When was the mlb formed

Prior to that, teams were organized as amateur squads who played for the pride of their hometown, club or college. The stakes in these games were bragging rights, often a trophy or loving cup, and occasionally a cash prize put up by a benefactor, or as a wager between the teams.

It was inevitable that professional players would soon follow. The first known professional players were paid under the table. The desire to win had eclipsed the desire to observe good sportsmanship, and the first step down the slope toward full professionalization of the sport had been taken. Just a few years later, in , the first professional team was established.

The Redstockings are as famous for being the first professional team as they are for their record and barnstorming accomplishments. The team was openly professional, and thus served as a worthy goal for other teams, amateur, semi-professional, and professional alike. The Cincinnati squad spent the next year barnstorming across America, taking on, and defeating, all challengers.

In the process they drew attention to the game of baseball, and played a key part in its growing popularity. Just two years later, the first entirely professional baseball league would be established.

The formation of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in created a different level of competition for baseball players. The professional organization, which originally included nine teams, broke away from the National Association of Base Ball Players, which used amateur players.

The amateur league folded three years after the split. The league was reorganized and renamed the National League in This system, however, proved to be problematic. It was not uncommon for players to jump from one team to another during the season for a pay increase. This not only cost team owners money, but also created havoc with the integrity of the game, as players moved among teams, causing dramatic mid-season swings in the quality of teams.

During the winter of , team owners gathered to discuss the problem of player roster jumping. Furthermore, they agreed to restrain themselves during the off-season as well. Each owner would circulate to the other owners a list of five players he intended to keep on his roster the following season.

Hence, the reserve clause was born. It would take nearly a century before this was struck down. In the meantime, it went from five players about half the team to the entire team and to a formal contract clause agreed to by the players. Owners would ultimately make such a convincing case for the necessity of the reserve clause, that players themselves testified to its necessity in the Celler Anti-monopoly Hearings in In the minor league teams agreed to a system that allowed the National League teams to draft players from their teams.

This agreement was in response to their failure to get the NL to honor their reserve clause. In other words, what was good for the goose, was not good for the gander. While NL owners agreed to honor their reserve lists among one another, they paid no such honor to the reserve lists of teams in other organized, professional leagues. They believed they were at the top of the pyramid, where all the best players should be, and therefore they would get those players when they wanted them.

As part of the draft agreement, the minor league teams allowed the NL teams to select players from their roster for fixed payments. The NL sacrificed some money, but restored a bit of order to the process, not to mention eliminated expensive bidding wars among teams for the services of players from the minor league teams.

The first revolt by the players came in , when they formed their own league, called the Players League, to compete with the National League and its rival, the American Association AA , founded in The Players League was the first and only example of a cooperative league. The league featured profit sharing with players, an abolition of unilateral contract transfers, and no reserve clause.

The competing league caused a bidding war for talent, leading to salary increases for the best players. This proved to be an unwieldy league arrangement however, and some of the franchises proved financially unstable. In order to preserve the structure of the league and avoid bankruptcy of some teams, syndicate ownership evolved, in which owners purchased a controlling interest in two teams. This did not help the stability of the league.

Instead, it became a situation in which the syndicates used one team to train young players and feed the best of them to the other team. This period in league history exhibits some of the greatest examples of disparity between the best and worst teams in the league.

In the Cleveland Spiders, the poor stepsister in the Cleveland-St. Louis syndicate, would lose a record out of games, a level of futility that has never been equaled. Syndicate ownership was ended in as the final part of the reorganization of the NL. It also sparked the minor Western League to declare major league status, and move some teams into NL markets for direct competition Chicago, Boston, St.

Louis, Philadelphia and Manhattan. All out competition followed in , complete with roster raiding, salary increases, and team jumping, much to the benefit of the players. Syndicate ownership appeared again in when the owners of the Pittsburgh franchise purchased an interest in the Philadelphia club. Owners briefly entertained the idea of turning the entire league into a syndicate, transferring players to the market where they might be most valuable.

