Free Pinstripe Empire by Marty Appel Page A

thirty thousand from the previous year.

Chapter Four
    DURING THE YANKEES’ FIRST TWO decades, one issue above all stood out in public debate.
    Sunday baseball.
    All of professional baseball had been dealing with the matter long before the American League came along, so it certainly didn’t catch Farrell and Devery by surprise. But they joined in efforts to reverse the ban on playing games on Sunday, one deeply set in America’s traditional ties to the church. A politician was more likely to win votes with the support of clergymen than with their opposition.
    At the start of the twentieth century, Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati were the only major league towns that allowed Sunday baseball. It was not until the 1910s that Detroit, Cleveland, and Washington joined them, recognizing how wartime workers needed a day at the ballpark to unwind.
    But New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh remained holdouts. Bills were periodically introduced in the state legislatures, but they made little progress.
    Today, Sundays are the the most lucrative attendance day of the week. It’s the reason that baseball leagues never have an odd number of teams: If they did, someone would be idle on Sunday.
    The main argument against Sunday baseball had always been that it distracted people from church attendance. While charging admission was the most severe flaunting of the law, even amateur teams could find themselves under arrest, depending on the passion the local police held for enforcement. It was supposed to be a day of rest. For organized groups like theAnti-Saloon League and the Sabbatarians, the passion of this fight was equal to today’s polarization over abortion. It would occupy the battlefield of public opinion for decades. The ban lasted in Boston until 1932 and in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh until 1934. Few fans today even know that it was once such a great issue.
    Proponents argued that baseball had grown into a wonderful leisure activity, a national pastime that embodied wholesome qualities. Wealthier people were going off to play golf or ride horses on Sunday, but the working class—people who commonly worked six days a week—were being deprived.
    It was pointed out that teens could sneak into saloons on Sunday but didn’t have a baseball game as an option. There were cases of arrests and fines for those even caught playing the game recreationally.
    Of course, Frank Farrell owned so many saloons, he tended to be quiet on the matter. He was going to be fine either way.
    New York’s teams sought ways around the ban. A ten-thousand-seat field in Ridgewood, Queens, called Wallace’s Ridgewood Grounds was a place to play on Sunday, even if the games were billed as exhibitions. It was located at the crosshairs of Wyckoff and Irving avenues and Weirfield and Covert streets. Teams would get around the no-admission rule by allowing everyone in for free but requiring that they purchase a scorecard for the equivalent of a ticket. Ordinarily a scorecard was five cents. At Ridgewood, it could be as much as seventy-five cents. And there you might see the Highlanders take on a team like the Brooklyn Field Club, or whatever team was available to face Keeler and Chesbro and the rest. The players would share in the proceeds of the Sunday games. On occasion the local gentry protested, sometimes even getting Griffith himself arrested.
    In 1909, the Highlanders played a Sunday exhibition in Jersey City, and the club owners handed out notices to fans not to cheer, so as not to arouse suspicion among the local police. The game was played in silence.
    The Brooklyn Superbas (forerunners of the Dodgers), claiming they had territorial control over Ridgewood, tried to stop the Highlanders from playing there, forcing them to appear only when Brooklyn was out of town. Ultimately, the Highlanders ceded the territory to the Superbas and found other places to play. But for New Yorkers, Ridgewood Field was ground zero for the Sunday baseball feud,