Big league baseball’s founding ‘documents to be auctioned’
First draft of history
LOS ANGELES, May 23, (AP): In 1876, a group of owners and team officials gathered at a New York hotel to draft and sign the constitution that created baseball’s National League and would ultimately have ramifications far beyond the diamond.
The principles the document laid out, largely the work of Chicago White Stockings owner William Hulbert, would provide the basic model for every major team sports league in the world that followed.
The constitution is getting a public airing for the first time in more than a century when it’s put up for sale in California, starting Wednesday.
It offers a glimpse into a time when nearly half the teams in the league had “stockings” in their names, 50 cents for a ticket was considered a steep price, and getting paid to play sports was deemed dirty.
Many fans were convinced the outcome of games was determined in advance. Occasionally they were correct, Thorn said.
The NL’s immediate predecessor was the National Association of Professional Baseball Players, known casually as the National Association or NA. It was plagued with problems in its short life including weak central organization, teams constantly folding, and East Coast teams refusing to travel west.
Players just split up the gate receipts as though they were a small-time rock band playing a nightclub. One team, the Boston Red Stockings, was utterly dominant.
The league’s demise after the 1875 season gave Hulbert, a man of the West who did not like the dominance of East Coast teams, an opening to found something new and lasting.
On Feb. 2, 1876, in a meeting at the Grand Central Hotel in New York that included other early baseball luminaries like Harry Wright and Al Spalding, the new constitution of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was drafted and signed.
It listed on its opening page its central principles, including:
“To encourage, foster and elevate the game of base ball.”
“To enact and enforce proper rules for the exhibition and conduct of the game.”
“To make base ball playing respectable and honorable.”
But it did something far more revolutionary in sports. It created a strict division between capital and labor. Owners and their officers ran the business end, and paid wages to the players.
The new league had eight teams: Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Cincinnati Reds, the Hartford Dark Blues, the New York Mutuals, and the St. Louis Brown Stockings.
The documents themselves have been held privately for decades by the family of an old National League executive that is now putting them up for sale. The auction house is not making their names public.
“Everything is in great condition. It’s been preserved in a bound volume since 1925,” said Dan Imler, vice president of SCP auctions.
Last year, SCP auctions sold a similar document, 1857’s “Laws of Base Ball,” which laid out the rules of the modern game.
That went for $3.26 million. This prize could easily surpass it. Imler said he expects both institutions and individuals will be among the bidders.
While its 74 pages have the ink-and-parchment dignity of old government documents, there are also cross-outs and other signs of mistakes, changes and corrections.
“It’s highly dramatic because it’s the first draft of history,” said Thorn, who has studied the documents but is not involved in the auction. “This is sloppy. This is messy. This is what historians love.”
The new constitution was no magic bullet. At first things were the same as ever. Toward the end of the inaugural season, Philadelphia and New York both refused to make scheduled western road trips.