The Impace of World War I on American Baseball

For baseball, the decade before the war began by clearing up the game's paternity. In the process of ôdiscoveringö its origins, however, baseball created a myth that lingers to this day. A.G. Spalding, a former player and head of a sporting goods company that bore his name, discovered that baseball's origins could be traced to an English game called ôrounders.ö The first organized rules, enacted in 1845, clearly were based on rounders (Thorn, et. al, 2513).

An outraged Spalding would not accept that America's pastime had foreign roots, so in 1904 he assembled a commission to determine who founded baseball. Spalding enlisted a U.S. Senator to help, so the commission carried the imprimatur of government. The commission, not surprisingly, found that baseball had American r

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r League Baseball on antitrust grounds. They purposely sued in the court of Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, a noted trust-buster (Seymour 212). Major League Baseball seemingly faced its greatest challenge, but it fizzled. Landis the trust-buster also turned out to be a baseball fan. He stalled the case, forcing the Federal League to settle with Major League Baseball. Two Federal League teams joined Major League Baseball in 1916 and the rest of the league folded (Seymour 231). Major League Baseball's peace of mind proved to be short-lived. Growing tensions with Germany resulted in the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on February 1, 1917. It became obvious that the U.S. would soon enter World War I. What did that mean for baseball? Nobody knew. The owners promised to continue playing, though in 1917 spring training they began putting players through drills with army sergeants to prepare them for military duty. After Congress declared war in April 1917, it established a National Commission to regulate home life. The Commission suggested to baseball's owners that they began playing Sunday exhibition games, with the proceeds donated to war dependents. This would prove an important breakthrough for baseball, whic
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Approximate Word count = 2784
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)