American Baseball Guild

American Baseball Guild
Founded14 April 1946
Dissolved1946
Location
Key people
Robert Murphy
F. X. Doherty

The American Baseball Guild was a short-lived American trade union that attempted to organize Major League Baseball (MLB) players into a collective bargaining unit in 1946.[1][2][3] Created by Robert Murphy, a Harvard-educated labor lawyer from Boston, it failed to take root when Murphy could not convince a two-thirds majority of the Pittsburgh Pirates' active players to authorize a strike before a National League game on June 7, 1946.[4] That summer, MLB owners — also shaken by the Mexican League raids that enticed a handful of American players to "jump" their contracts for higher salaries in Mexico — made minor concessions to players and the Guild perished. It was the fourth and last unsuccessful attempt to unionize big-league players before the formation of the Major League Baseball Players Association, founded in 1953 and recognized as their official bargaining unit in 1966.

  1. ^ Weintraub, Robert (1 December 2012), "Failed Baseball Union Paved Way for Success." The New York Times
  2. ^ Voigt, David Q., The Owner-Player Conflict. Society for American Baseball Research
  3. ^ Green, Wallace I. (2 August 1946), "'Company Union!' Murphy Shouts at Player-Owner Meeting." The Harvard Crimson
  4. ^ Spink, J. G. Taylor, editor (1947): "Guild Movement Nipped in Bud." The Sporting News: The 1947 Official Baseball Guide and Record Book, page 199