George Sisler and the End of the National Commission

What was George Sisler thinking when he signed a contract to play professional baseball in Akron, Ohio, in January 1911 at the tender age of 17? After all, he had not consulted with his family or any other adult except for Jesse Goehler, who, acting as a representative of the Akron club, signed the future Hall of Famer to play after his high school graduation from Akron. Yet Sisler’s action, the action of impetuous youth, contributed mightily to the eventual downfall of the ruling triumvirate of organized baseball, the National Commission.

This saga includes as dramatis personae a few of the most powerful men of professional baseball at the time. We will see how the lives of George Sisler are intertwined with those of Branch Rickey, Barney Dreyfuss, August “Garry” Herrmann, and ultimately, although indirectly, Judge Kenesaw Landis.

The story begins in 1911 as Sisler was completing his senior year in high school. “Peerless George” was born March 3, 1893, in Nimisilia, Ohio, south of Akron. “Many baseball books show that Sisler was born at Manchester, a few miles east of Clinton. But Nimisilia is the correct place, if you can find it—or pronounce it.”1

By the time Sisler was in high school, he was making a name for himself as a left-handed pitcher. Sisler remembers, “I got a lot of publicity in my last year in high school, and when I was still a student I signed up one day to play with Akron.”2

Ernest J. Lanigan, a former executive at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, wrote an undated notation to George Sisler’s file at the Hall of Fame Library:

Three years before Fohl [Lee Alexander Fohl] was in charge of the Akron club, which was owned by Columbus, and one night he phoned Bob Quinn, Columbus business manager, that there was a youth at Akron High School that looked like the prospect of the century and suggested signing him.

“Sign him,” said Quinn, “at $100 a month, even if you have to release somebody.”

“I can’t sign him,” said Fohl, “but I know someone who can.”

And the Someone Who Could—Umpire Jesse Goehler—signed Sisler, then 17, to an Akron contract for $100 a month. He reported to the club one day, but there was no uniform to fit him, so he didn’t play. And he never showed up again. Akron transferred his contract later to Columbus and Columbus sold him to Pittsburgh, but Garry Herrmann of the National Commission ruled that Akron had no right to the player, that Columbus hadn’t and that Pittsburgh hadn’t. Rickey signed him for the Browns, and that was the start of a lifelong feud between Herrmann and Barney Dreyfuss that led eventually to Judge Landis getting into the baseball picture.3

Sisler later contended, “I was only 17 years old when I wrote my name on the slip of paper that made me property of Akron …. After I signed it I got scared and I didn’t even tell my dad or anybody ’cause I knew folks wanted me to go on to college and I figured they’d be sore if they knew I wanted to be a ballplayer.”4 Sisler also maintained that he never reported to Akron or any professional club until after he graduated from the University of Michigan, dismantling the myth that there was no uniform to fit him.

Eventually Sisler did confess to his father that he had signed a contract with Akron. “In a way that’s what saved me, I guess. For by not telling my dad he never had a chance to Okay my signature and in that way the contract didn’t hold.” After graduation from Akron Central High School, Sisler was told to report to Akron on March 17, 1912, for spring training with the Columbus club. When he did not report to either team, Columbus sold his contract in 1912 to Barney Dreyfuss, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates for $5,000.

George Sisler enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for the fall term in 1911. However, his Akron contract was duly “promulgated in April of that year by Secretary Farrell, of the National Association.” The Sporting News later reported, “The Agreement for the transfer of the player by Columbus to Pittsburg was filed with the National Commission and as it was in proper form was approved and promulgated by the Commission.”5

The first volley in the battle to emancipate George Sisler from his Akron contract came from Sisler himself (with assistance from Branch Rickey6 and George B. Codd, a Michigan circuit court judge) when he wrote to Garry Herrmann, chairman of the National Commission. Sisler wanted his amateur status reinstated so he could play varsity baseball that spring for Michigan. Dated August 27, 1912, Sisler wrote, “Two years ago this winter while I was attending high school, I signed the baseball contract given me by an umpire who watched me pitch the summer before. The proposition came very suddenly and unexpectedly, and I was an easy mark as I now look back upon it. At that time, being only 17 years old, I thought it would be a great thing to sign a league contract and supposed that I would be a sort of a hero among my fellow students and the people around Akron in general.”7

When Sisler requested that the National Commission sustain his amateur status, he was recognized as an up-and-coming athletic star at Michigan under the watchful eye of Branch Rickey.

