League and player wars caused great strife amidst journalists, but Richter encouraged cooperation throughout the profession. Although Richter sought to unite fellow journalists, the handful of player’s wars divided journalists across the nation. In 1890, the Brotherhood War, the revolt that culminated because of resentment of the players against the owners restrictive policies, divided sportswriters across the nation and split the association of sportswriters. Sportswriters had opposing views of who to blame for the problems in baseball. The derisive factions of journalists supporting players or owners caused resentment and hatred among many writers (Richter, 1914).
As a result of costly bidding wars, the American Association, financially ailing, surrendered to the National League. Left war-torn and dying in 1891, the president of the St. Louis Browns Christopher Von der Ahe, the American Associations’ last hope, met with several league owners to discuss plans to merge with the National League. On December 7, the National League paid $135,000 to the owners to compensate investors of the other Association clubs. The debt was assumed equally between the clubs of the league by taking ten percent of the gate receipts and four Association clubs -- St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, and Louisville -- were added to the National League, forming one unified league of twelve teams (Seymour, 1960; Spalding, 1926; Alexander, 1991).
Because of his plethora of rule book knowledge, Richter was a member on the rules committee in the earliest baseball association. During his time as a member of the rules committee, he, along with his protégée Chadwick, crusaded to strike a balance between offense and defense, emphasizing the scientific aspects of the game. One of most lasting and profound suggestion in the development of rules may have been the lengthening of the pitcher’s mound to 60-feet, 6-inches, balancing offense and defense. Both men also were instrumental in creating records of batting, fielding, and hitting that were “much appreciated by the lovers and students of the game, and greatly expatiated upon the writers of the great sport” (Richter, 1914, p. 173). Along with founding baseball writers before him, Richter influenced the development of many of baseball’s rules during his time at the Sporting Life and on prominent rules committees such as the Joint Playing Rules Committee of the National League and American Association and its predecessor the National Association’s Committee on Rules. While on the committee, Richter and Chadwick suggested a number of changes in playing and scoring rules such as changing the definition of a stolen base and earned runs, along with the placing of strike-outs in the game summary, among others (Reach Guide, 1926; Hardy, 1990; Seymour, 1960; Richter, 1914).
After gaining clout with the powerful league owners and officials, Richter greatly impacted the amalgamation of the National and American Association into a twelve-team National League in 1892. Richter predicted the ultimate demise of the American Association and the ultimate success of the National League with remarkable precision. He cited that the older league would succeed because of more prestige, experience, better management, and more capital. The founding baseball journalist stated that the “associations promoters were generally less competent than their league counterparts” (Voigt, 1966, p. 125). Richter’s pre-war prediction that the National League would eventually overtake the American Association because of its experience, management, and prestige was remarkably accurate. With the press recognized as a major power in baseball, he impacted the deal by working closely with the president of the Cleveland club Frank Robinson, who was credited as the devisor of the peace plans. He endorsed the plan in the Sporting Life and asserted that the plan “incorporate(ed) all the modern ideas awakened within the recent eventful years and developed at the ever-memorable St. Louis conference” (Seymour, 1960, p. 261).
Richter became disillusioned with the National League after it reached its climax with a firm grasp on a monopoly. He asserted in the Sporting Life that the National League was “arrogantly determined to maintain its monopoly and crush out opposition by any means, yet in mortal dread of business opposition” (Seymour, 1960, 272). He believed that the National League was exhibiting a “mercenary fear of diminished profits and base hope of financial gain” (p. 306). According to Richter, the decline in good management, along with the factional wars, corruption, “alienation of press and public, their flagrant disloyalty to friends and supporters and their tyrannical treatment of players” would lead to the League’s demise (p. 306). At the dawning of a new century, the National League was left in its poorest condition since its inception, and the stage was set for the introduction of the League’s fiercest rival.
Because of the ailing financial health and the poor conditions in the National League’s monopoly, Ban Johnson decided to take advantage of the timing and extend his Western League in 1900. With the backing of former players such as John McGraw and Connie Mack, the newly formed American League’s charter clubs of Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Washington sold players on more lucrative salaries and better playing conditions. Richter took this opportunity to jump ship into cahoots with the American League’s leaders (Alexander, 1991).
Richter endeavored to explain to the other journalists, readers, and anyone involved the intricacies of the reserve clause and the legal consequences that abounded through his extensive “Law and Ball” series in the Sporting Life. By asserting "if the league contract should be judicial sustained, ... it can hold (players) indefinitely," he seemed to be very aware that the players were still under enslaving contracts (Sporting Life, 1901, p.6). Yet, he seemed to condemn any player that would seek to break contracts for financial gain by stating that the players not only "play(ed) off the two leagues against each other for every dollar in sight" but also "have even broken signed bargains of their own making" (p.6). Instead, he argued in what he perceived was the best interest of the sport. He stated that the courts should not rule on technicalities because "this would be unsatisfactory to the baseball world at large, as it is important that the contract in all its phases be fully and broadly considered, and its legal status be definitely decided, so that leagues and clubs may learn where they legally stand at present, and how to adjust themselves in future if an adverse decision create new conditions” (p.6).