The idea was dropped, however, for fear that the game would lose credibility and result in a decrease in attendance. In syndicate ownership was formally banned, though it did occur again in , when the Montreal franchise was purchased by the other 29 MLB franchises as part of a three way franchise swap involving Boston, Miami and Montreal. MLB is currently looking to sell the franchise and move it to a more profitable market. Once more the labor wars were ended, this time in an agreement that would establish the major leagues as an organization of two cooperating leagues: the National League and the American League, each with eight teams, located in the largest cities east of the Mississippi with the exception of St.

Louis , and each league honoring the reserved rosters of teams in the other. This structure would prove remarkably stable, with no changes until when the Boston Braves became the first team to relocate in half a century when they moved to Milwaukee. The location and number of franchises has been a tightly controlled issue for teams since leagues were first organized. Though franchise movements were not rare in the early days of the league, they have always been under the control of the league, not the individual franchise owners.

An owner is accepted into the league, but may not change the location of his or her franchise without the approval of the other members of the league. In addition, moving the location of a franchise within the vicinity of another franchise requires the permission of the affected franchise.

As a result, MLB franchises have been very stable over time in regard to location. The size of the league has also been stable. From the merger of the AL and NL in until , the league retained the same sixteen teams. Since that time, expansion has occurred fairly regularly, increasing to its present size of 30 teams with the latest round of expansion in In , the league proposed going in the other direction, suggesting that it would contract by two teams in response to an alleged fiscal crisis and breakdown in competitive balance.

Those plans were postponed at least four years by the labor agreement signed in Separate professional leagues for African Americans existed, since they were excluded from participating in MLB until when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. The first was formed in , and the last survived until , though their future was doomed by the integration of the major and minor leagues. As revenues dried up or new markets beckoned due to shifts in population and the decreasing cost of trans-continental transportation, franchises began relocating in the second half of the twentieth century.

The period from saw a spate of franchise relocation: teams moved to Kansas City, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Oakland, Dallas and San Francisco in pursuit of new markets.

Most of these moves involved one team moving out of a market it shared with another team. The last team to relocate was the Washington D. The original franchise, a charter member of the American League, had moved to Minneapolis in While there have been no relocations since then, there have been plenty of examples of threats to relocate.

The threat to relocate has frequently been used by a team trying to get a new stadium built with public financing. There were still a couple of challenges to the reserve clause. Until the s, these came in the form of rival leagues creating competition for players, not a challenge to the legality of the reserve clause. In the Federal League debuted. The new league did not recognize the reserve clause of the existing leagues, and raided their rosters, successfully luring some of the best players to the rival league with huge salary increases.

Other players benefited from the new competition, and were able to win handsome raises from their NL and AL employers in return for not jumping leagues. The Federal League folded after two seasons when some of the franchise owners were granted access to the major leagues. No new teams were added, but a few owners were allowed to purchase existing NL and AL teams.

The first attack on the organizational structure of the major leagues to reach the US Supreme Court occurred when the shunned owner of the Baltimore club of the Federal League sued major league baseball for violation of antitrust law.

Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v the National League eventually reached the Supreme Court, where in the famous decision that baseball was not interstate commerce, and therefore was exempt from antitrust laws was rendered. The first player strike actually occurred in The Detroit Tigers, in a show of unison for their embattled star Ty Cobb, refused to play in protest of what they regarded as an unfair suspension of Cobb, refusing to take the field unless the suspension was lifted.

The results were not surprising: a victory for the visiting Philadelphia Athletics. This was not an organized strike against the system per se, but it was indicative of the problems existent in the labor relations between players and owners. The owner was in total control, and could mete out whatever punishment for whatever length he deemed appropriate. The next competing league appeared in from an unusual source: Mexico.

Again, as in previous league wars, the competition benefited the players. In this case the players who benefited most were those players who were able to use Mexican League offers as leverage to gain better contracts from their major league teams.

On opening day, April 15, Robinson officially broke the color barrier in baseball, becoming the second black player ever to play in the majors - Moses Fleetwood Walker had made a short appearance for Toledo of the American Association in But Robinson was the first to make it in MLB, and the game never looked back - though many at the time wished it had.

Robinson endured untold amounts of abuse from fans and fellow players alike. Still, he never retaliated in the early years, something Rickey insisted on, telling Robinson any violent response would set the cause back twenty years. As the forties came to a close, the game enjoyed its greatest success to that point, setting records for attendance, drawing more than 21 million fans.