Rickey revolutionized baseball by creating an extensive farm system when he was an executive with the St. Louis Cardinals. In 1947, as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a major league baseball contract. Sisler first met “the Mahatma” in the spring of 1912.

Rickey had attended the University of Michigan Law School, and he coached the Michigan varsity baseball team to make ends meet. In September 1911, he and two law school classmates opened up a legal practice in Boise, Idaho. In January 1912 he wired the Michigan athletic director, “am starving. Will be back without delay.”8 Baseball was, until 1913, only a way for Rickey to get what he wanted, a law degree. When he realized that the law business was not succeeding and that he was placing his health in jeopardy, he decided to devote himself to baseball full-time.9

Rickey had some experience as a judge of baseball talent. He had worked at Allegheny College as coach and athletic director. In 1904 he signed to play for the Cincinnati Reds under the ownership of Garry Herrmann, who had taken a liking to Rickey and his honest virtues. Rickey had refused to play on Sundays as a promise to his mother, so the Reds manager Joe Kelley fired the rookie catcher before he appeared in a regular season game. Herrmann reversed the decision and allowed Rickey to remain on the team. After thinking about it, Rickey decided to leave the Reds anyway, with Herrmann’s blessing.10 He later was a catcher and outfielder with the Cardinals and Yankees, appearing in 120 games.

Branch Rickey returned from Boise in the spring of 1912. “Candidates for several varsity baseball teams were reporting,” Rickey said in describing a pivotal moment in his life, “for registration, assignment and tryout. Here before me stood a handsome boy of eighteen, with dark brown hair, serious gray eyes and posture. He was about five feet eight or nine, well built but not heavy, and he wore a somewhat battered finger glove on his right hand. He said he had pitched on a high school team in Akron, Ohio, and that he was George Sisler, engineering student in the freshman class.

‘”Oh, a freshman,’ I said. ‘Well, this part of the program is only for the varsity. You can’t play this year.’ He showed extreme disappointment. I said, ‘You can’t play this year, but you can work out with the varsity today.’

“The workout was unforgettable. He pitched batting practice and, for the next twenty minutes, created no end of varsity embarrassment. His speed and control made him almost unhittable. All of his moves were guided by perfection of reflexes, which made him quick, graceful, accurate-the foundation of athletic greatness. It was all there.”’11

Sisler had played football, basketball and baseball in high school, and he was offered scholarships at the University of Pennsylvania and Western Reserve but he chose Michigan because of Russ Baer, his high school catcher. “Russ today [1953] is a banker in Akron. At that time he wanted to study law and decided to enroll at Michigan. I thought I would have a better chance in baseball as a pitcher if I had Baer as my catcher, so I followed him.”12

George Codd pushed hard on Sisler’s behalf. On December 28, 1912, Garry Herrmann wrote to Judge Codd with a response on behalf of the National Commission, of which he was chairman. Although the commission would not rule on the amateur status of Sisler, his contract was made “dormant,” he stated, “The player’s status is and will be wholly dependent on his own acts regardless of formal claims by the Pittsburg club, or any other National Agreement Club, of the right or property in contracting with him.”13 Rather than declare Sisler an amateur, the National Commission sidestepped the issue by saying that Sisler was not a professional—yet. Sisler was now eligible to play for the Michigan varsity under Rickey.

J.G. Taylor Spink reported that many clubs were following Sisler’s brilliant performance and were interested in signing him when he graduated.14 “By the time he graduated college,” noted historian Donald Honig, “Sisler’s baseball abilities were known to every big league club. Mysteriously, however, only the Pirates seemed interested. By dint of Gentleman’s Agreement among all the owners, the old voided contract Sisler had signed was being honored by Major League Baseball. Rather than commit the slightest offense against their hallowed reserve clause, the owners were recognizing a contract that their own ruling body had voided.”15 All teams that is, except the St. Louis Browns, where Branch Rickey, Sisler’s baseball mentor, began his managerial and executive career in 1913.

