As America’s role in the Second World War entered its fourth year in December 1944, it was increasingly clear that fathers between the ages of 26 and 29 would soon be called into military service unless they were employed in a war-plant job. At age 27 in January 1945, Tony’s family status of a wife and two daughters no longer qualified him for deferment from military service.[1]
On March 5, 1945, Tony was formally inducted into the U.S. Navy. Initially he reported to the Sampson Naval Training Station near Lake Seneca in upstate New York, but he was soon dispatched to attended classes at nearby Colgate University in the V–7 Navy College Training Program. The V–7 program was a four-month accelerated course to rapidly prepare college graduates to become junior naval officers. Tony completed the V–7 program, was commissioned an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve just before the Japanese surrender in August 1945, and then discharged from the Navy on September 8, 1945.[2]
Tony immediately returned to his civilian job with the Philadelphia Phillies, where he was the team’s first baseman in 15 games during September 1945 and compiled a .315 batting average (17-for-54). However, Tony’s return did nothing to change the fate of the Phillies, who were hopelessly entrenched in last place in the National League standings. In December 1945, the Phillies acquired another first baseman, purchasing the contract of Frank McCormick from the Cincinnati Reds. Tony expected to contend for the starting first-base job during spring training in 1946.
The Phillies, though, were publicly committed to McCormick as their first baseman. “Not one man will be in the 1946 opening day lineup who played the final game of the 1945 season at Shibe Park,” The Sporting News reported in mid-February, forecasting Tony’s departure from the Phillies. “It seems a pretty fair assumption that Frank McCormick will be at first base.” The Phillies were in the midst of engineering a “complete house-cleaning of the cellar club” that would “cost $150,000 for new talent.”[3]
When Tony hadn’t receive a contract offer for the upcoming 1946 season from the Phillies by early February, he contacted Herb Pennock, the Phillies general manager. Here’s how Tony later described the ensuing conversation. “Once we get waivers on you, Tony, we are selling your contract to Hollywood of the Pacific Coast League,” Pennock said. Stunned, Tony replied, “Don’t you know that a returned serviceman is allowed at least a year’s grace at getting his old job back?” Pennock retorted, “That doesn’t apply to baseball.” Appalled, Tony shouted, “Who the hell are you to think that you’re above the federal government?”[4]
There was no doubt in Tony’s mind that this demotion from the major leagues was a violation of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, a federal law that promised returning military servicemen their old jobs back with a one-year trial period before they could be discharged from that job. There was also the matter of baseball’s own regulations that specified that a returning serviceman be given a 30-day trial in spring training or 15 days during the regular season before he could be transferred to a lower-classification ball club.[5]
Pennock suggested that Tony appeal to Commissioner Chandler if he wasn’t happy with the Phillies transaction to transfer him to the Hollywood Stars. His registered letter to the commissioner, though, was returned unopened. He finally received a response from Herold “Muddy” Ruel, an assistant in the commissioner’s office, on Saturday, February 23, informing him that the transaction with Hollywood was in good order. Tony was profoundly dissatisfied with this decision.[6]
On Sunday, February 24, Tony initiated a press campaign by talking to Boston sportswriters to raise awareness about how military veterans returning to their jobs as professional baseball players were being denied their legal rights by major league ball-club owners, who were not adhering to federal law.
On Monday, February 25, Tony’s beliefs were prominently reported in the Boston Globe, with shorter wire-service reports published in newspapers nationwide. Pennock defended the Phillies decision, contending that Tony had met baseball’s 15-day requirement when he returned to the Phillies at the end of the 1945 season and thus “he had every opportunity to make good during the 22 days he was with us last year.” Tony naturally disagreed. “I think the least the Phils might have done is give me a chance to show what I have. I batted better than .300 in the few games I played last year,” Tony countered Pennock’s assertion. “I don’t think I had a fair trial last year because I was very much out of condition.”[7]
Tony had thoughtfully put together his argument for public consumption. He utilized his sociology training garnered at Harvard to focus on a societal issue to distinguish his comments from mere personal grumbling: “If veterans returning to other lines of work get one year to make good, why should baseball players be limited to 15 days?” Tony also wisely framed his argument to refer to the G.I. Bill of Rights, a widely popular federal law enacted in 1944 to provide low-interest home mortgages and free college tuition to returning servicemen. While the G.I. Bill also provided one year of unemployment compensation, this law did not explicitly guarantee restoration to a man’s former job, as did the 1940 Selective Training and Service Act. The G.I. Bill, though, was more recognizable and easier to articulate, thus making that term resonate more with the public.[8]
Among the Boston sportswriters, Tony found many supporters. One was Boston Globe columnist Harold Kaese, whose February 25 column was headlined: “Lupien, Guaranteed a Year’s Job With Phils Under Selective Service Law, Gets Kick in Pants Instead.” Kaese openly pondered: “That’s baseball law. What about civil law? Can baseball deny players the ordinary rights of American citizens? Could baseball give Tony a 15-day job when the law of the land says he is entitled to his old job for a full year?” As he paced from room to room in his Lexington home, Tony told Kaese, “I don’t know what I’ll do. I have no intent to hurt the game. Nor do I want to quit, after seven years of pro baseball.”[9]
Another vocal supporter of Tony’s plight was Boston Record columnist Dave Egan, a fellow Harvard alumnus. “The law of the land gives Tony Lupien the absolute right to reinstatement as first baseman of the Phillies and not for fifteen days as the barons of the racket contend, but for one year,” Egan wrote, before colorfully articulating Tony’s societal angle. “Baseball players who are veterans did not fight for the dubious privilege of selling apples on street corners and in common justice are entitled to the same rights as all other citizens. This is the first recorded instance in sport of a war veteran being denied his rights, but I am sorry to say that it is not the last, for by the first of May the woods will be filled with veterans, wondering what happened to them and their supposed rights.”[10]
However, Tony never did receive broad nationwide support from sportswriters, or even general news reporters, about the seemingly important issues he raised.
