October 11th, 1906
Manhattan, New York
Baseball’s progressive faction under Commissioner Jacob Parker scored an undisputed political victory.
Making good on his 1904 campaign promises, Parker convinced the General Managers of the Legacy Baseball League to support a significant increase in the league arbitration ballplayer salaries. With the threat of an organized strike hanging over the vote, progressives scored a 8-2 victory on Proposal 1906.2, increasing the baseline arbitration of all LBL players by 30%. This is the second increase in LBL history and the largest to date.
Thomas W. Hershey, the founder and President of the LBLPU, called the vote a “resounding success” that he hopes will “encourage more players to see that there is power in the union.” Only two franchises opposed the measure–Baltimore and the New York Kings. Together, with Twin Cities, the trio represents the staunchest anti-union core of the LBL since the turn of the century. However, with the majority of Twin Cities’ outfield threatening to sit out the 1907 season on the back of an historic Legacy Cup victory, the Empire threw their lot in with the progressives and avoided the strike. The Kings and the Clippers, ever-obstinate, refuse to give in to Parker’s pro-unionist agenda. While the Kings enjoy anti-union measures secured in the founding of the LBL, the Clippers will likely face the 1907 season without SS Jacob Kalberer and RF Harry Bailey.
“Jacob Parker, the midget scrivener from the frontier of Missouri, knows exactly where he may stick his precious Players Union,” Kings owner Alexander Bingley told the Sporting Times as he exited the Fifth Avenue Theater last evening.
In addition to the passing of the arbitration increase, General Managers voted to divert significant funding to the modernization of their recordkeeping and communication systems–a neglected corner of the league administration that Commissioner Parker called “Neolithic.” He told General Managers to “embrace the discord of the modern administrative decentralization” and “let go of slack” in regards to old ways of doing business. This modernization process is likely to take more than a year to be fully implemented at Madigan Hall.
The most controversial vote of the day–one vocally supported by Parker and other Board members in the newspaper circuit leading up to the Meetings–was a proposal to expunge the current amateur draft order formula for a weighted lottery. Given the Brooklyn Seven Scandal and the broader national concern for immorality and gambling in the sporting world, this hotly debated measure replaces the current model with a scaled lottery for draft positions one through twelve.
Critics of the Draft Lottery warned that instead of encouraging competition, this measure would only further punish those teams unable to compete with the Philadelphias, Brooklyns, and Twin Cities of the world. Parker and the administration argued that there was no great financial disparity reported between franchises in 1906, and that a lottery rescinded entitlement of guaranteed rewards for poor performance on the field.
In a final victorious flourish, the taciturn and mumbling Jacob Parker announced his plan for “morality audits” beginning in 1907. The Commissioner revealed his establishment of a League Ethics Department charged with reviewing and investigating the practices and procedures of each franchise, to discover and prevent the sort of widespread immorality that nearly crippled the league four seasons ago. General Managers looked on in general dismay as Parker unveiled this policing measure, warning that violators of the LBL Code of Ethics would be “indiscriminately denied the privileges of wealth and talent” if found in violation. The little man from Missouri was ten feet fall before the astounded delegations from across the baseball world.
With the passing of these three measures and the drastic expansion of the Negro Leagues, Jacob Parker is proving to the masses that he is a man of his word. More than one moderate member of the league assembly is, perhaps, doubting their vote for the journalist from Saint Louis–a complete outsider to the baseball world–as his progressive agenda continues to unfurl within the LBL.