From Ring Lardner:
“Players who jump for the dough,
Bandits and crooks every one
Baseball’s pleasure, you know,
Players should play for the fun.
Magnates don’t care for the mon’
They can’t be tempted with gold,
They’re in the game for the fun–
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That is why Collins was sold.”
This was Lardner’s sardonic response when Connie Mack, the owner-manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, began cannibalizing his club after the 1914 season. Mack’s Athletics had won two consecutive American League pennants and four of the last five but he insisted he was heading for the poorhouse.
So he dismantled his team. He sold future Hall of Famer Eddie Collins, the best second baseman of the time, to the White Sox for $50,000. He also unloaded two of his best pitchers, Chief Bender and Eddie Plank, who, like Collins, reportedly were threatening to jump to the outlaw Federal League.
The A’s plunged into the cellar. They finished last in each of the next seven seasons. Fifteen years later Mack had another powerhouse. Beginning in 1929 the A’s won three successive pennants. But once again Mack was in economic distress. His player payroll was high and attendance was declining. Outfielders Al Simmons and Mule Haas and third baseman Jimmy Dykes, all outstanding front-liners, were sold to the White Sox.
A year later, after the 1933 season, Mack peddled Mickey Cochrane, a Hall of Fame catcher, to Detroit, then swung a big deal, sending two of his star pitchers, Lefty Grove (who also resides in Cooperstown) and Rube Walberg, plus infielder Max Bishop to Boston for $125,000. Pitcher George Earnshaw also departed.
There was no recovery. The A’s spent 32 of the next 34 seasons in the second division. So far as is known, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the “Great Punisher,” never chastised Mack. When Mack died in 1956 at the age of 94, he long had been acclaimed as “Baseball’s Grand Old Man.”
Two other championship clubs also were dismantled. Landis suspended eight White Sox players who were in on the infamous 1919 Word Series fix. A half-century later, after the 1975 season, Charley Finley’s Oakland A’s, were torn apart after a run of five consecutive division titles that included three consecutive World Series triumphs.
Finley was an innocent bystander, a victim of the advent of free agency. An impartial arbitrator ruled the players no longer could be held in perpetual bondage. In subsequent labor negotiations, it was agreed players with six years of big-league experience were free to bargain for a new deal.
Finley had a veteran team; nine of his players became free agents. To soften the loss Finley, in the middle of the 1976 season, sold outfielder Joe Rudi and pitcher Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $1 million each and pitcher Vida Blue to the Yankees for $1.5 million. Only Blue was not eligible for free agency.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn voided the deals with the claim they were not in the “best interests of baseball” because they would upset “competitive balance,” a mythic phrase created for the occasion.
It was the 13th time a commissioner invoked his “best interest” powers. Unike all the previous occasions, there had not been a rule violation, a dispute between clubs, moral turpitude or an attempt to circumvent an existing rule.
Finley was not guilty of any of these charges and was trying to get a return for the loss of his free agents, eligible to depart after the season. It was his only avenue for compensation. Finley subsequently sued Kuhn. Frank McGarr, a Chicago federal jurist, ruled for Kuhn.
In his claim that he was protecting competitive balance, Kuhn had become the “great handicapper.” From his New York office, he was, in effect, determining the comparative strength of the American League teams. This supposition, taken to the final and ideal conclusion, gave him the bizzare authority to equalize competition for a 12-team pennant tie.
It was fantasy. The destruction of the Finley dynasty, actually increased competitive balance. In addition to Rudi and Fingers, Finley also was stripped of outfielder Reggie Jackson, catcher Gene Tenace, third baseman Sal Bando and shortstop Bert Campaneris, all of whom jumped, rewarded with million-dollar contracts by their new clubs.
And today we have Wayne Huizenga, the owner of the defending world champion Florida Marlins who has decreased his player payroll severely to offset claimed 1997 losses of $30 million. Should acting commissioner Bud Selig penalize Huizenga? No way!