But the fifties would only spread the game farther. Between and , the World Series featured at least one New York squad, and six times had two. One of the years when two New York teams played in the series, , was more famous for its National League championship play-off series.

The Giants and the Dodgers, bitter rivals in the Empire City, tied for first in the NL at the end of the season, and played a three-game series to determine who would play the Yankees for the title.

Tied a game apiece, and down going into the final inning, the Giants stormed back, with Bobby Thompson hitting a game-ending three run homer called "The Shot Hear 'Round the World. Mickey Mantle DiMaggio retired in December of '51, but, in what was becoming a pattern in baseball, and particularly with the Yankees, a replacement star was stepping up to the plate. At the end of his career, Mantle would find his place alongside DiMaggio as one of the greatest Yankees of all time.

Still, his career was somewhat tumultuous; he was often injured, and because such high expectations were placed on him Mantle himself said he was expected to be "Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio, all rolled up into one" , he was often booed by Yankee fans anticipating near-perfection. The '50s saw a shift in the country out of the eastern cities to the suburbs and the West Coast, a region that had no big-league ballclubs. Additionally, the advent of television was thought by many to have a negative effect on the game.

While radio had increased attendance for the teams that used it, television was decreasing attendance. Owners scrambled to find ways to draw people to the ballpark, and none was more inventive than Bill Veeck. Helming the Chicago White Sox, he installed an exploding scoreboard that shot off fireworks for home runs and victories a gimmick still employed by the White Sox today. Running the St. Louis Browns, Veeck came up with some of his best work.

His publicity stunts with the Browns included Grandstand Managers' Day, in which fans were given placards that said things like "Bunt," "Steal" and "Yank the pitcher," and the on-field manager was forced to obey, and signing Eddie Gaedel for one day.

Gaedel stood 3 feet, 7 inches, with a strike zone that measured just one and a half inches. Gaedel pinch hit, walking on four straight pitches, then was pulled for a pinch runner. The Browns abandoned St. Louis for Baltimore and became the Orioles. But the '50s were not wholly a time of despair for MLB.

The '50s saw the advent of a player who would be considered by many the best to ever play the game - both before and since. Willie Mays , who broke in with the Giants in , would go on to hit.

Players, managers and fans alike heaped praise on the young centerfielder. Teams Go West The '50s also saw the beginning of the great migration west, not just by America, but by baseball. In its history, the furthest team west played in Missouri - until It was in that year that Walter O'Malley decided he wanted to move out of Brooklyn, and found a willing home in Los Angeles. New York was no longer the baseball capital of America, and baseball's westward expansion had truly begun.

New Bigger Shinier Stadiums As much as the '50s saw great changes in baseball, the game's transformation only became more complete in the next decade. The old game, played by legends like Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth, was disappearing.

But it was a chase for another record during the '61 regular season that got all the attention. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, both of the Yankees, battled in a season-long race for 61 home runs, a mark that would top Ruth's record of On the final day of the season, Maris hit a home run to the right field bleachers in the fourth inning, setting a new single-season home run record, one that would stand until Branch Rickey Branch Rickey, in one last attempt to continue revolutionizing baseball, tried to start up a new league, the Continental League, putting teams in cities without baseball and two teams back in New York.

The other owners cut him off at the pass, agreeing to expand each league by two teams and increasing the length of the regular season from games to which is where it still stands today. The Sixties saw both expansion and shift: the Los Angeles Angels sprouted up in , moving to Anaheim five years later, becoming the California Angels and much later the Anaheim Angels, and most recently the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

In , two new teams joined the National League - one, based in Houston, the Colt. The Washington Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Twins in In , the Braves moved once against, this time from Milwaukee to Atlanta, where they remain to this day, and in '68, the Kansas City A's also relocated for the second time, shifting now to Oakland, their permanent location at present. Just as the s saw dominance transfer from the pitchers to the hitters, that balance reverted back to pitchers in the '60s.

Commissioner Ford Frick urged the owners to vote on rule changes to benefit pitchers; the owners re-expanded the strike zone to stretch from the top of the shoulders to the bottom of the knees.

