to the bootblack, stopped
to look into the faces of the Chicago team and to gossip on the result of J. Palmer O’Neil’s piracies.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 23, 1891,
page 1.
“There goes J. Palmer, the Pirate,”
exclaimed a female voice, as a pair of dark side-whiskers and a chronic smile
appeared above the stairway.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 23, 1891,
page 6.
 |
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 4, 1891,
page 3.
|
J. Palmer
O’Neil made at least part of his fortune, appropriately enough, selling the
sorts of items actual pirates might buy.
Even as Pittsburghers
embraced the name as a badge of honor, critics still regarded them as actual
pirates and “contract jumpers”:
Men of dishonor.
Baseballists who disgrace the diamond represented in J. Palmer O’Neil’s Pittsburg pirates.
Can they play honest ball? The public asks. . . . To-day O’Neil’s pirates, Pittsburg’s all star aggregation, or
as best named, the contract jumper team, will
make their appearance at the League park . . . .
Pittsburgh Dispatch, May 7, 1891, page 6
(citing comments appearing in the Cincinnati
Post).
Although Pittsburgh is the team that became “Pirates” for all time, other “pirates” of the turbulent 1890 and 1891 seasons wore the name from time to time.
But one man’s “piracy” is another’s freedom, it
depends on “whose ox is gored.”
[iv]
To fully understand
how and why Pittsburgh’s disputed contracts were widely considered “piracy,” yet
nevertheless received the blessing of the league, requires a bit of historical
context and an analysis of the technical minutiae of the rules governing
professional baseball at the time.
Professional Baseball
Before 1890
The business
of professional baseball was barely twenty years old in 1890, and the
now-familiar arrangement of professional baseball “leagues,” comprised of a set
number of teams, competing on an equal basis, under standardized rules, on
mutual schedules, was barely fifteen years old.
The owners and the players were developing the business of the
professional sports leagues, franchising and labor arrangements on the fly,
without experience or historical precedent to guide them. It’s no surprise that there were a few
missteps along the way.
The First Professionals
The
Cincinnati Red Stockings toured the country in 1869 as the first fully
professional team of baseball players. They
were a competitive and commercial success, winning most of their games and
spawning imitators in cities across a country that saw, for the first time, the
potential skill-level of a team of dedicated, trained professionals. By 1871, a group of newly-professional teams
organized themselves into a National Association of Professional Baseball
Players.
But the
Association was not a “league,” as such; it was more of a professional
association with a code of professional conduct.
It standardized rules of the game and
competition, but did not control scheduling, and there were few incentives for
teams to abide by its rules.
Captain
Jack Sparrow of the
Pirates of the
Caribbean might have described its rules as “
more of what you call a
guideline than actual rules.” And, in any case, since any team could join
the association by paying a $10 entrance fee, the number of teams swelled
uncontrollably and the average level of play suffered as a result.
The First League
To bring
more order, stability and professionalism into baseball, eight teams in eight
major cities joined forces in 1876 as the “National League,” the same National
League that, alongside the American League, is part of Major League Baseball
today. Two of its original teams are even
still in the league, the Chicago Cubs (then known as the Chicago White
Stockings) and Atlanta Braves (then known simply as the Bostons, later the
Beaneaters, Boston Braves and Milwaukee Braves).
 |
| Philadelphia Times, February 4, 1876,
page 1. |
The new
league prevented uncontrolled expansion by increasing the membership fee to
$100 and restricting membership to larger cities, with only one team per city:
No club shall ever be admitted from a city of less than
75,000 in habitants, or from any city within five miles of the locale of any
club in the League, thus giving the League club virtually full proprietary
rights over the city to which it belongs.
Philadelphia Times, February 4, 1876,
page 1.
The
Agreement also provided that teams could sign a player for a subsequent season
at any time, after which no other team could negotiate with the player.
Players whose contracts expired at the end of
the season, and had not yet committed to playing the following season, were
free to sign with any other team.
[v]
The “Reserve Rule”
The fact
that players could jump from team to team, season after season created player turnover
and increased labor costs. Teams worried
that they would lose their investment in finding and developing talent, and bidding
wars for top-talent put upward pressure on player salaries.
The league
addressed the issues at an inter-league meeting in Buffalo, New York in 1878.
The “Buffalo Agreement,”
[vi]
signed by the National League and six teams of the International League,
introduced the first “reserve rule” in baseball.
The rule, then widely referred to as the
“five man rule”, gave teams the option of reserving the exclusive right to sign
up to five players on their team for a subsequent season.
An 1879
report explains its perceived benefits:
We understand that the Cincinnati Club alone
failed to take advantage of the “five men reservation”
adopted by the League meeting at Buffalo, so that Cincinnati is likely
to lose every good player it has. Kelly and the White brothers may go, but
their places will not be easily filled.
No wonder Cincinnati people get disgusted with base-ball. It’s enough to make any one sick to see players developed here, and as soon as they are useful see
them go away to strengthen a rival Club.
Why does not the Cincinnati Club take hold or step aside’ and give a
clear field to another organization?
The Buffalo Commercial, October 6, 1879,
page 3.
A Second Major League
The National
League met its first major rival in 1882, the American Association. But since all of its teams were in different
cities (at least initially), it did not compete directly for paying customers
with the National League. That changed in
1883, however, with each league fielding separate teams in Philadelphia, an
arrangement that would play a role in the story of how Pittsburgh became the
Pirates. The leagues also competed in
the same markets briefly in New York (1883-1887) and Brooklyn (1890). Pittsburgh’s baseball team was a charter
member of the American Association in 1882, where it played for five years,
before switching allegiances to the National League in 1887.
