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APBL RULES FLESHED OUT AT AUTUMN MEETINGS
ROSTER RULES & PLAYER REGULATIONS FINALIZED; APBL OFFICIALLY READY FOR BUSINESS

NEW YORK CITY (Nov 11-14, 1870) - The National Base Ball Organization’s Autumn Meetings took place over the previous four days at the familiar St. Nicholas Hotel, and as part of those meetings the clubs exiting for the American Professional Baseball League hammered out agreements on the rules & regulations of their new competition.

With the ever-respected author of “The Laws of Baseball”, Knickerbocker president Doc Adams, overseeing things, many of the outstanding issues facing the 1871 seasons were discussed, debated, and eventually agreed upon over the course of the four days.

First up, the makeup of the APBL. It was announced during midseason how the two groups of teams would likely be split up, but here it was made official:

• COLONIAL CONFERENCE: Alleghany, Flour City, Mass. Bay, Niagara, Shamrock, St. John’s
• METROPOLITAN CONFERENCE: American, Excelsior, Gotham, Kings Co., Knickerbocker, Orange

The second order of business came from the NBBO. With a professional league now in existence, the Executive Committee wanted to differentiate between the APBL & NBBO and came up with a classification for both competitions:

• PROFESSIONAL LEAGUE (PRO): American Professional Baseball League
• REGIONAL LEAGUE (REG): National Base Ball Organization

Now it was time for a rough outline of the schedule:

• Each team shall play every other team in its conference eighteen times, for a total of 90 games, beginning in May. Teams will play a pair of three-game series each week, totaling six games. The season will be fifteen weeks in length.

• The first-place team in each conference will contest a seven-game series for the APBL championship after the end of the season.

The winners of each conference would be playing for a new cup as well. Executives from the five founding APBL clubs signed a contract with Tiffany & Co. (NOTE: it was founded in 1837), a Connecticut luxury goods company newly established in Manhattan and noted for its excellence in Sterling silver craftsmanship, to create a trophy to be given out at the climax of the first APBL Championship Series that would henceforth be known as the “Founders Cup”.

Next on the list was the basic roster rules which, were quickly agreed upon with this decree:

• Basic roster regulations for the clubs of the APBL shall remain identical to those of the NBBO. Each club may have 18 men on its Senior Roster and 18 men on its Reserve Roster. All club members may take part in the April training exercises, and there are no restrictions on who teams can sign with respect to country of birth.

Now it was time to discuss finances. First to be decreed was what a professional team should charge its attending fans:

• While ticket prices in the NBBO were 10¢ per person, formal discussions with club patrons have found that they are more than willing to pay 25¢ per ticket to attend games between teams in a fully professional competition.

(In real life, the National Association charged 50¢ per ticket when it began play in 1871. Based on the AI financials in OOTP, I don’t know how those teams weren’t swimming in cash.)

Then came the most important part of the discussions: rules regarding how much players should be paid and when they could move clubs. In the NBBO players typically worked on agreements of one or two years with the clubs they were playing for, as it was supposed to be an amateur competition with players leaving to work their regular jobs as soon as the season ended.

In the APBL, baseball would be the player’s job. That meant much more formal governance regarding the players, and how teams dealt with them, was needed.

First came the official decree regarding pay:

• Given that the average weekly wage packet for skilled laborers is somewhere in the region of $15 per week for six days of work, players on Senior Rosters in the APBL should be considered skilled laborers and guaranteed pay of at least $15 per week. For a fifteen-week season, that would guarantee a seasonal wage of at least $225 per player. Clubs may pay their Senior Roster players whatever they wish beyond that amount.

• Players on a club’s Reserve Roster may be professional or they may be on a Reserve Roster Contract, which gives the player amateur status.

It was estimated by some executives at the meetings that an “Average Quality” Senior Roster player should expect to make at least $400 per season, with the best players in the sport making in excess of $1,500.

Now it was time for the very fine details – regulations regarding player movement:

• Greenhorns in the APBL shall be bound to their initial clubs for four years, a length of time similar to an apprenticeship, unless the club decides grant them their release. After that four-year period, the player shall be granted their “Freedom of Agency”, provided they have not already stated their desire to remain with the club.

• After their Greenhorn season, APBL players will be able to request a raise and have a New York judge act as an arbiter to decide if an increase in pay is warranted.

• Time spent in the NBBO by players who were formally paid will count toward Professional Service Time for any players who move between the two competitions.

And then came the conundrum: contracts. How long should they be? Two years? Five years? Eight years? Life? It was thought that having a maximum “Personal Services Contract” length of four years to match the Free Agency length made sense, but some club executives were worried that star players would move around too much. That led long-time Gotham president Johnny Morton to make an off-the-cuff suggestion: “Well, if you really want someone to work for you that badly why not just give him a job offer that’s good for a decade?”

There was the winner. Clubs could offer Senior Roster players professional contracts that would last for up to ten years, or most of their career. Of course, there would be an inherent risk that a player would decline and lose their place in the team over that time, but these ten-year offers would likely only go to the best of the best: the Creightons, the Jensens, etc.

Award discussion was easy. The APBL would offer the same kinds of awards the NBBO did, and with the same names.

All-Star Game discussion was similar, but with a slight twist. With only six teams per conference Adams and the executives figured that it would be for the best if there were only twenty men representing each, similar to the first few years of the NBBO All-Star Game. Also, everyone felt that all twelve teams should be represented.

And that was that. The APBL now had a format, a schedule, a structure, a rulebook, and it was open & ready for business.