Below is an excerpt from the seminal account of the tenure, trials, and tribulations of the second Commissioner of the Legacy Baseball League, Jacob Parker, from esteemed baseball historian Richard Abbott. This excerpt is published with the permission of the author in connection with the release of a new edition with an all new foreword. The new edition can be purchased at any local bookstore or via the following link. Please note that we do receive a small portion of the sales price of any books purchased via our affiliate link and appreciate your support.
Unexpectedly assuming office by a narrow margin after the two other candidates for LBL Commissioner split the conservative owners’ vote, the reformer Commissioner, Jacob Parker, set to work immediately installing his vision of a more just and a less corrupt national past time.
His first act as Commissioner was to wrestle control away of the very symbol of corruption that had allowed his ascent to the top of the Legacy Baseball League, the Brooklyn Whales. Asserting new, controversial Commissioner’s powers—under an ambiguous clause in the league’s founding documents—previously unexercised by his predecessor Alexander Madigan, Parker took control of the Brooklyn franchise and set off a wave of litigation in his efforts to exorcise the LBL’s demons. With owner William Barclay and general manager Landon Kerr banned from organized baseball for their involvement—knowing or unknowing—in the attempted fix of the 1902 Legacy Cup, Parker placed Whales’ management under the Madigan’s Hall Trust, a newly established, League-owned trust.
Parker viewed the move as a necessity to assess and remove the rot from the Brooklyn Whales’ organization and to restore both the integrity of the Legacy Baseball League and the faith of baseball fans’ nationwide in the national pastime. The action also served as a test for one of his primary goals as League Commissioner—the removal of the corrupting influence of capitalism from the game of baseball and the replacement of the traditional private ownership model of baseball clubs with locally owned collectives.
Given the goal of cleansing the Brooklyn club of its past sins, the steward of Parker’s vision was unlikely. Jacob Parker asked Marques Williams, manager of the infamous 1902 Whales, to remain as manager of the ballclub and to assume the mantle of General Manager and President of baseball operations, a role he had been rumored to hold informally during Landon Kerr’s nominal occupation of the office.
Parker’s reasoning for the decision to retain Williams was sound despite the public criticism that it attracted. Williams, a three-time Legacy Cup-winning manager, was among the most respected baseball minds in the business. He had weathered the backlash of the 1902 scandal, revealed late in the 1903 season, throughout the 1904 season and led the Whales’—amid the increased attention and public acrimony—to his fourth Ivy League pennant in six seasons. Additionally, Williams’ reputation had been largely left untarnished by the ensuing Congressional investigation into the scandal after the special Congressional committee found that he was not involved, directly or indirectly, in any of the alleged misdeeds. In its report, Congress cited the testimony of a member of the 1902 Whales, one Alberto “Pappy” Webb, as thoroughly persuasive as to Williams lack of involvement. Williams’ own testimony before the Committee, by contrast, was so profane as to be deemed unfit for preservation in the Congressional record—an infamy not since repeated in American history. Contemporaneous accounts, however, suggest that the performance did win the manager some acclaim among those unsympathetic to Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.
Parker’s faith in Williams was rewarded. Leaving the manager to run the organization as he saw fit, Williams lived up to his reputation as a shrewd talent evaluator. Over the coming seasons, Williams bolstered the pitching staff and lineup with new talent to replace the players who had received a lifetime ban from the LBL. Accordingly, the Whales again won the Ivy pennant in 1905, finishing with the second best record in all of the Legacy Baseball League, and served as a proof of concept for Parker.
Control of the Whales’ franchise also allowed Parker to focus on other potential emerging labor issues in the game of baseball. Prior to his tenure, the teams’ had set in motion the organization of a minor league for purposes of talent development for the major league organizations. Recognizing the inherent probability of abuse of those hopefuls striving to play professional baseball, Parker installed the President of the Legacy Baseball League Players’ Union, Tommy “Bird Eye” Hershey, as manager of the Whales’ minor league club in Jersey City—just across the water from Madigan’s Hall—to observe and report directly to the Commissioner’s office any observed problems or unacceptable conditions. The local newspaper, in light of Mr. Hershey’s stature in the game of baseball and his longstanding nickname, would come to refer to the youthful Jersey City team under his tutelage as the “Chicks.”
Mr. Parker’s aggressive, reformist agenda began immediately upon his assumption of office. His quick actions helped to stabilize the Brooklyn Whales organization amidst the wake of scandal, to place players’ rights front-and-center among issues in the game of baseball, and to begin to salvage the reputation of the Legacy Baseball League. However, entrenched and threatened interests would not allow the seas to remain calm for long.