The “National Agreement”
To avoid a
competitive free-for-all that might harm both leagues, the National League and
American Association entered into a “National Agreement” (or “Tri-partite
Agreement,” the minor league Northwestern League having also signed on) before
the 1884 season, setting out the rules
governing the business of professional baseball. From 1884 through 1889, the Agreement
maintained relative peace. Beginning in
1884, the champions of the two leagues even played a season-ending “World’s
Series”, much like the current World’s Series played annually between the
National League and American League since 1903.
The National
Agreement included a version of the old “five-man rule” or “reserve rule,” but
with the number of players expanded to eleven – nearly an entire roster:
Every club shall have the right to
reserve any of its players, not to exceed eleven in number, provided that they
shall not force any of these players to play for less than $1000 a year. This is the old
five-men agreement, extended in number to eleven, virtually the entire
team, and with so much concession to the player that he cannot be beaten down to
less than $1000 unless he agrees to play for that. But if the club offers him that sum he can go
nowhere else.
The Boston Globe, February 25, 1883,
page 6.
The
purported benefits of the rule (to the owners) were couched in terms that might
naturally anger a player hoping to maximize his earning capacity:
Now every club will have a chance to
retain all its favorite players, and instead of clubs paying out $17,000 for a
team and going into bankruptcy they will get the same team for $10,000 and get
through. Never has the national game had
such a glorious future before it as dawned when representatives of the
thirty-one leading professional clubs clasped hands and banded their clubs
together in a common brotherhood to protect themselves and foster the game of
base ball.
The Louisville Courier-Journal, February
20, 1883, page 3.
It worked
great for the owners, but not so much for the players, a lesson the learned
well in 1883 when league realignments led to the dissolution of several teams, and
a glut of players entered the market as free agents. Many of those players negotiated contracts
worth several times more than they could have made under the “reserve rule.” This
glimpse into the power of the labor free market inspired the players to
consider forming a union:
Those players who, by the disbandment
of the clubs with which they played last season, were in the market at the
close of the season, found such an active competition to secure their services
that they brought enormous prices at auction; two or three times their value to
any club. They are aware of this fact,
and also of the fact that long before the coming season closes they will be
appraised at their true valuation, and will either play for a fair salary in
1884, or not at all. For this reason,
the Buck Ewings and Johnny Richmonds are agitating a
Players’ Protective Association as a means to counteract the reserve rule.
Detroit Free Press, February 28, 1883,
page 6.
Over the
years, the provisions of the “reserve rule” became even more onerous for the
players. By 1890, the rule had not only increased
the number of current players eligible for reservation to fourteen, but also
provided that teams could list any number of players who had been on earlier
reserve lists, but who had refused to sign a contract with that team. As a result, each team might control the
rights to any number of players, current and former, effectively blacklisting
forever any player who refused even once to sign with the team who reserved him
first:
IV. On the tenth day of October in each
year the Secretary of each Association shall transmit to the Secretary of the
other Association a reserve list of players, not
exceeding fourteen in number then under contract with each of its
several Club members, and of such players reserved in
any prior annual reserve list, who have refused to contract with said Club
members and of all other ineligible players, and such players, together
with all others thereafter to be regularly contracted with by such Club
members, are and shall be ineligible to contract with
any other Club, except as hereinbefore prescribed.
Spalding’s Base Ball Guide and Official
League Book for 1890, Chicago and New York, A. G. Spalding & Bros.,
1890, pages 144-145.
In 1885, the
players finally did form their union, the National Brotherhood of Professional
Base-Ball Players, but without any real leverage to wrest major concessions
from the owners, their position never improved.
It all came
to a head before the 1890 season when the Brotherhood started its own league, the
Players’ League, run by their own rules and without regard to the major
leagues’ “reserve lists”.
It was war.
The First Baseball War - 1890
 |
| New York Times, November 5, 1889, page
8. |
Like the
Founding Fathers, who risked execution for treason by signing the Declaration
of Independence, many of the players who signed contracts to play in the Players’
League did so at risk of receiving baseball’s equivalent of the death penalty –
the blacklist.
The League
and the Association viewed the entire Players’ League as pirates.
 |
| The Boston Globe, November 4, 1889, page
5. |
But one
man’s piracy is another’s freedom. The
players considered the business practices of the other leagues tantamount to “piracy”
– or slavery:
[The Players] claim they have a perfect right after filling
their contracts to start in business for themselves if they can get backing
that suits them.
Is this piracy?
Was it piracy when the league went in to the ranks of other
clubs and carried off players who had signed contracts, and if I am not
mistaken Brother C. [(Oliver Perry Caylor)] was a prime mover in that kind of business, as in the case
of Mullane; does it depend on whose ox is gored?
. . . To subserve their interests [the owners] have dealt in
base ball players much after the fashion of the old Southern slavedriver. They have trafficked in the players who have
been sold among themselves ad libitum. Like the old slaves, the star players have
been placed on the block and auctioned off to the highest bidders. With no redress, the players with whom it is
“play or starve,” have fared hard. No
matter the proficiency of the players, or their devices, they have been
mercilessly cast to play wherever it has suited the sweet will of the magnates,
who have thus kept them in subjection, and at the same time have grown rich on
the blood and sweat of the hirelings.
