Major League Quotes

"Baseball, as at present played, is not a brutal game like slugball, but a rowdy game, a riotous game, a brawling, disgraceful game, and a game presided over by umpires whose decisions are not respected and whose penalties are not imposed, because players are allowed to violate the rules of the game by talking to, browbeating, and menacing the umpires.”

Source	Author	Date
Chicago Tribune		January 18, 1898

"If [Ban] Johnson meets with the objection of the major league in an effort to revive another American Association, another baseball war will result; a war wider of scope and more important, in the issues that would stand and fall, than the Brotherhood fight of 1890."

Source	Author	Date
Washington Post		December 28, 1899

"There is no doubt in my mind that the parties mean business. It strikes me the American League people have secured an ideal location for their business.” — D.L. Prendergast after Ban Johnson and Connie Mack secured a location for Boston's Huntington Avenue Grounds

Source	Author	Date
Chicago Tribune		January 18, 1901

”To us it looked as if the National Leaguers hoping to choke off the expanding American League were actually aiding in the launching of the new organization. We decided we would go even farther than we originally intended." — Ban Johnson

Source	Author	Date
Chicago Tribune	Irving Vaughan	January 24, 1929

“If the National League men had set out to help the American League along on the quickest road to victory, they could not have chosen a better way than by the fraternal wrangling and the effect it will have on the public.”

Source	Author	Date
Chicago Tribune		March 10, 1901

“It is expected that the raid which has been mostly on the American League side will be carried to extremes never dreamed of before, and that the National League will try to do a little rustling on its own account."

Source	Author	Date
Boston Globe		January 1, 1902
Up to that point the American League had been raiding the Nationals of their players, but the Globe speculated that the Nationals were about to turn the tables and begin a raid of their own while also attempting to get their players back through legal means.

“There is nothing in the constitution or playing rules of the National League which requires its victorious club to submit its championship honors to a contest with a victorious club in a minor league.” — Giants owner John T. Brush

Source	Author	Publisher	Date	Page
The History of the World Series Since 1903	Glenn Dickey	New York: Stein and Day/Publishers	1984	21
Brush's comment came on the heels of his refusal to allow his National League champion Giants to face the American League champion Red Sox in the 1904 World Series.

“I know the American League and its methods. I ought to, for I paid for my knowledge…they still have my money.” — John McGraw

Source	Author	Publisher	Date	Page
John McGraw	Charles Alexander	New York: Viking Penguin Inc.	1988	109
McGraw was giving his reasons for not wanting to play the Red Sox in the 1904 World Series.