Players Start League

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - A group of National League players fed up with a salary classification system imposed in 1888 met in New York on this date in 1889 to form a competing major league (the American League had not yet been established). It would be called the Players' League.

According to Leonard Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball about three dozen players met on the 4th and 5th of November to line up financial backers and discuss other arrangements. The plan had quietly been in the works for over a year, precipitated by the owners having sole discretion to decide which "class" each player belonged, and therefore what his salary would be:

• Class A - $2,500
• Class B - $2,250
• Class C - $2,000
• Class D - $1,750
• Class E - $1,500

The players were led by John Montgomery Ward, a 25-year old infielder for the New York Gothams (today's San Francisco Giants) just out of Columbia University Law School. The Players League was launched the next season:

• The League would be in 8 cities, 7 of which already had National League teams
• There would be no reserve clause tying a player to one team
• Gate receipts would be shared 50-50 with the visiting team
• Players could purchase stock in their own teams

What was essentially a job action by the players lasted only one season - 1890. By 1891, many of the financial backers got cold feet. The players who were good enough went back to the National League, where the reserve clause was still intact and would be for decades to come.

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