The
Boston Globe, November 4, 1889, page 5.
The slavery
analogy may have been a bit overwrought.
No one was forcing the players to play professional baseball. They could have gone home and work as
haberdashers, farmers or clerks if they wanted to. But if they wanted to play baseball in the
major leagues, their hands were tied. If
they were named on a “reserve list” they had to play for that team, and none
other, or risk the prospect of never playing major league baseball again.
The Players
League placed teams in seven of eight of the National League cities,
putting it in direct competition with the League for fans and players. Competition was particularly fierce in
Philadelphia, where there were already two major league teams, the National
League’s Phillies and American Association’s Athletics.
The
Athletics went bankrupt before the season ended, several players left the team
for non-payment of salaries and the team finished off the season with a
twenty-two game losing streak.
 |
| Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1890,
page 4. |
To stop the
bleeding, the Association took control of the franchise for the remainder of
the season. The Association retained control
of the franchise during the offseason, while looking for suitable new
ownership. In early 1891, they would
award the franchise to the Wagner Brothers, owners of the local Players’ League
team who had tried to buy out the Athletics when they ran into financial
difficulty during the season.
In the
interim, however, the front-office chaos caused by the ownership vacuum likely played
a role in Bierbauer and Stovey being left off the Athletics’ “reserve list,” which,
in turn, set in motion the sequence of events that would ultimately lead to
Pittsburgh becoming “Pirates” a few months later.
Peace
As the 1890
season ended, with the future of organized, professional baseball in doubt, one
man single-handedly brought the three leagues together to negotiate a peaceful
settlement to the conflict. Early
reports of his efforts erroneously referred to him as Allen W. Thurman, Jr. or
A. G. Thurman Jr., based on the fame of his father, Allen G. Thurman, a Senator
from Ohio and close friend of President Cleveland. But the writers would soon learn his real
name, and in short-order saddled him with a new nickname – the “White Winged
Angel of Peace”.
SIGNS
OF PEACE
A
Conference Likely Between Representatives of Rival Baseball Leagues.
New York, October 3. -
. . . [O]ne thing is certain, Allen W.
Thurman, Jr., a member of the Board of Arbitration, and one of the largest
stockholders of the Columbus club, has been in the city for some time, and has
had a conference with President day, of the New York National League club; Vice
President Talcott, of the New York Players’ League club, and other luminaries of
baseball. . . . Mr. Day said that he had a talk with a. G. Thurman, Jr.,
regarding the matter, and that the latter was very much in earnest about
producing harmony.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, October 4, 1890,
page 6.
When formal
negotiations began less than a week later, Allen W. Thurman had a new nickname,
the “White Winged Angel of Peace”.
[vii] Four months later, however, after voting with
the National League to award Bierbauer and Stovey to Pittsburgh and Boston,
respectively, his name would be mud.
In
the interim, the leagues continued to meet periodically to hammer out the details
of a final settlement.
With peace
on the horizon, teams continued with business as usual to prepare for an
upcoming season, including the usually routine business of submitting their
list of reserved players.
When the new
reserve lists were published on October 20, 1890, a sharp-eyed reporter for the
Pittsburgh Daily Post noticed a
glaring gap in the Philadelphia Athletics’ “reserve list” – several players who
had played for the Athletics in 1889, and in the Players’ League in 1890 (in violation
of the reserve rule), were missing from the list, including Beierbauer and
Stovey:
The Athletics have lost the right to their old players, so
that Larkin, Cross, Brennan, Bierbauer, Weyhing
and Stovey can walk over this free land without
shackles and become the prey of any club – national agreement or otherwise.
Pittsburgh Daily Post, October 20, 1890,
page 6.
The stop-gap
management team put in place to shepherd the team through its post-bankruptcy ownership
vacuum appears to have listed only their current players, while neglecting to
name the additional “players reserved in any prior annual reserve list, who
have refused to contract,” as permitted under the National Agreement. The six missing players all played in the
Players’ League during 1890; Weyhing and Bierbauer for Brooklyn, Brennan and
Larkin for Cleveland, Stovey in Boston and Cross in Philadelphia. Weyhing, Larkin and Cross would play for
Philadelphia in 1891, and Cross would leave baseball for good. Bierbauer and Stovey, however, took advantage
of the situation to seek greener pastures.
The Daily Post kept an eye on those players,
posting a similar notice in December. J.
Palmer O’Neil may have been taking notes.
 |
| Pittsburgh Daily Post, January 26, 1891,
page 6. |
The
Philadelphia papers, on the other hand, took a different stance:
The Athletic Club players – Weyhing, Cross, Larkin,
Bierbauer, Stovey and others – will be at the disposal of the American
Association, to be assigned probably to those securing the Athletic club’s
franchise.
Philadelphia Inquirer,
December 4, 1890, page 3.
[T]he players who deserted from the Athletic Club will be
returned to the Association, and the Wagner Brothers [(new ownership team)]
will secure the nucleus of a good team if Stovey, Bierbauer, Weyhing, Cross,
Robinson, McMahon, Purcell, Shafer, Larkin and O’Brien are awarded to them.
Philadelphia Inquirer, December 21,
1890, page 3.