Judge Codd pressured the National Commission to declare Sisler a free agent. “Through the influence of powerful friends Sisler was eventually declared a free agent by the National Commission, not, however, until the threat to carry the matter into the courts had been resorted to. The commission, in declaring him a free agent, however, recommended that he give Pittsburg the preference, which was only fair.”16

Barney Dreyfuss was furious. He was one of the most innovative magnates and considered an outstanding judge of baseball talent. Branch Rickey told Lee Allen, historian at the Baseball Hall of Fame, “Dreyfuss was the best judge of players he had ever seen.”17 Dreyfuss was successful in baseball because he understood the business of baseball and its rules. He appealed to the National Commission for a review, especially after National League President John Tener wrote in May 1914 that while the Pittsburgh club had conformed with the “laws and regulations” of organized baseball and that it might have a moral right to the player, he concluded that “The Pittsburg Club’s claims and contentions are all based on the assumption that the signing of an Akron Club contract by Sisler was perfectly legal, valid, reasonable and binding.”18

Tener offered, and it was adopted by the National Commission, that Dreyfuss and the Pirates be given an unimpeded first chance to sign Sisler. The mistake that Dreyfuss may have made was the assumption that he had a clear and easy path to the player when in fact Branch Rickey held the upper hand. Dreyfuss received a letter from Sisler dated June 2, 1915, asking for “your very best offer.”19 When Dreyfuss learned on June 18 that Sisler had signed with St. Louis, he immediately asked the National Commission to review his charges of interference and tampering by Rickey and the St. Louis Browns. The commission asked Dreyfuss for evidence to prove the allegations, which he couldn’t provide.

The case for Sisler had really come down to contract terms, notwithstanding his previous association with Rickey. “Branch Rickey, however, refused to enter into this collusion [the Gentleman’s Agreement]. Always the maverick, Rickey saw to it that the Browns signed Sisler. The draconic machin­ery of Baseball’s jurisprudence went so far as to suspend Sisler while the question was being investigated. Rickey, determined not to lose his prize, made some not-so-veiled threats about civil law versus baseball law, and the National Commission finally ruled on behalf of the Browns.”20 The St. Louis club offered Sisler $7,400 as opposed to $5,200 from Pittsburgh.21 By June 18, Sisler was on the Browns team for good and appeared in 81 games.

The Browns eventually moved Sisler to first base to take advantage of his hitting. “He was in fact generally acclaimed the greatest of all first basemen until nudged aside by the power hitting of Lou Gehrig.”22 In 1922, his greatest season, Sisler earned the first American League MVP award after hitting .420. George Sisler was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1939, the 10th player so honored.

Barney Dreyfuss refused to let go of his grievance against the National Commission. Dreyfuss “never forgave Herrmann for voting with [American League President Ban] Johnson in awarding the crack first baseman to the Browns. Barney was an implacable enemy, and cried for vengeance.”23 Barney wanted Herrmann out as chairman, feeling that he had a conflict of interest as owner of the Cincinnati Reds. Dreyfuss had supported Herrmann in the past especially after Herrmann’s role in negotiating peace between the American and National Leagues in 1903. Dreyfuss felt that Herrmann had a history with and was too close to Ban Johnson. It was Johnson, in fact, who had nominated Herrmann as chairman.24 The business of baseball was evolving and a different kind of leadership was needed, and Dreyfuss pushed hard for a “neutral” chairman of the commission.

According to Spink, Dreyfuss’s first attempt to overthrow Herrmann was “a one man campaign” when he introduced his resolution to the National League meeting in December 1916.25 Harold Seymour notes that while Dreyfuss’s initial resolution failed, “his was never an entirely lone voice against Herrmann in National League councils.”26 The National Commission was struggling with other demanding problems, externally and within baseball. Organized baseball was dealing with the impact of war in Europe, anti-trust suits from the Federal League, player disputes, and allegations that Herrmann was “under Ban Johnson’s thumb”27 or unfavorable to American League clubs because of his conflict of interest.’

Two years after the Sisler case was over, another major dispute erupted involving a pitcher, Scott Perry of the Philadelphia Athletics. He had pitched briefly for the NL’s Boston Braves but left the team after 17 days. Perry played for some independent and minor league teams before signing to pitch for Connie Mack’s A’s .28 Perry, who won a few games for Philadelphia, was ordered to report to the Braves but Philadelphia obtained an injunction keeping him an Athletic. National League owners were upset and Dreyfuss cried foul, stating, “Herrmann decides against us we have to take it; he decides for us, and the American League goes to court.”29

