| Baseball seems always to have lived more in | | | | controlled the players through labor practices that |
| myth than in history. Children in England and the | | | | combined elements of chattel slavery (the |
| United States had been playing variants of the | | | | infamous reserve rule) and freewheeling industrial |
| game for years such as rounders, one o' cat, and | | | | capitalism: blacklisting, fines, salary limits, and |
| base. | | | | reductions, even the use of Pinkerton spies. |
| In 1845, some young men in Manhattan organized | | | | In 1975 and arbitrator ruled that the reserved |
| themselves into the Knickerbockers BaseBall Club | | | | clause applied for only one year and players, as |
| and wrote down the rules of the game they | | | | "free agents," regained their negotiating power; |
| were playing. Twenty years later dozens of | | | | salaries quickly reached unheard-of levels. Owners |
| baseball clubs in New York and Brooklyn, and their | | | | retaliated in 1981 but were soundly defeated by a |
| journalist brethren, had made what they called | | | | players' strike. |
| "the national pastime" more popular than cricket, | | | | Then in the late 1980s they conspired (illegally, an |
| and the metropolis had become the country's first | | | | arbitrator held) to limit salary offers to free |
| baseball powerhouse. | | | | agents. After a twenty-year period of franchise |
| As baseball clubs were transformed into | | | | movement, league expansions, and the creation |
| entertainment businesses, so grew their need for | | | | of divisions within leagues, baseball became |
| first-rate players who could attract paying | | | | organizationally stable again in the late 1970s. |
| crowds. Although distinctions between players and | | | | Attendance grew dramatically throughout the |
| their clubs (now really small businesses) had been | | | | 1980s, more people attended major league |
| hardening for years, the National League | | | | baseball games (over 50 million per year at the |
| formalized the division, which has continued until | | | | end of the decade) than at any other time in the |
| today. | | | | games history. Baseball has been America's most |
| Baseball soon outdistanced other spectator sports | | | | popular sport for so long mainly because it has |
| in popularity and contributed to the sports boom | | | | successfully straddled some of the nation's most |
| of the 1880s and 1890s. Late nineteenth-century | | | | important cultural divisions. Though it was born |
| baseball resembled the Gilded Age business world. | | | | among the respectable working class and sporting |
| Owners moved the clubs frequently, while rival | | | | middle class, the games cultural antecedents lay in |
| leagues sprung up and competed for players and | | | | the boisterous street culture of saloon-based |
| spectators. | | | | volunteer fire companies, militias, theater |
| The National League either defeated its opponents | | | | partisans, street gangs, and political factions. |
| outright or incorporated them into a subordinate | | | | Currently, baseball is integrated in that there are |
| national structure of minor leagues. Not until 1901 | | | | large numbers of African-American and Latin |
| was the National League force to accept the | | | | players; it is not unusual for a starting lineup to |
| American League, the only other surviving major | | | | have a minority of whites. They are a great part |
| league. Leagues controlled access to spectators | | | | in the ball game itinerary. |
| by granting franchises. Owners and leagues | | | | |