In
late-January 1891, Zach Phelps, ex-President of the American Association, took
Pittsburgh’s side of the issue:
Last October, after the reserve lists were published, The
Pittsburgh Post took the stand and has maintained it ever since, that the old
Athletic players were not reserved and could sign wherever they pleased. That The Post was right is conclusively
proven by the following special from Louisville: President Phelps received a telegram from J. Earl Wagner of
Philadelphia, asking if Larkin, Stovey, Bierbauer and Cross had been reserved
by the old Athletic management. This, it
is thought, is a test to the validity of Bierbauer’s contract with
Pittsburgh. President
Phelps telegraphed that they were not reserved.
Pittsburgh Daily Post, January 27, 1891,
page 6.
Boston’s
National League team may have been paying attention:
 |
| Chicago Inter-Ocean, February 6, 1891,
page 6. |
In mid-January 1891, before Pittsburgh and Boston signed Bierbauer
and Stovey, the National League, American Association, Western Association (a
minor league) and remnants of the Players League all met to sign a new National
Agreement and resolve several outstanding issues. Boston and Chicago would receive new American
Association franchises, with those franchises going to the Players’ League
teams from those cities. They also
awarded the Philadelphia Athletics’ lapsed franchise to the Wagner Brothers,
owners of the local Players’ League team.
The final compromise also addressed the treatment of players who had
played in the Players’ League. To clear
the air, they reset the clock to the status
quo ante from before formation of the Players’ League, with teams permitted
to “reserve” players for 1891 who had been on their reserve lists for 1890
season, regardless of where the players played during the chaotic 1890
season.
. . . All the players’ League sheep
must return to the folds, where they were reserved, but undoubtedly many
of them will be allowed to stay where they are. . . .
The Inter-Ocean (Chicago), January 17,
1891, page 2.
But since
the deadline for submitting the “reserve lists” had long since passed, the die
was already cast. Unless the league made
some equitable exception, Philadelphia, which had failed to reserve all of the
players it could have reserved, may have already lost their claim to Bierbauer,
Stovey and the others, despite the leagues’ expressed intent to return all of the
old players to their old teams.
Pittsburgh argued
the letter of the law.
Philadelphia
argued the spirit of the law.
The stage
was set for a showdown at the next baseball meetings to be held in February.
A Second Baseball War
At the baseball meeting in mid-February 1891, the National Board of Control for baseball addressed the
question of whether Pittsburgh and Boston could sign Bierbauer and Stovey over the
Philadelphia Athletics’ compelling, if technically defective, “reserve rule”
claim. The American Association’s new
President, Allen W. Thurman, that “white-winged angel of peace,” voted with the
National League (and consistent with the opinion voiced by a former President
of the Association) to uphold the disputed contracts. The board also awarded Connie Mack to
Pittsburgh under less controversial circumstances (Mack had been under a “personal”
contract with a Boston baseball executive hoping to land a new Association
franchise, not a sanctioned league contract; he was therefore not subject to the “reserve rule” or the National
Agreement).
Despite ruling
in Pittsburgh’s and Boston’s favor on a technical legal point, the board condemned
their tactics, encouraging them to release the players back to Philadelphia:
Chicago, Feb. 14. – It was not until
this afternoon after a session continuing all day yesterday and until 3 o’clock
this morning that the Baseball Board of Control announced its decisions in the
famous players’ cases. . . .
[The verdict] substantially says to
Pittsburg and Boston: “We are guilty of a perfectly implied understanding, but
unfortunately we cannot prove it.” The
words used in the decision are: “We are therefore reluctantly compelled to
decide in favor of Boston.”
In summing up, the Board said:
Undoubtedly Pittsburg has the legal right to the men, but morally it has
not. It ought to withdraw its claim, but
as it does not we must reluctantly decide in favor of Pittsburg.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, February 15, 1891,
page 6.
The decision
received immediate condemnation from American Association teams, accompanied by
accusations of piracy against Pittsburgh and Boston. The Association declared war, but did not
fight at the negotiation table – they left the table completely, backing out of
the mutual protections of the “National Agreement,” a decision that would have sweeping,
unintended consequences and would help seal J. Palmer O’Neil’s reputation as a
“Pirate King” a few weeks later:
New York, Feb. 21. – Once more the base
ball world is in a ferment. The American Association has withdrawn from the national
agreement, Allen W. Thurman has been deposed from the presidency . . .
.
The Association was to have all its
former players, place clubs in Chicago and Boston, and, after each League club
had “reserved” fourteen players all the others were to be thrown into the hands
of the National Board for apportionment.
Within ten days J. Palmer O’Neil of the
Pittsburg League club signed Louis Bierbauer, the second baseman, who in
1889 left the Athletics to play with Ward’s Brooklyn wonders. Mr. O’Neil discovered that by an oversight of
the American Association’s President no “reserve” list has been promulgated,
and through this technicality he thought he could obtain the players who,
according to the spirit of the Fifth Avenue Hotel settlement, should have gone
to the Wagner Bros.’ Philadelphia team. Then the Boston League Club secured Harry Stovey in the same
way. The Association men were
incensed at this breach of faith, and when President Thurman, their member of
the National board, voted against them and with the League, sustaining the piracy of the Boston and Pittsburg clubs,
their rage knew no bounds.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 22,
1891, page 24.
But even
though the American Association was upset with Pittsburgh’s and Boston’s “piracies,”
they were perfectly willing to fight fire with fire with piracy of their own.
“It is war. Sign all the good League
players you want.”
