The Quinn case all by itself soured once and for all the relationship between the two founding fathers of the American League. Eugene C. Murdock, Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball Jack (John Picus) Quinn had a remarkable baseball career that spanned more than three decades. He won more than 300 games, 247 of them in a Major League career from 1909 to 1933. Jack was repeatedly given up as finished and too old, in 1912 and 1921 by the Yankees, in 1925 by the Red Sox, and in 1930 by the Athletics. He repeatedly came back. After almost six years in the wilderness, away from the Majors, Quinn returned in the summer of 1918. A strange and unique set of circumstances--America's entrance into World War I--placed him in the middle of a fierce battle between two American League teams and also a battle between two of the league's most powerful men, Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey and AL founder and president Ban Johnson. The fallout of this conflict paved the way for Johnson's fall and the rise of the commissioner system in Major League baseball late in 1920. BASEBALL AND THE GREAT WAR The start of the Great War in 1914 had little impact on life in America. But three years later, in April 1917, the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. The ripple effect on society began slowly in 1917 and ramped up considerably in 1918, as the shadow of war spread slowly across the land. The first draft of June-July 1917 had little impact on the player pool of big-league ball. Yet the Minor Leagues were hurting. By 1917 they had been struggling for a few years. They were caught in a vise of falling attendance and rising prices from inflation. These pressures were coupled with player shortages, as men entered the draft or shipbuilding and steel industries. A handful of leagues suspended operations that summer. The National Commission, the governing body of the major leagues, ruled that Suspending teams that suspended contracts could not claim reservation of players. (1) In other words, minor leagues and teams that curtailed their seasons could not claim the reserve clause and hold onto their player for the next season. Supposedly, Major League baseball recognized moral rights and compensated the Minors for players the higher league claimed. (2) Organized Baseball lurched between protecting its interests and supporting the war. The owners argued that the game should continue since it lifted the nation's morale and generated revenue for the war effort, through the 10 percent entertainment war tax on admission tickets. On the other hand, the magnates did not want to seem unpatriotic. By 1918, after years of enormous casualties on the European front, it was evident that American manpower held the key to the Allied war effort. On May 23, 1918, U.S. Provost-Marshall General Enoch Crowder announced his famous or Fight order. Young men aged twenty-one to thirty had to get into Essential Work (such as the shipyards and steel mills) or be subject to draft on July 1. The question was whether baseball would be considered essential work. The answer came a couple months later when Secretary of War Newton Baker announced on July 20 that baseball was non-essential, unlike theatrical performers (who were exempt from the or Fight order). Just what factors entered into this decision can only be surmised. Baseball's being a daytime effort (as opposed to the theater) that drew fans away from their jobs was probably a major factor. The impression that ballplayers were slackers may have also entered into the equation. At time did President Woodrow Wilson request or even suggest that baseball should cancel its season. On July 27 the president wrote that he saw no necessity at all for stopping or curtailing the baseball schedule. (3) Secretary Baker did give baseball a two-month extension to wind down its season, until September 1 (and even later for World Series participants). …