Richter’s explanation of the intricacies of the reserve clause addressed the potential legal difficulties of players who jumped from one team to another to sign more lucrative contracts. He was ahead of his time in explaining the potential legal implications of the reserve clause. On April 23, 1902, a representative of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court presented three Philadelphia Athletics’ players including Napoleon Lajoie with an injunction granted to the Philadelphia Phillies not allowing them to play for the Athletics. In 1900, the three players allegedly had jumped contracts with the Phillies to play for Connie Mack’s Athletics. The contract with the Philadelphia Phillies contained a reserve clause, ensuring the club the right to employ the players in future seasons. In the end, Justice William Potter overturned an early decision to deny the injunction and stated that the contract with the Phillies was binding (White, 1996).
In the midst of a costly war for players between the National League and the new-rival American League, Richter pleaded for many of baseball’s rules to be amended to perfect the sports’ integral balance between offense and defense. He suggested a number of changes in the rules in his editorials such as “Change the Rules” in the Sporting Life. In 1901, he elaborated why it was important for the League to repeal the foul-ball and hit-by-pitcher rules. He unabashedly argued that the “amendments of the playing rules recently adopted by the National League have now passed the gamut of critical inspection by magnates, scribes, players and public, and the result is -- universal condemnation" (Sporting Life, 1901, p. 1). He also stated that “the foul ball rule is too radical an innovation and along with the lightening of the penalty of being hit by pitcher, places too heavy a handicap on the batsman and correspondingly increases the power of the pitcher" (p.1). His former protégé Chadwick agreed stating, “The fundamental principle in making amendments in the rules each season is to take advantage of the lessons taught by the working of the existing code of the previous year so as to equalize the process of the attack and the defense in the game." Richter was never slow or anxious to speak about a rule that he did not like. In 1904, with the foul-strike rule still in place, he stated the rule “was never any good, never will be, and the longer it is tried the more unsatisfactory it will be” (Richter, 1904, p.1). He further commented that three years of bickering about the rule “proves its inherent unfitness for a place in the playing code (p.1)”
Apparent that the new league would not go away, the newly-elected National League president Harry Pulliam decided to make a deal with the American League on January 10, 1903. The National League treated the American League’s status as a new entity, and the two leagues agreed to respect current reserve lists, adopt a common set of rules, and allow the American League to have a club in New York City if they did not move into Pittsburgh. The new National Agreement set forth player contracts with reserve clauses, promised not to change circuits without the consent of the majority of managers, and picked a three-man National Commission, comprised of two presidents and one chairman to be picked by the presidents. Richter influenced these developments in the National Agreement of 1903 by introducing the contractual methods proposed in the meeting. In 1904, Richter assisted in discussions of the newly formed National Association. After the National League agreed to implement Richter’s suggestions in contractual methods, Richter supported the association, stating that “the National Association is bound to remain indefinitely what it now is -- a big factor, if not the biggest factor, in the professional base ball world” (Sporting Life, 1904, p.1). Richter wanted its influence to “never grow less” (p.1). (Voigt, 1966; Spalding, 1926; Alexander, 1991).
Richter impacted baseball through his role in the promotion of Organized Baseball and sportsmanship in the game, and his influence in the gambling cases that plagued baseball and threatened to lead to its ultimate demise. He shaped baseball into a profitable enterprise by acting as promoter, advisor, rule maker, and mouthpiece. The early baseball journalist did more for the game than simply recapturing narrative. In addition, he had prominent roles in many areas such as promotion, record keeping, and public opinion making. Through his extensive articles, Richter revolutionized the industry, figuring prominently into the development of professionalism in baseball. Efforts of early sports journalist, such as Richter, have no doubt been the “largest single factor in the widespread interest in, and popularity of, the great game” (Richter, 1914, p. 299). Baseball journalists acted as a part of the intricate system of supportive mechanisms surrounding baseball (Guttman,1978; Hardy, 1990; Seymour, 1960).
Richter acted as promoter of baseball by supplying his readers with the dates, times, and locations of games, writing rulebooks, technique guides, and in depth articles featuring certain teams and players, and participating in forums on sportsmanship and codes of conduct. He impacted the promotion of baseball, directly contributing to its prosperity, by writing in-depth articles advocating the virtues of baseball and featuring current and historical information about teams and players in his early newspaper career, weekly in the Sporting Life, in the Reach Official American League Guide, edited by Richter from 1899 until his death in 1926, and in his 1914 history of baseball, Reach Official American League Guide (Reach Guide, 1926).