That was the message, you will remember, which flashed across
the wires between Chicago and Boston about ten minutes after the National Board
announced its decision in the Bierbauer-Stovey case. The message was directed to Mr. Prince[viii]
in Boston and was signed by Arthur Irwin[ix]
in Chicago.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, March 1, 1891, page
6.
The Secretary
of the new American Association franchise in Washington DC declared:
“We are
pirates now. . . and have hoisted the black flag against the National
League for the good of base-ball.
The Cincinnati Enquirer,
February 21, 1891, page 2.
Critics of the American Association’s withdrawal from the Agreement
echoed his sentiments:
The American association is composed
of a precious set of fools when it gets started. . . . The American association simply takes the
place of the Players’ league. It is at
liberty to take players anywhere and everywhere. It is a piratical
ship with the black flag up and the torch lighted. It regards no law, no rule. Every base ball association is its prey and
every league its feeding ground.
Nebraska State Journal
(Lincoln), February 23, 1891, page 2.
When the Association
hoisted their black flag, their idea of “piracy” may have been limited to the signing
of “reserved” players. They do not
appear to have considered or anticipated the consequences their decision would
have on the continued validity of contracts signed before they left the Agreement.
Shortly
after the American Association broke from the Agreement, several players argued
that the withdrawal invalidated contracts they had signed with Association teams when it was still subject to the National Agreement. Columbus
third-baseman Charlie Reilly, the first Association “contract jumper,” laid out
the argument in his letter of resignation:
Princeton, N. J., Feb. 26. – Columbus Base-ball Company.
Sirs: I have this day signed with the Pittsburg National League club. . .
. My contract
with Columbus was broken by your club breaking the National agreement. .
. . I am very sorry that the association
did such a foolish move by breaking the National agreement. If the association and league compromise I
will be glad to play in Columbus again, but not otherwise.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 1, 1891, page
2.
Once again, J.
Palmer O’Neil was the first person to recognize and aggressively exploit this “loophole”
(if that’s what it was), sending his agents on a cross-country signing spree. They tracked down third-baseman Charlie
Reilly at his home in Princeton, New Jersey on February 26, pitcher Mark
Baldwin in Pittsburgh on the 27th, pitcher Scott Stratton in Middleborough,
Kentucky on the 28th and catcher Jack O’Connor in St. Louis, Missouri
on March 1.
Pittsburgh’s agent in St.
Louis was also hot on the trail of the St. Louis Browns’ pitcher, Charles
“Silver” King at the time – that is, before his arrest at the behest of Browns' owner Chris Von der Ahe (more on that later). All four new signees had already signed
contracts with American Association teams, Reilly, Baldwin and O’Connor with
Columbus, Stratton with Louisville and King with St. Louis.
Charles
“Silver” King eventually did sign a contract with Pittsburgh, but not until the season began a couple months later. Jack O’Connor would later
change his mind and return to Columbus before the season opener.
Two days
after J. Palmer O’Neil signed his fourth contract jumper, the National League validated
his tactics and contracts at a meeting in New York City. As J. Palmer emerged victorious from Parlor F
of New York City’s Fifth Avenue Hotel, an anonymous bystander serenaded him
with words loosely borrowed from Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic opera, The Pirates of Penzance:
It is, it is a wonderful
thing, to be, to be a Pirate King!
And it was a
wonderful thing. Like the Players’
League before it, the American Association collapsed after the 1891 season,
leaving the National League as the one and only major league for a decade,
before the emergence of the American League established the two-league
equilibrium that persists to this day.
It may have
been a wonderful thing to be a “Pirate King,” but it was also dangerous. Several of the Pirates’ contract signings
involved physical risk, legal jeopardy and enough drama to fill a Gilbert &
Sullivan opera.
Contract Drama.
In
late-January 1891, Pittsburgh’s manager, Ned Hanlon, risked life and limb to secure
the team’s first “piracy” – fittingly, it happened at sea. As recounted nearly twenty years later, it
was something akin to Eliza crossing the ice floes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
Ned Hanlon, then managing Pittsburg, went to Erie in the
depth of the Winter to secure a contract from Bierbauer. He found him on Presque Isle Peninsula, his
favorite “hang-out.” Hanlon had to cross the ice on the harbor in a bitter storm, but
he finally reached Bierbauer’s shack and before leaving had secured his
signature to a contract to play with Pittsburg.
Alfred
Spink, The National Game; America’s
leading out-door sport, St. Louis, Missouri, National Game Publishing
Company, 1910, page 192.
Pittsburgh
risked losing Bierbauer a couple months later; he threatened to jump ship if
Pittsburgh did not complete the deal – which they quickly did:
Erie, Pa, March 6. – Bierbauer is not at all satisfied with
the treatment he is receiving from the Pittsburg management. He has signed only a conditional contract,
and feels at liberty to sign wherever he please, and will do so if Pittsburg
does not straighten matters soon.
Erie, March 6. – Edward Hanlon, manager of the Pittsburg Ball
Club, came to Erie last evening and this morning consummated his deal with the
famous second baseman at $4500.
Sporting Life, March 7, 1891, page 1.
Pittsburgh’s
ex-manager, Guy Hecker, put his health at risk to sign Scott Stratton in a
remote corner of Appalachia – cue the dueling banjos:
“I had a great time locating Pitcher Scott Stratton. I finally came up with him at Middleborough,
Ky., a little oil town about 300 miles east of Louisville and deep in the
mountains near Cumberland gap. Stratton
and his uncle have opened a general store in this mushroom town, which is in
one of the unhealthiest parts of the state,
chills and fever being an epidemic all the year round. Stratton was just making up a batch of
biscuits for supper when I made my most unexpected appearance. I was made welcome and treated to the best in
the house. Terms were soon arranged
between us and a little parcel of advance money was dropped.”