Pitchers developed a new pitch, the slider, which started out looking like a fastball but tailed away from the hitter. More night games made it harder for hitters to see the ball, and new, bigger gloves made fielding easier. In one season, , homers dropped 10 percent, the number of runs scored dropped 12 percent and the overall batting average lowered by 10 points.

This shift helped catapult Sandy Koufax to stardom. A Jewish ballplayer who refused to play on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, Koufax had already pitched seven years in the big leagues coming to with little acclaim or great success. As he changed his pitching style - and the league helped out its pitchers - Koufax became an ace, winning five ERA earned-run average titles, pitching four no-hitters and winning the Cy Young award three times over five years.

Facing Koufax, said Pirate great Willie Stargell, was "like drinking coffee with a fork. Baseball Moves Inside Additionally, the s saw the game move indoors.

At first, it was a disaster - players got balls lost in the ceiling, and the grass died. Soon, though, some of the skylights were painted over, and a new creation called Astroturf a plastic surface held together by zippers kept the Astrodome around for years to come. Players Association Marvin Miller was an economist with no connection to baseball other than as a fan of the game.

He had worked for the government for a time before working with the machinists union, the autoworkers union and steel workers union. In , pitchers Robin Roberts and Jim Bunning approached him, asking him to become the executive director of the Players Association, an organization that had been in existence since , but had done precisely nothing for players in that time.

Miller agreed, and was overwhelmingly elected. Right away, he set out to finally equalize the relationship between players and owners. But Miller was far from done working. New Teams Added and Divisions was perhaps the greatest single year of change in the game.

Despondent at the domination of pitchers and because hitters drew crowds , owners once again changed the rules, lowering the pitching mound and shrinking the strike zone again. With those additions, the leagues split into divisions for the first time ever, creating two new playoff series: the National and American League Championship Series. And '69 saw Marvin Miller lead a holdout of players, with owners giving in to some of his demands, including an even greater increase in pension fund donations and allowing benefits to be extended after four years of service in the bigs, rather than five.

It was the start of a significant loosening of the owners' grip on the game. Players Reserve Clause As the 60s gave way to the s, players and Miller worked harder and harder to end the use of the reserve clause.

One player, Curt Flood, after asking for a raise from the owner of his team, the St. Louis Cardinals, was told he was being traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, a team whose fans were notoriously hard on black players.

Flood, an African-American, did not want to leave St. Louis, and wrote a letter to commissioner Bowie Kuhn stating he would not play for Philly.

When told he had no choice, Flood then proceeded to take his case to court, with his suit reaching the highest court in the land. Unfortunately, Flood's challenge to the reserve clause was denied However, owners felt more and more pressure from players, and instituted the 10 and 5 rule, which said any player with 10 years experience in the major league, including 5 years with his current team, could veto a trade.

The owners retaliated, releasing or trading sixteen of the twenty-six player representatives with the Player's Association.

The strike ended with the owners giving in to Miller's original demands - a cost-of-living raise in pension and welfare benefits. But Miller wasn't done; a year later, he got the owners to agree to arbitration hearings by a three-person panel over salary disputes. It was this avenue that allowed Miller to finally defeat the reserve clause. Players Wages Increase The reserve clause's language stated that if a player and his club couldn't agree to a contract, the club could "renew the contract for the period of one year on the same terms.

Miller argued it could only happen for one year, and then the player would be released. Miller got two pitchers - Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Expos - to agree to test his theory in and go to arbitration.

The owners' attempt in court to block the arbitration hearing was denied, and the arbitrator ruled in favor of the players. The owners again went to court to try to reverse that decision, and again were denied. Miller shrewdly stepped in with what appeared to be a compromise - players had to serve six years in the league before becoming eligible for free agency, rather than possibly becoming free agents every year.

The owners quickly agreed, but it was Miller and the players who ended up with the better end of the deal; but only having a few players come into free agency every year, the value of those free agents went much higher. The average salary for ballplayers doubled the next year and tripled over the next five years. Paige, who had pitched more than innings in the Negro Leagues, sometimes two and three games a day, was still effective at 42, and still playing at His ERA in white baseball, after thousands of balls pitched, was still just 2.

