The Great Baseball Revolt

The Rise and Fall of the 1890 Players League

By: Robert B. Ross

Narrated by: Gary Galone

Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

The Players League, formed in 1890, was a short-lived professional baseball league controlled and owned, in part, by the players themselves, a response to the National League’s salary cap and “reserve rule” which bound players for life to one particular team. Led by John Montgomery Ward, the Players League was a star-studded group that included most of the best players of the National League who bolted, not only to gain control of their wages but also to share ownership of the teams.

Lasting only a year, the league impacted both the professional sports and labor politics of athletes and nonathletes alike. The Great Baseball Revolt is a historic overview of the rise and fall of the Players League which fielded teams in Boston, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.

Though it marketed itself as a working-class league, the players were underfunded and had to turn to wealthy capitalists for much of their start-up costs, including the new ballparks. It was in this context that the league intersected with the organized labor movement and, in many ways, challenged by organized labor to be "by and for the people".

In its only season, the Players League outdrew the National League in fan attendance. The Great Baseball Revolt brings to life a compelling cast of characters and a mostly forgotten but important time in professional sports when labor politics affected both athletes and nonathletes.

"Makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the early days of the business of baseball." (New York Journal of Books)

"This text is outstanding." (New York Labor History)

“You will absolutely love this book." (Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation)

©2016 Robert B. Ross (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

What could have been

Very enlightening history of baseball at a crossroads, just as American business was in its Gilded Age. For a fleeting moment it seemed like there may have been an equitable business model to use as a template for sports entertainment. But, as it turns out, money does indeed talk. Greed, along with poor decisions, spelled doom for the great experiment. In the fullness of time, some of what was in dispute, such as salary caps and the reserve clause, have been resolved, notwithstanding MLB's antitrust exemption. But one has to wonder, given an alternative history of the business of baseball, if the game could have grown in a more healthy fashion, perhaps reigning in the boomerang effect of exorbitant modern salaries.

Great baseball history

In “The Great Baseball Revolt,” Robert B. Ross examines the environment in the early days of professional baseball in the United States that led to the formation of the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players organizing the Players’ League in 1890. The new league formed to counter National League’s and American Association’s control of the players, offering them to play in a league void of the dreaded reserve clause, and giving ballplayers shared ownership of their team.


The author does a fantastic job of summarizing the control mechanisms employed by the owners to keep the players under their thumbs. The owners maintained local monopolies, territorial rights to exclude competition. The owners controlled player movement with the reserve clause, and buying and selling talent. As noted in the book, owners would require players to purchase, clean, and replace their uniforms. Teams charged players fifty cents per day for travel expenses on road trips. Often times, players were fined for profanity and even blacklisted for trivial offenses. Chicago owner Albert Spalding even hired Pinkerton agents to spy on his own players.


Led by the versatile John Montgomery Ward, the Players’ League outdrew the Nation League in 1890. However, Ross documents the reasons why the league only survived one season. The Pittsburgh franchise was so financially strapped, and turned to amateur players as replacements to cut costs and finish out the season. In the end, only the Boston franchise turned a marginal profit, leaving the league in the red. The stronger teams would merge with their National League counterparts. As Ross points out, in the coming years, the average player’s salaries declined.


Ross does a superb job establishing the Players’ League’s legacy in baseball history, and describing the aftermath of its demise. In my humble opinion, Ross hits a home run with “The Great Baseball Revolt.”