Richter's Sporting Life served as the mouthpiece of the national pastime by providing commentary on league play, providing insight into the league's decisions and supplying its audience with records and historical information on the sport. The Sporting Life asserted, in an article written by Chadwick, that baseball developed from a children's game, opposing the previous view promoted by Albert Goodwill Spalding. By refuting the fact that Abner Doubleday invented the sport, Richter's journal created a great controversy that wielded much public attention. Richter stated emphatically that baseball originated from the children’s game of One Old Cat and the early version of town ball. This perspective put the young journalist at odds with Spalding, who wanted to ensure that the public saw baseball as without a doubt an American phenomenon. With information such as the latter, the Sporting Life provided the reader with much attention and historical insight into the game (Richter, 1914).
In addition to providing historical insight, Richter always argued that the game of baseball provided physical and psychological benefits to its audience. In his frequent Pittsburgh Gazettecolumn called “The Spectator's Gain,” Richter asserted “to those who deprecate popular interest in and attendance upon baseball games on the ground that nothing is gained except by active participants” that attendance does benefit the working man. The article stated that men “are drawn out into the open air” and “freed from the cares of business” which helps them “approach the next day's work refreshed” (Sporting Life, 1904, p.1).
Richter convinced his readers that involvement in baseball "contributed to both individual self-improvement and national betterment" and thus created a massive public relations campaign (Rose, 1980, p. 13). Richter promoted baseball as an important pastime, which advocated Middle American values and pioneer qualities such as courage, patience, ruggedness, and teamwork. By invoking these values, sportswriters "improv(ed) the sport's image and combat(ed) competition from other major amusements (p.17). Richter and other early sports journalists cared about the promotion of baseball because their own “personal careers were wrapped up in it” and by doing so they were “advancing themselves professionally” (Rose, 1980, p. 17; Richter, 1914; Sporting Life, 1903; Sporting Life, 1904).
Richter advocated sportsmanship in his writings and sought to deter fans, players, and coaches from displaying ill-mannered tactics. Prominent and influential journalists encouraged players to “quietly acquiesce” to an umpire's decision, displaying at all times a “gentlemanly demeanor” and exhibiting “honorable and upright play” (Seymour, 1960, p. 68). Richter and his protégé Chadwick criticized players for drinking, gambling, and other vices. Many of the contributions that Richter made to the ideal of sportsmanship paralleled the influence and contributions of Chadwick. Both Richter and Chadwick wrote a plethora of information on the subject. While seeking to promote the game, he and his mentor were instrumental in the formation of rule and technique guides that engrained virtuous values and the rules of baseball into the reader (Voigt, 1966; Hardy, 1990).
Richter incessantly advocated “clean baseball,” constantly warring against the evil of gambling and corruption, which was beginning to surface in Organized Baseball (Sporting Life, 1905, p.1). He applauded the efforts of American League President Ban Johnson, who gave notice against un-sportsmanlike conduct. With warning shadows only beginning to loom onto the nation’s pastime, Richter warned the nation of the potential impact and danger of gambling on baseball. While American presidents such as William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt bragged about the virtues of the sport, Richter began to write about the perils of gambling, focusing on the “disgusting Jack Taylor case, which has inflicted considerable injury upon the hitherto unsullied fame of base ball as the only absolutely honest professional sport” (p.1). He made his readers aware of the Taylor case from its onset. The Sporting Life reported every detail of the National Commissions’ investigation of Taylor, focusing on his alleged throwing of a game between St. Louis and Pittsburgh on July 30, 1904. He asserted that the case of Taylor “cannot wholly be repaired no mater what the outcome of the investigation” (p.2). He was brought to trial on two charges: one count of “conspir(ing) with diverse gamblers and others to lose the game in question” and a second count of “conduct in violation of the constitution of the National League and prejudicial to the best interest of the game” (p.2). Taylor’s lawyers pleaded with the court that he was intoxicated on the day in question and “in no condition to pitch” (p.2). The strongest point in his case was the testimony of Michael Grady, his catcher, who claimed that Taylor pitched the balls he called. On February 14, 1905, Taylor was inevitably found not guilty on the first count, but paid a $300 fine after being found guilty of the second count.
