Federal League

Baltimore Terrapins History

By Wikipedia

The Baltimore Terrapins were one of the least successful teams in the short-lived Federal League of professional baseball from 1914 to 1915, but their brief existence led to litigation that led to an important legal precedent still intact as of 2005.

At a glance... BALTIMORE TERRAPINS Franchise Facts Established 1914 Disbanded 1915 Located Baltimore Owners Carrol W. Rasin Ned Hanlon John S. Wilson Jr. Harry Goldman President Carrol W. Rasin Year by Year Results W L % 1914  84 70 .545 1915  47 107 .305 Affiliations Federal League (1914-1915) Postseason/Titles FL Titles (0) Nicknames Baltimore Terrapins (1914-1915) Ballparks Oriole Park IV (1914-1915) (A.K.A. Terrapin Park) Top Performances Single-Season Career

While the 1914 team posted a respectable 84-70 record and finished only 4.5 games out of first place under player-manager Otto Knabe, the team was far less than successful than expected at the box office, even though four of the eight teams in the league (Chicago, Brooklyn, Pittsburgh and St. Louis) were competition with one and even two (Chicago and St. Louis) other major league teams in the same cities.

In an attempt to turn this situation around and attract a marquee player to help them at the box office, the 1915 team recruited Chief Bender of the American League champion Philadelphia Athletics, effectively ending one of the most successful dynasties in major league baseball history.

Bender had come off an impressive 17-3 season, 7 shutouts and a 2.26 E.R.A. in 1914. But his 1915 season at Baltimore was perhaps the lowest point of his Hall of Fame career when he slumped to a 4-16 record, no shutouts and a 3.99 E.R.A. Baltimore's collapse to a 47-107 record, 40 games out of first, was overshadowed only by the collapse of Bender's former team who went from a 99-53 league championship season to a dismal 43-109 record, 58.5 games out of first in 1915.

Bender, Philadelphia and the Baltimore Terrapins never made a full recovery from 1915.

The incident did show the Federal League could compete seriously with the National League and American League on a professional baseball level and led to the buy-out truce which ended the Federal League for good. However, the Baltimore team's owners were not offered a part in this buyout.

Bender went on to play three more seasons, but never pitched more than 125 innings in a year, nor garnered more than 8 wins.

The Philadelphia Athletics followed with last place finishes every year through 1921, and finally managed to move ahead of the last place Boston Red Sox in 1922, before finishing above .500 for the first time in 1925 as the next Connie Mack dynasty began to form in the shadow of the New York Yankees.

As irony would have it, Baltimore, the town where the great Babe Ruth got his start just before the Federal League started and where the Babe begin his career with the Boston Red Sox in 1914 with the rival American League would not see major league baseball again until 1954, when the former St. Louis Browns moved into town and became the current-day Baltimore Orioles.

Terrapins George Suggs, seen here in a 1915 Cracker Jacks baseball card, had 24 wins for the Terrapins in 1914.

Legacy

The owners in Baltimore were under the impression that they should be entitled to the International League (IL) franchise in Baltimore as part of any peace settlements. As neither side in the Federal League vs. American and National League dispute wanted the "question of Baltimore" to hold up a peace agreement, they agreed to put a committee in charge of deciding what to do with Baltimore. A commission was formed consisting of the National Commission (Johnson, Herrmann, Tener), Federal League President Gilmore, President Barrow of the International League, a representative of the Baltimore FL franchise, and a representative of the Buffalo FL franchise (because there was also the question of whether or not the Buffalo franchise would be allowed to absorb the IL franchise in the city).

The Baltimore FL owners were not happy with the agreement made by their fellow owners and kept the 1915 FL antitrust suit alive in early 1916 hoping for damages. Baltimore initially won a $420,000 award in April of 1919, but the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed the judgment in April 1921.

The case ultimately led to the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that the scheduling and playing of "base ball games", as the decision called it, did not constitute "interstate commerce" in any sense envisioned by the Framers of the United States Constitution and therefore the Sherman Act and other federal laws and regulations did not apply to baseball. The case, Federal Baseball Club v. National League, was not ultimately decided until 1922.

This precedent set in this case has not been deemed to extend to other U.S. professional sports, making it seemingly both anomalous and anachronistic, as major league baseball is now a multi-billion dollar industry, but later Supreme Court decisions have failed to overturn the precedent, nor has Congress acted to change the situation.

Federal League sources/bibliography:
The Federal League of 1914-1915 by Marc Okkonen.
The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present by David Pietrusza.
May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy by Andrew Zimbalist.
Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia by John Thorn, et al.