The headline in the Red Cloud (Neb.) Chief on July 25, 1902 was startling by anyone’s measure. SUNDAY BASEBALL RESULTS IN RIOT AT NEBRASKA CITY! SHERIFF ATTEMPTS ARREST OF PLAYERS.
The great baseball riot of
1902 did not make it into Nebraska’s history books. It was one event in a
long series of conflicts, some of them ugly, over one of the most remarkable
and heated political issues of the last century. Nebraska was not alone.
Debates over the morality of engaging in "common labor" and
recreation on Sunday raged all over the country.
Until 1913 playing
baseball in Nebraska on Sunday was reason enough for the sheriff to throw a
team in jail. The Nebraska Supreme Court singled out baseball as an
inappropriate activity for what was regarded as “a day of rest” in the secular
law and most Christian churches.
In the late 1800s and
early 1900s many states had “Sunday laws” or blue laws. Nebraska’s statute
banned a whole list of things that clergy assumed would not be to God's liking.
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| Headline from the Red Cloud (Neb) Chief, July 1902 |
“If any person of the age
of fourteen years or upward shall be found on the first day of the week,
commonly called Sunday, sporting, rioting, quarreling, hunting, fishing, or
shooting he or she shall be fined in a sum not exceeding twenty dollars or be
confined in the county jail for a term not exceeding twenty days or both at the
discretion of the court.”
Strict interpretations of
the Bible shaped almost every aspect of secular law at the time. Keeping
the Sabbath holy is one of the Ten Commandments. References appear
throughout the Bible
(Leviticus 23:3: “Six days shall work be done, but
on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall
do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.”).
That one commandment put
many devout Christians at odds with the other passion of the day:
baseball. This was a time when many Nebraska towns hosted minor league teams.
Thousands of people filled the stands at games all over the state. A winning
team was a matter of civic pride.
Community attitudes about
Sunday recreation varied greatly. In Omaha one local team ignored the
protests from some ministers. It wasn't a secret. There were ads in
the paper. and played Sunday baseball starting in 1900. Sandy Griswold,
a sports columnist for the Omaha World Herald, called the law “idiotic.”
Conflicts were inevitable.
Dozens of articles appear in newspapers of the era reporting conflicts over
baseball on Sunday. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, famous for
opposition to all liquor, added the evils of baseball to its pious protests
along with stopping theater performances on Sunday and “deploring extreme
styles of dress.”
Teams in Fremont, York and
Scribner all ended up in court at various times. Other towns protested by not
buying tickets. When a team in Hershey, Neb. scheduled a Sunday game in
1900 the North Platte Telegraph reported it “was a complete fizzle." Those
who stayed away were “a better class of citizens” according to the article. The
editor of the paper in Oakland, Neb. refused to run ads for the beloved local
team because they ignored the baseball ban.
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| Dakota County Herald, April 1910 |
Town team leagues found creative ways
to play their games for eager fans. Bruce Esser, who has
an encyclopedic knowledge of early baseball told me teams had to keep
moving around to stay out of trouble. “Sometimes they would move to a
town in a different county to play,” Esser said. “In one case they actually
went to Kansas to play. They just got on a train, played on a Kansas field and
came back.”
But nothing could compare
to the baseball riot in Nebraska City. A group called the Law & Order
League insisted the sheriff in Otoe County shut down Sunday baseball. When the
sheriff showed up players and angry fans surrounded him. As the crowd
roughed him up someone stole his revolver.
The entire team, including
manager Tim O’Rourk, earned a citation from the sheriff. Apparently they
weren't impressed. The team returned to finish the game that same day.
A few weeks later the
county judge threw the case out. The Otoe County Attorney, upset with the
verdict, appealed the case of State vs. O’Rourk all the way to the Nebraska
Supreme Court. The justices were asked if baseball could be legally
defined as a “sporting” activity and thus an illegal activity on the
Sabbath. The justices not only ruled it qualified as “sporting,” but
stated emphatically the Sunday ban served a higher purpose in the community. (Read the ruling here!)
In State v. O’Rourk, Chief
Justice Maxwell wrote: “As a Christian people, desiring to preserve
(their liberty) the State has enacted certain statutes, which recognize the
fourth commandment and the Christian religion and the binding force of the
teachings of the Saviour (sic). Among these is the statute which prohibits
sporting (and) hunting.”
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| Editorial cartoon from The Omaha Bee, 1913 |
Baseball became the
hottest political debate in the state. An editorial cartoon in the Omaha
Bee depicted the three most important issues facing state legislators in
1913: the death penalty, a woman’s right to vote, and playing baseball on
Sunday.
Lawmakers had tried and
failed to have the ban lifted for years. In1913 public opinion tempered and
state lawmakers agreed that maybe a friendly game of baseball would not
undermine the social fabric of the community. Sort of.
The revised law
left the decision up to individual counties and towns. Some held local
elections. Some city councils and county boards made the decision. Teams
in Omaha did what they had always been doing without interruption:
playing baseball on Sunday. One town after another dropped the ban.
Imagine
trying to explain to the NCAA why College World Series games couldn't be played
on Sunday in Omaha.
(Editors note: research for this post came from an NET News radio story that aired on the 100th anniversary of the change in the Nebraska's anti-baseball law. Listen to it here!)
