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- Title
The Sam Barkley Case.
- Authors
Ball, David; Nemec, David
- Abstract
Before the institution of the Reserve Clause after the 1879 National League season, players were free to change teams at will upon the expiration of their contracts (usually extant for only one year). Yet the first version of the Reserve Clause was only a baby step in regulating player movement from team to team. In the early 1880s player trades were still not a feature of the game, in part because no player could as yet be compelled to go to another team against his wishes. A player's right of refusal often also stymied player sales as well as so-called "waiver" deals in which one team would try to steer an unwanted player to a rival, sometimes out of simple generosity but more often in exchange for future considerations. In a book begun before his untimely death, 19th-century baseball historian David Ball set out to track the painstaking evolution of the present-day rules regarding player movement from team to team. David did not leave an introduction to his book or notes explaining its proposed scope, but we believe he planned to carry his work only to the conclusion of the 19th century. Among his fully developed sections is the story of the remarkably complex Sam Barkley case, in which the St. Louis Browns endeavored to sell their disenchanted second baseman to the highest bidder in the winter of 1885-1886, on the heels of rule revisions prompted by the nefarious Tony Mullane case of the previous winter. Upon its final settlement, major league owners and officials arrived at the rude recognition that their work to achieve movement of a player from one team to another that was equitable and acceptable to all had only just begun.
- Subjects
BARKLEY, Sam; MULLANE, Tony, 1859-1944; BASEBALL teams; NATIONAL League of Professional Baseball Clubs; RESERVE clauses (Professional sports contracts); PROFESSIONAL sports contracts; NINETEENTH century; HISTORY
- Publication
Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, 2013, Vol 7, p126
- ISSN
1934-2802
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3172/BB.7.126