In , Major League Baseball retired Robinson's uniform number 42 from use by all teams. According to some baseball historians, Robinson and the other African-American players helped reestablish the importance of baserunning and similar elements of play that were previously deemphasized by the predominance of power hitting. Mays, the "Say Hey Kid", was fantastically talented: an athletic center-fielder with a splendid throwing arm who could hit for power and average as well as steal bases.

In his rookie season he helped the Giants to win the pennant, a feat only accomplished by Bobby Thomson 's homer against the Dodgers on the last day of the season — its fame as " The Shot Heard 'Round The World " is due in no small part to Russ Hodges' commentary:.

Baseball had been in the West for almost as long as the National League and the American League had been around.

The PCL was huge in the West. The PCL was far more independent than the other "minor" leagues, and rebelled continuously against their Eastern masters. Clarence Pants Rowland , the President of the PCL, took on baseball commissioners Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Happy Chandler at first to get better equity from the major leagues, then to form a third major league.

His efforts were rebuffed by both commissioners. Chandler and several of the owners, who saw the value of the markets in the West, started to plot the extermination of the PCL.

They had one thing that Rowland did not: The financial power of the Eastern major league baseball establishment. No one was going to back a PCL club building a major-league size stadium if the National or the American League was going to build one too, and potentially put the investment in the PCL ballpark into jeopardy.

Up to this time, major league baseball franchises had been largely confined to the northeastern United States, with the Classic 16 alignment having remained unchanged from to The first team to relocate in fifty years was the Boston Braves , who moved to Milwaukee in In Milwaukee the club set attendance records, and more teams moved: the St. In the New York market ripped apart. The Yankees were becoming the dominant draw, and the cities of the West offered generations of new fans in much more sheltered markets for the other venerable New York clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants.

Placing these storied, powerhouse clubs in the two biggest cities in the West had the specific design of crushing any attempt by the PCL to form a third major league. Eager to bring these big names to the West, Los Angeles gave Walter O'Malley , owner of the Dodgers, a helicopter tour of the city and asked him to pick his spot.

The logical first candidates for major league "expansion" were the same metropolitan areas that had just attracted the Dodgers and Giants. It is said that the Dodgers and Giants, rivals in New York, chose those cities because Los Angeles and San Francisco already hated each other, having economic, cultural and political rivalries dating back to the state's founding. However, the Bay Area would eventually gain an American League team to go along with the Giants, as the Athletics would move again, settling in Oakland in The other expansion team was the Washington Senators , who took over the nation's capital when the previous Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Twins.

Expansion continued in with the addition of the Houston Colt. The Pilots stayed just one season in Seattle before moving to Milwaukee and becoming today's Milwaukee Brewers. The Padres were the last of the core PCL teams to be absorbed. The Coast League did not die, though. It reformed, and moved into other markets, and endures to this day as a Class AAA league.

The last team move of this time period was in , when the second Washington Senators moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and became the Texas Rangers. Baseball would not see another team move until Major League Baseball announced near the end of the season that the Montreal Expos would begin play in Washington, D. In , another expansion occurred as the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays joined the American League, the last expansion until four teams were added in the s.

In order to keep the number of teams in each league even, Milwaukee changed leagues and is a now a member of the National League. Beginning with the season, both the AL and the NL were divided into three divisions East, West, and Central , with the addition of a wild card team the team with the best record among those finishing in second place to enable four teams in each league to advance to the preliminary division series.

However, due to the strike which canceled the World Series , the new rules did not go into effect until the World Series. As of , there are 16 teams in the National League and 14 teams in the American League. By the late s , the balance between pitching and hitting had swung in favor of the pitchers. In Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title with an average of just.

That same year, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won 31 games — making him the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season. In response to these events, major league baseball implemented certain rules changes in to benefit the batters. The pitcher's mound was lowered, and the strike zone was reduced.

In the American League, which had been suffering from much lower attendance than the National League, made a move to increase scoring even further by initiating the designated hitter rule.

From the time of the formation of the Major Leagues to the s , when it came to the control of the game of baseball the team owners held the whip hand. After the so-called "Brotherhood Strike" of and the failure of the National Brotherhood of Ball Players and its Players League, the owners control of the game seemed absolute and lasted over 70 years, despite the formation of a number of short-lived players organizations over that time.