The Pittsburgh Press, March 2, 1891,
page 6.
When Charlie
Reilly sent his letter of resignation to Columbus, the team threatened to sue
him and anyone else who followed his lead.
The threats were real. Mark Baldwin
and Charlie Reilly had to resort to a bit of cloak-and-dagger (well, cloak) to
avoid arrest while crossing Ohio by train, it was like something straight out
of Murder on the Orient Express:
They Wore Whiskers.
A special to the Baltimore American from Cincinnati says:
“Mark Baldwin and Charlie Reilly, the contract jumpers, were not with the
team. They came on ahead. As soon as they struck Ohio soil they repaired
to the toilet-room of their sleepers and changed their clothes. They disguised themselves, and returned to
their seats looking very much like two of the rustics in ‘Old Jed Prouty.’ Baldwin wore a set of side whiskers very much
like J. Palmer O’Neil’s, while Reilly had on a pair of Galways. In this way they rode through the State and
escaped the vigilant detectives who want them to appear in a Columbus court for
contract breaking.
The Buffalo Enquirer, April 23, 1891,
page 3.
Contract
jumper Mark Baldwin, a Pittsburgh native, took an active role in seeking out
and signing other new players for the team.
In early March, 1891, he tracked down his old, trusted catcher on the Columbus
team, Jack O’Connor, at his home in St. Louis, Missouri. And while there, he also sought out pitcher,
Charles “Silver” King, who was then under contract with Chris Von der Ahe’s St.
Louis Browns. Von der Ahe did not take
it lightly.
President Von der Ahe learned of what
was in progress soon after Baldwin arrived here, and about 1 o’clock yesterday
morning he hauled Chief of Detectives Desmond out of bed and told him of what
was going on. He asked Desmond to run
Baldwin in on the vagrancy clause . . . and they went chasing around hotels
after him.
Baldwin seems to have caught on to the
game, for he kept shady all of last night.
This morning President Von der Ahe . .
. called on Assisting Prosecuting Attorney Estep, and asked for a warrant for
Baldwin’s arrest on the charge of conspiracy.
The Courier-Journal (Louisville,
Kentucky), March 4, 1891, page 2.
Despite the
dragnet closing in on him, Baldwin does not appear to have taken the threat too
seriously:
Baldwin was about town to-day boasting
that Von der Ahe’s talk about having him arrested for conspiracy was all
buncombe. He was around the Laclede
Hotel all afternoon playing billiards and enjoying himself nicely, when Chief
of Detectives Desmond tapped him on the shoulder and told him he was wanted at
the Four Courts. . . . Judge Claibourne
. . . was not around at the time, and as he was the only person authorized to
receive bond Baldwin could not have procured his release even had he been able
to do so. As a result he was locked in jail, and the probability is that he
will stay there for at least twenty-four hours.
New York World, March 6, 1891, page 7.
The criminal
charges were dropped, and Baldwin was encouraged to sue for false imprisonment:
The Von der Ahe outrage upon Mark
Baldwin has been thrown out of court.
Now, if the Pittsburg club officials do not back Baldwin in making Von
der Ahe pay for his little piece of fun, they do not deserve the patronage of
Pittsburg people. . . . The Sporting Times does not approve of
Baldwin’s methods, but the attempt to disgrace him and his club by dragging him
into the criminal courts was a thrust at the life of the national game and should be punished if there be law to punish false arrest and
imprisonment.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 12, 1891,
page 6.
Baldwin took
that advice, suing Von der Ahe for damages, beginning a seven year odyssey in
the courts:
. . . whom he charges with malicious
prosecution. The suit grows out of the
arrest of Baldwin on March 5, upon an information taken out by Von der Ahe,
charging him with conspiracy with O’Neil and others to bribe Charles F. King to
abandon the Browns and join the League team.
Baldwin alleges that the arrest was without
probably cause and made with malicious intentions.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 12, 1891,
page 6.
It took a
few years, but Baldwin eventually won a jury award of $2,500,
[x]
but not until after he had Von der Ahe arrested in Pittsburgh.
[xi]
Von der Ahe filed for and won a new trial, and Baldwin would prevail again,
receiving a slightly bigger award of $2,525.
[xii]
 |
| Philadelphia Inquirer, January 27, 1897,
page 4. |
Von der Ahe
promptly refused to pay, but that didn’t prevent Baldwin from trying to collect.
On June 25, 1897, he reportedly attached the
gate receipts from the game, in Pittsburgh, between Pittsburgh and St. Louis (which
had since switched over to the National League) – attendance 1800.
[xiii] It is not clear whether or how much Baldwin
recovered from that game, but whatever it was, it was not enough.
Von der Ahe stilled owed him money in 1898,
prompting more decisive action.
Baldwin
hired his own “detective” (essentially a bounty hunter) who kidnapped Von der
Ahe in St. Louis and dragged him back to Pittsburgh to pay. This time Von der Ahe alleged false
imprisonment. But on the facts of the
case (Baldwin had a valid, unsatisfied judgment against Von der Ahe) and under
the laws in effect at the time, Baldwin prevailed.
 |
| Sedalia Weekly Democrat (Missouri),
February 17, 1898, page 3. |
I’m not so
sure kidnapping someone who owes you money would be a good idea today – don’t
try this at home.