Dreyfuss’s movement to make significant changes began to gather momentum during the postwar era. NL President John Heydler was unhappy by the way the commission handled a threatened players’ strike at the 1918 World Series. Spink wrote, “The entire incident left a nasty taste in everyone’s mouth. I have always felt that mercenary-minded players on those 1918 championship teams [Red Sox and Cubs] were mostly to blame; their judgment in pulling a strike at such a time was more than deplorable—it was downright stupid. Yet, the old Commission, especially Johnson and Herrmann, took a lot of abuse, and their conduct in dealing with the strikers was termed undignified. It was felt by many that it showed that the game needed a strong one-man head.”30 Later, two owners, including Red Sox magnate Harry Frazee approached William Howard Taft about replacing Herrmann, but he declined.31 NL President Heydler later conveyed to Spink that he realized the end of the three-man commission was near after the players’ strike in Boston. 32

Whether Ban Johnson was controlling Herrmann’s swing vote or Herrmann was trying to avoid civil litigation, the National Commission received more criticism in Johnson’s handling of pitcher Carl Mays’ defection from the Red Sox in 1920. Johnson suspended Mays, but the Red Sox traded him to the New York Yankees, claiming that they had not suspended him and defied Johnson’s power. The Yankees secured an injunction against the American League allowing Mays to pitch for them. This action caused alienation between Johnson and several AL clubs.33

As the power of the National Commission began to crumble, Barney Dreyfuss could only feel like he had accomplished what he set out to do in 1916. Several initiatives were under way to reform the leadership of the game. The final blow came in September 1920 when “the officialdom of Organized Baseball, ostensibly represented by a two-man National Commission, was in chaos.” That’s when the Black Sox Scandal broke and accelerated the movement toward a radical change in baseball and the hiring of Judge Landis.

The case of George Sisler pointed out, “Baseball and law have the same affinity that oil and water possess-they don’t mix, that’s all.”34 The National Commission, always mindful of welfare of the game, tried to avoid legal confrontations and in doing so created animosity among the magnates. Certainly Sisler had no idea when he signed that contract in 1911, he would challenge the structure of the game. The result of his action had a curious and interesting result: the game would be run by a Landis, a federal judge, and uniquely influenced by Rickey, a lawyer. 

SAM BERNSTEIN, MSW, is a school social worker in Elizabeth, New Jersey. When not rooting for the Mets, his main research interest is the life of Barney Dreyfuss.

 

Notes

1. Allen, Lee and Tom Meany. Kings of the Diamond. New York: Putnam, 1965, p. 104.

2. Smith, Lyall, “George Sisler as Told to Lyall Smith”, My Greatest Day in Baseball as told to John P. Carmichael and Other Sportswriters. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996, p. 158.

3. Lanigan, Ernest J. Baseball Hall of Fame Library player file on George Sisler.

4. Smith, p. 158.

5. The Sporting News, June 15, 1916.

6. Mann, Arthur. Branch Rickey: American in Action. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1957, p 82.

7. The Sporting News, June 15, 1916.

8. Mann, p. 60.

9. Lipman, David. Mr. Baseball: The Story of Branch Rickey, New York: Putnam, 1966, p. 39.

10. Lipman, p. 53.

11. Mann, pp. 60-61.

12. Biederman, Les. “Gorgeous George H. Sisler,” The Sporting News, February 25, 1953.

13. The Sporting News, June 15, 1916.

14. Spink, J. G. Taylor. Judge Landis and Twenty-Five Years of Baseball. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1947, p. 41.

15. Honig, Donald. The Greatest First Basemen of All Time. New York: Crown, 1988, p. 23.

16. Ward, John J. “The Famous Sisler Case,” Baseball Magazine, October 1916, p. 35.

17. Allen, Lee. Cooperstown Corner. Cleveland: SABR, 1990, p. 164.

18. The Sporting News, June 15, 1916.

19. The Sporting News, June 15, 1916.

20. Honig, p. 23.

21. “Dreyfuss vs. Herrmann,” Baseball Magazine, October 1916, p. 22.

22. Honig, p. 21.

23. Spink, p. 43. In 1945 Sisler stated to Lyall Smith (p. 158), “I didn’t know at the time I signed that contract I was stepping into a rumpus that went on and on until it finally involved the National Baseball Commission, the owners of two big league clubs and Judge Landis.”

24. Bruce, John E. “The Chief Justice of Baseball’s Supreme Court,” Baseball Magazine, February 1912, p. 54.

25. Spink, p. 43.

26. Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 261.

27. Seymour, p. 261.

28. Seymour, p. 262.

29. Seymour, p. 43.

30. Seymour, p. 45.

31. Seymour, p. 263.

32. Spink, p. 45.

33. White, G. Edward. Creating the National Pastime. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, p. 107.

34. Ward, p. 33.