The same year, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale — both Cy Young Award winners for the Los Angeles Dodgers — refused to re-sign their contracts, and the era of the reserve clause, which held players to one team, was coming toward an end. The first legal challenge came in Louis Cardinals outfielder Curt Flood took the leagues to court to negate a player trade, citing the 13th Amendment and antitrust legislation.

In he finally lost his case in the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 3, but gained large-scale public sympathy, and the damage had been done. The reserve clause survived, but it had been irrevocably weakened. In Andy Messersmith of the Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos played without contracts, and then declared themselves free agents in response to an arbitrator's ruling.

Handcuffed by concessions made in the Flood case, the owners had no choice but to accept the collective bargaining package offered by the MLBPA, and the reserve clause was effectively ended, to be replaced by the current system of free-agency and arbitration.

While the legal challenges were going on, the game continued. In the "Miracle Mets" , just 7 years after their formation, recorded their first winning season, won the National League East and finally the World Series. On the field, the s saw some of the longest standing records fall and the rise of two powerhouse dynasties. In Oakland, the Swinging A's were overpowering, winning the Series in '72 , '73 and '74 , and five straight division titles.

The strained relationships between teammates, who included Catfish Hunter , Vida Blue and Reggie Jackson , gave the lie to the need for " chemistry " between players. This A's dynasty also single-handedly reintroduced the mustache into baseball.

The decade also contained great individual achievements as well. He would retire in with There was great pitching too: between and , Nolan Ryan threw 4 "no-hit" games.

He would add a record-breaking fifth in and two more before his retirement in , by which time he had also accumulated 5, strikeouts, another record, in a year career. From the s onward, the major league game has changed dramatically from a combination of effects brought about by free agency, improvements in the science of sports conditioning, changes in the marketing and television broadcasting of sporting events, and the push by brand-name products for greater visibility.

These events lead to greater labor difficulties, fan disaffection, skyrocketing prices, changes in the way that the game is played, and problems with the use of performance enhancing substances like steroids tainting the race for records.

Through this period crowds generally rose. Average attendances first broke 20, in and 30, in That year total attendance hit 70 million, but baseball was hit hard by a strike in , and as of it has only marginally improved on those records. During the s , the science of conditioning and workouts greatly improved.

Weight rooms and training equipment were improved. Trainers and doctors developed better diets and regimens to make athletes bigger, healthier, and stronger than they had ever been. Another major change that had been occurring during this time was the adoption of the pitch count.

Starting pitchers playing complete games had not been an unusual thing in baseball's history. Now pitching coaches watched to see how many pitches a player had thrown over the game. At anywhere from to , pitchers increasingly would be pulled out to preserve their arms. Bullpens began to specialize more, with more pitchers being trained as middle relievers, and a few hurlers, usually possessing high velocity but not much durability, as closers. Along with the expansion of teams, the addition of more pitchers needed to play a complete game stressed the total number of quality players available in a system that restricted its talent searches at that time to America, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Baseball had been watched live since the mid 20th century. Television sports' arrival in the s increased attention and revenue for all major league clubs at first. The television programming was extremely regional. It hurt the minor and independent leagues most. People stayed home to watch Maury Wills rather than watch unknowns at their local baseball park. Major League Baseball, as it always did, made sure that it controlled rights and fees charged for the broadcasts of all games, just as it did on radio.

It brought additional revenues and attention both from the broadcast itself, and from the increases in attendance and merchandise sales that expanded audiences allowed. The national networks began televising national games of the week, opening the door for a national audience to see particular clubs.

While most teams were broadcast, emphasis was always on the league leaders and the major market franchises that could draw the largest audience. In the s the cable revolution began. The roll out of ESPN , then regional sports networks now mostly under the umbrella of Fox Sports Net changed sports news and particularly impacted baseball. Potboiled down to the thirty-second game highlight, and now under the microscope of news organizations that needed to fill 24 hours of time, the amount of attention paid to major league players magnified to staggering levels from where it had been just 20 years prior.

It brought with it increased attention for individual players, who reached super-star status nationwide on careers that often were not as compelling as those who had come before them in a less media intense time. As player contract values soared, and the number of broadcasters, commentators, columnists, and sports writers also soared.