It took a
few more months, but Baldwin finally did get paid:
The Baldwin-Von der Ahe damage suit which was decided against
Von der Ahe several months ago was ended yesterday by the attorney of the St.
Louis baseball magnate paying the amount of the Baldwin judgment, in the
neighborhood of $3,000, together with the costs, something over $1,200.
Detroit Free Press, September 7, 1898,
page 6.
Who’s the Pirate
now?
 |
| Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska), February 12, 1899, page 14. |
Chicago Pirates.
Chicago Pirates - Baseball
Surprisingly,
perhaps, the Pittsburgh Pirates were not the first major league team called the
“Pirates”. The “Chicago Pirates” played
in the short-lived Players League during their first and only season in
1890. The apparent origin of their name,
however, was a bit more mundane.
It is
tempting to assume that they selected the name because the Chicago Pirates
“stole” seven players from the 1889 Chicago White Stockings team as part of the
“Baseball War” sparked by the Players’ League.
[xiv] But Chicago’s “piracy” was neither unique nor
particularly remarkable.
Nearly every
Players’ League team “stole” several players from National League or American
Association teams in their city.
Of
course, it wasn’t “stealing,” as they were forming an entirely new and
independent league, not subject to the same agreement or rules by which the
other league played.
Players League
teams in New York and Philadelphia even stole their nicknames from their local rivals, the
Giants and Athletics, respectively.
Before
condemning these teams for stealing nicknames, note that team nicknames, for
the most part, were not then considered valuable, unique, immutable trademarks,
as they are now. Teams were most
frequently referred to as the plural of the name of the city they played in,
such as, for example, the New Yorks, the Philadelphias, the Bostons.
Sportswriters
and fans, however, applied colorful nicknames at their pleasure.
In some cities, the history or culture of
the place lent itself to a nickname; the Boston Beaneaters (Boston baked
beans), the Washington Senators (legislature) or Philadelphia Quakers (William
Penn’s tribe).
In other cities,
nicknames came and went with uniform changes (St. Louis Browns, St. Louis
Maroons, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Stockings, Chicago Black
Stockings), or player changes. The Cleveland Naps, for example, were captained by Napoleon
Lajoie, whose departure in 1915 created
the nickname
vacancy which was filled with a longer-lasting replacement, the Cleveland “Indians”.
In Chicago, the name Anson’s Colts combined
the name of its manager with the fact that many of their players were young).
In Brooklyn, several members of the team got
married during the same off-season, leading to the name, Brooklyn Bridegrooms.
Social conditions in Brooklyn brought a new
name a few years later, the
Brooklyn
Trolley Dodgers, when hundreds of people died at the hands a new-fangled,
fast-moving, yet silent killer – electric trolleys.
The admission of expansion teams to a league
frequently resulted in the new teams being dubbed “Infants” or “Babies” for a
season or two.
In 1895, after several
rain-outs, one sportswriter tried renaming the Phillies, the “Rainmakers”.
In 1890, the
Chicago Players’ League team was known by two different nicknames, one new and
one old, and both related to the team uniform’s color scheme.
The home uniform will consist of white
shirts, trousers and stockings of jersey cloth, with black caps and belts, and
a narrow black ribbed seam on the side of the trousers. The word Chicago will be lettered on the
breast of the shirt in plain black letters.
The other uniforms will be made of expensive black
cloth, with white stockings, belts and
caps. The lettering will also be in
white. Each suit will have black cloth
jacket.
The Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania),
January 12, 1890, page 2.
The name
“White Stockings”, adopted months before the season started (and weeks before
the uniform colors were announced),
[xv]
was likely an intentional nod to an earlier name for the local National League
team (now the Cubs), who had been known by that name for several years, before
changing their socks and becoming the “Black Stockings” (not to be confused
with the “Black Sox” scandal of 1918).
An alternate
nickname apparently referred to the general impression given by the black away-uniform
color scheme with white trimmings – they looked like pirates – “Chicago
Pirates.” The name was used as early as
opening day – an away game, coincidentally in Pittsburgh:
Couldn’t Beat the Umpires.
Rank Decisions Help the Pittsburgs to
Defeat Comiskey’s Men.
Pittsburg, Pa., April 21. – [Special.] – The laurel wreath of
victory which adorned the camp of the Pirates, as the
Chicago team has been dubbed on account its colors, has been supplanted
by crepe tonight, and gloom reigns supreme.
Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1890, page 2.
The Chicago
writers apparently liked the name; they used it all season – even at home where
they wore white. Sportswriters used both
nicknames interchangeably until the team folded, along with the rest of the
Players’ League, at the end of the 1890 season.
A post-mortem for the team, after its absorption into the local National League club, used both names:
The Chicago Players Get Their
Salaries Minus 10 Per Cent.
Chicago, Dec. 30. – The Chicago White Stocking club is no more. Its grand stand and chairs, the lease of its
park, and its insurance policies, its books and papers, its contracts with
players, belong to the League club.
Pittsburgh Daily Post,
December 31, 1890, page 6.
Coincidentally (?), nearly one year
to the day after the Chicago Pirates opened the Players’ League season in
Pittsburgh in 1890, “Cap” Anson’s Chicago Colts traveled east to open the 1891 season against the Pittsburgh Pirates:
. . . the “Pirate King’s”
forces and the forces of the chieftain of the West commenced hostilities.
Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 23, 1891,
page 6.
Chicago Pirates – Copyright
Chicago’s baseball
“Pirates” were not the first “Chicago Pirates.”
Although it’s unclear whether these earlier pirates have any connection
to the baseball team’s name, the story dovetails nicely with the musical origin
of the “Pittsburgh Pirates.” And since
the earlier “pirates” were in the publishing industry, it is at least
hypothetically possible that name may have influenced some newspaper editor to
apply the name to the baseball team, even if the black uniforms played a role
in the decision.
For more
than a decade before the “Chicago Pirates” played baseball in 1890, Chicago-based
publishers were internationally known as “Chicago pirates,” based on their
reputation for pirating copyrighted books and plays. Ironically, they famously pirated plays written
by Gilbert & Sullivan, whose Pirates
of Penzance inspired the naming of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
John J. Ryan, the person who was arrested Tuesday, and lodged
in jail on the charge of conspiring to injure the property and business of Mr.
McKee Rankin by surreptitiously procuring and selling copies of the play called
“The Danites,” was yesterday morning taken before Justice Meech for
examination. . . . [I]f our Chicago pirate can
be convicted on a criminal charge, the fact will be regarded with considerable
satisfaction as establishing a precedent and avoiding much unprofitable
botheration in the future.
The Chicago Tribune, February 15, 1878,
page 8.
. . . Owing to a class of men who are, I believe, known in their own country and by their brethren of the trade
as Chicago pirates, it is almost impossible for the British author to
derive any pecuniary advantage from the publication of his works in the United
States . . . .
[A] number of firms have recently sprung up in Chicago and
other American cities who seize upon the book as soon as it appears in the
States, and, having the resources of great printing establishments at their
command, in three or four days flood the market with cheap editions at 15c. and
even less. . . .
This system of piracy
has completely ruined the chance of the English author . . . .
The London Times, August 13, 1880, page
12.
And in an
historical twist that might surprise modern critics of China’s poor record of
protecting foreign intellectual property, China was once held out as a place
where copyrights (at least domestic copyrights) received much better protection
than in England or Chicago:
In China I read that there is a perpetual copyright for an
author’s productions. The infringement
of it is punished by a hundred blows on the feet and transportation for three
years. The first penalty is admirable;
but I doubt whether the second would always have a deterrent effect. Would a Chicago
pirate-publisher for example live in Chicago if he could help it?
Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (South
Yorkshire, England), June 11, 1881, page 9.
Gilbert
& Sullivan’s first run-in with American copyright pirates came in 1879,
when more than 100 companies mounted unauthorized productions of their first
pirate opera, The HMS Pinafore,
shortly after its 1878 London opening.
To avoid a similar fate for their next production, they staged The Pirates of Penzance in New York City
before its London debut, thereby arguably securing copyright protection under
American copyright law of the time.
But
international copyright laws did not change as quickly as they hoped. Gilbert & Sullivan faced similar
challenges several years later from “Chicago pirates,” or “The Pirates of ‘The Mikado’”:
New York, June 30. – [Special.] – Sir
Arthur Sullivan [(of Gilbert & Sullivan)] is very much worked up
over the announcements of New York and Chicago managers that they will produce
“The Mikado” next season without first having bought the English right to do
so. “So far as the
Chicago pirates are concerned,” he said to-day, “I know nothing about
them, but will find out within a few days.”
Detroit Free Press, July 1, 1885, page
1.
The lack of
coherent, reciprocal copyright laws was a continued nuisance to publishers on
both sides of the Atlantic. In 1886, the
satirical magazine, Puck, published a
cartoon depicting the state of affairs as something akin to a scene from The Pirates of Penzance – the
“Pirate-Publisher” (in place of the “Pirate King”) in a musical stand-off with
American and European authors:
Chorus of British Authors:
Behold
the Pirate Publisher stand,
Stealing
our brains for Yankee-land;
He’s
rude, uncultured, bold and free –
The Pirate-Publisher:
You
bet your life: The Law – that’s Me.
W. S. Gilbert,
himself, appears as one of the aggrieved Brits (on the right side – moustache,
no beard, directly above the Jack-in-the-Box).
I can hear
him now, “It is, it is a glorious thing, to be a Pirate King!”
[i]
John McCollister,
The Bucs!: The Story of
the Pittsburgh Pirates, Lyons Press, 2016, page 9. “The spokesman for the
American Association was much more emotional in his accusations.
“The act of the Pittsburgh Club is
piratical,” he shouted.
[ii]
Thomas B. Kalbfus, publisher of the
Sunday
Herald newspaper in Washington DC and secretary of the newly-organized
American Association team in that city.
[iv] The Boston Globe, November 4, 1889, page
5.
[v] Philadelphia Times, February 4, 1876,
page 1.
[vi] Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1878, page 7.
[vii] Pittsburgh Dispatch, October 10, 1890,
page 6.
[viii]
Charles A. Prince was
the director of the Boston Players’ League team that had recently switched over
to the American Association.
[ix] Arthur Irwin was a
player/manager for the Players’ League team in Boston that had recently
switched over to the American Association.
[x] Pittsburgh Daily Post, May 23, 1895,
page 8.
[xi] Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 4, 1894, page
5.
[xii] Philadelphia Inquirer, January 27, 1897,
page 4.
[xiii]
Burlington Free Press (Vermont), June
26, 1897, page 2.