After the Taylor case, Richter asserted that the one “accused of crookedness and bad conduct” was “extremely lucky to get off so cheaply” for his actions that “disgraced himself and his profession” (Sporting Life, 1905, p.1). The seemingly omniscient journalist further warned that gambling, “an ill wind that blows nobody good,” was “growing to menacing proportions” (p.1). He warned league officials and owners that the “evil is the steadily increasing volume of wagers on major league baseball games” (p.1). He also stated that Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis all had problems with the perilous evil. Richter declared that the “individual clubs” must enforce National League laws yet realized that “no ball club can suppress discreetly conducted verbal betting in its parks” (p.1). One of the first writers to foresee the potential dangers of gambling, Richter knew “that something ought to be done” (p.1). Although in 1913, the American Magazine asserted that “nobody dreams of crookedness or shadiness in baseball,” Richter had long before noticed the problems of corruption (Riess, 1980, p. 21). He warned of the potential problems of corruption in the Sporting Life until 1917, when its doors were forever closed due the outbreak of World War I (Voigt, 1983).
The 1919 Chicago White Sox dominated baseball with an all-star roster, winning one hundred games and the American League pennant, yet two elements the team lacked were teamwork and intelligence. The team was comprised of players who refused to speak to each other and poor, naïve athletes such as “Shoeless” Joe Jackson. The owner Charles Comiskey treated the players unfairly, requiring them to pay for their uniforms to be laundered and paying them slight salaries. These conditions, along with the prevalence of gambling, set the stage for the throwing of the 1919 World Series. The gamblers bribed eight Chicago players including Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, and Chick Gandil, promising them a total of $ 80,000 to throw the eight game series. Many of the high officials of both leagues including Ban Johnson knew of the fix, yet no one sought to look into the situation until syndicated columnist Hugh Fullerton of the Sporting News investigated the series. Although Cicotte and Jackson confessed to corruption in court in 1920, the eight White Sox were found innocent after the evidence mysteriously disappeared. Yet, the damage that Richter warned the leaders of baseball of had been done. As a result of the scandal, Organized Baseball could no longer ignore the cancerous evil that corrupted the game and threatened to disillusion Middle America. In 1921, baseball sought to remedy the problem, selecting Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, a proven friend of baseball after exempting the league from anti-trust laws, as the one-man governing body. Thus, a new era was ushered in (Alexander, 1991).
Richter was the last of the founding sports journalists to promote the sport of baseball. As mentioned earlier, Richter, along with early baseball journalists, promoted baseball as the National Pastime and a healthy recreational activity. Because of the success these founding journalists had in the promotion of baseball, the next generation of writers focused on promoting sports heroes.
Richter recorded historical information, along with rules and guidelines of the game in both the Reach Official American League Guide and Richter’s History and Records of Baseball. He edited the Reach Guide, a ‘year in review’ publication featuring team and individual records of the American and National Leagues, the chronological summary of the baseball year, and information on the rules and guidelines of the game. Thus, he paved the way for future ball players by aiding in their understanding of the rules and for future journalists by supplying them with thorough records and history of years past. In the annual guide, Richter also included highlights from the year such as the Presidents’ Dinner at the Victoria Hotel, at which he was an honored speaker. In 1914, he embellished upon his Brief History of Baseball, published in 1909, by writing Richter’s History and Records of Baseball. In the book, he detailed the history of the National League, along with all of the warring leagues, including the American League; supplied the history of the minor leagues; printed individual and team records; and included a history of baseball journalists. The thorough volume supplied future writers with a framework of baseball’s history with which to pull knowledge and understanding (Richter, 1914; Riess, 1980).
The next generation of baseball writers sensationalized players into legendary heroes of Greek proportion, tending to make players “larger than life” (Oriard, 1993, p. 183). Sports writers of the 1920’s sought to find “personalities (they) could cultivate” (Evenson, 1993, p. 233). Journalists such as Grantland Rice and Arch Wood used the “same sill and shrewd promotion which successfully hawked automobiles” to sell “athletes to the public” (Rader, 1983, p. 11). They often sold these athletes by selling images that “overwhelmed the athlete’s actual accomplishments” (p. 11). Because of journalistic promotion and some personal talent, “one could still catapult to fame and fortune without years of arduous training” in baseball (p. 12). Ghost writers such as Ford Frick who wrote about Babe Ruth were prominent during the era. Ruth flew in the face of proponents of scientific and brainy baseball and “seemed to embody the public preference for a compensatory hero with mere brute strength rather than one who exercised intelligence” (p. 14). Critics believed newspapers were becoming “gigantic commercial operations” that only interested “larger and larger masses of undifferentiated readers” through larger than life sports pages (p. 234).
If it were not for the work of Richter and other founding journalists, the baseball writers of the 1920s could not have promoted sports heroes such as Ruth to such a large extent. Richter provided the foundation for those sports journalists that came after him through his promotion of baseball to its apex as the National Pastime.