The competition for a fresh angle on any story became fierce. Media pundits began questioning the high salaries that the players received. Coverage began to become intensely negative. Players personal lives, which had always been off-limits unless something extreme happened, became the fodder of editorials, insider stories on television, and features in magazines.

When the use of performance-enhancing drugs became an issue, the gap between the sports media and the players whom they covered widened further. With the development of satellite television particularly direct broadcast satellite services like DirecTV and digital cable, Major League Baseball launched baseball channels with season subscription fees, making it possible for fans to watch virtually every game played as they played.

The next round became the single-team cable networks. These networks generated as much revenue or more annually for large market teams like the Yankees and Boston Red Sox as their entire baseball operations did. By making these separate companies, these owners were able to exclude the money from consideration of deals to try and keep the level of play equal at all clubs in the major leagues. The rule of the day became he who has the most money can spend it at will on players.

Television and greater media coverage in magazines and newspapers trying to attract a new generation of non-readers also brought in the sponsors, and even more money, that would attract players to new financial opportunities and bring in other elements to the business of baseball that would impact the game.

Baseball memorabilia and souvenirs, including baseball cards, exploded in price as networks of adults became more sophisticated in their trading. This would explode yet again in the late s, as the Internet , and the website eBay provided venues for collectors of all things baseball to trade with each other. Regionalized pricing was wiped away, and many objects, baseballs, bats, and the like began selling for high dollar values.

This in turn brought in new businessmen whose sole means of making a living was acquiring autographs and memorabilia from the athletes. Beyond the staple billboards, large corporations like NIKE and Champion fought to make sure that their logos were seen on the clothing and shoes worn by athletes on the field.

This kind of association branding became a new revenue stream. In the late s and into the dawn of the 21st century, the dugout, the backstops behind home plate, and anywhere else that might be seen by a camera all became fair game for inserting advertising.

Players who had been dramatically underpaid for generations were now replaced by players who were paid extremely well, and, in many cases, dramatically overpaid for their services.

By the s a new generation of sports agents were hawking the talents of players who knew baseball but didn't know how the business end of the game was played. The agents broke down what the teams were generating in revenue off of the players' performances.

They calculated what their player might be worth to energize a television contract, or provide more merchandise revenue, or put more fans into seats. The athletes signed shoe deals, baseball card sponsorships, and commercial endorsements for products of every size and shape. At first this boon seemed only fitting. The players were finally getting what so many had not. Then the other side of the coin flipped.

Salaries began to climb to such astronomical levels that the relationship between the average fan and the players began to change. Piazza was booed every time he came to bat. In a short while he was traded to Florida, then was acquired by the New York Mets. Players balked at many of the traditions of baseball: Playing in old timers' games, making appearances not tied to their endorsements, and even autographing kids' baseballs.

Sky high salaries also changed many of the strategies of the game. Players rarely were "sent" down to the minors if they failed to perform. Who could justify paying a slumping player millions to sit in Toledo where the major league fans couldn't pay their way? Other players in the Triple-A level of the minor leagues, who used to rise on merit, became trapped under these overpaid "stars. It was much better to buy someone else's shortstop who was a known quantity to the national sports media than to take a chance on a player with no name value and no visibility if you were in a major market ballclub.

Tactics on the field changed too. Risky moves that could get players hurt, and sideline millions of dollars in payroll on the disabled list, became less common. Stealing home, a popular tactic of great stars of the day like Ty Cobb or Pete Rose, became infrequent occurrences. The perception of players by the general public changed from larger-than-life heroes to a more cynical view of many of them as spoiled and overpaid. Two years later, they took home the first World Series in franchise history — beating the crosstown rival Cubs.

They went on to win another World Series in but had to wait until before capturing another. However, there was no interleague play between teams in the regular season for more than 90 years. That changed in , when the leagues introduced regular-season interleague play. On April 1, , the Los Angeles Angels and Cincinnati Reds played the first interleague game on opening day after the Houston Astros moved from the National League to the American League creating an even team balance in each league.

Skip to content. White Sox infielder and pitcher Kid Gleason, left, shakes hands with team owner Charles Comiskey in an undated photo. Chicago Tribune historical photo.

The early days.