Tony had been well schooled in the legal issues by his lawyer Arthur Johns, who was a friend and former baseball teammate at Harvard. Johns scheduled an appointment on February 27 to take Tony’s case to Massachusetts Selective Service officials in Boston. All the public outrage printed in the Boston newspapers, though, didn’t help advance Tony’s argument with the Selective Service bureaucrats. At the meeting, Tony was notified that there was a long, convoluted process to follow to move his claim forward until it finally reached Philadelphia officials. That evening, Tony announced to the press that he would sign a contract with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League and make his way to the West Coast to begin training for the 1946 baseball season.[11]
The Phillies had deployed an exception to the baseball regulations to facilitate a player’s demotion to a lower-classification league. If the player cleared waivers in both major leagues, the higher-classification club would make up the difference in salary (from the player’s previous contract before serving in the military) from that offered by the lower-classification club. In Tony’s situation, he would receive his $8,000 former salary, with Hollywood paying $5,000 and the Phillies paying the other $3,000.[12]
Tony was not giving up the battle, though, because to him it was vitally important to play at the highest level of the sport in the major leagues. “Since this procedure may be lengthy and involved, my legal counsel Arthur Johns has advised me to proceed with the Hollywood club,” Tony said in a prepared statement distributed to the press. “Baseball is my business and I intend to give Hollywood my best. However, I shall fight the case through to the finish.”[13]
Next stop in the press campaign was the weekly baseball newspaper, The Sporting News. In early March, The Sporting News published a full page of articles about Tony’s situation, under the banner headline: “Lupien Case Threatening Test of Game’s Laws.” Accompanying the articles was a photograph of Tony with his wife, Natalie, and their two children, Diana and Judith.[14]
“I am not dropping my appeal because of the salary adjustment,” Tony told Stan Baumgartner, a former ballplayer turned sportswriter, who was the Philadelphia correspondent for The Sporting News. “It is still a test case and the decision is not one that merely involves me. Scores of ball players may be faced with a similar problem in a matter of a few weeks. Telephone calls I have received from apprehensive players and a large number of war veterans now in training camps bring home the point clearly to me.”[15]
“The G.I. Bill was designed to protect for at least one year the jobs of men who entered the service. Now that bill either applies to ballplayers or it doesn’t,” Tony presented his case. “That’s what I am trying to find out, and if it means that I am the goat or the ball carrier, I am perfectly willing to assume that role. If the G.I. Bill does apply, then I may help many other veterans in the months to come by following through with my action.”[16]
“It is important to know from a legal standpoint just where ball players stand, if at all, in respect to the G.I. Bill of Rights,” Tony concluded. “Unless a National Defense List player gets more re-employment rights than 15 days, he is not in a great deal better position than a player who suddenly decided he was essential in a war plant, shipyard, or farm yard and left baseball to return as soon as the war ended.”[17]
After Tony drove 3,000 miles across the country to attend the training camp of the Hollywood Stars, Los Angeles sportswriters described the new arrival as “ex-sailor Tony Lupien, the Harvard graduate who challenged the rights of the Phillies to shunt him out of the big leagues.” Tony kept pitching his societal argument. “Personalities are not involved in the issues I have made,” he told the LA baseball scribes. “My contention is that any returning player, under the G.I. Bill of Rights, is entitled to a 30 day trial. It’s a matter of principle that may involve hundreds of other returning servicemen.”[18]
There was no public reporting of whether or not Tony ever heard back from the Selective Service with a determination in his test case, to bring closure to the betrayal Tony felt by having played by society’s rules – he had served his patriotic military duty during wartime – which were blatantly circumvented by major-league baseball.
By mid-March 1946, Tony’s unperceived bigger problem was not the limited public reception of the society-based argument he was advocating, but rather his negative perception among executives in the baseball establishment. Tony was not just some rogue maverick, but rather an articulate non-conformist in an industry of strict conformity. The baseball mini-society was highly patriarchal, bordering on authoritarian given its control exercised over employees. Ball-club owners had an attitude that “ballplayers should be seen and not heard,” like children in a patriarchy.
By reaching out to American society about the wartime re-employment issue, Tony had violated the unwritten rules of the baseball mini-society. It would cost him a decade of hard times, as he slowly converted from idealist to pragmatist, a crusty pragmatist at that. Tony never did fully make peace with an imperfect professional baseball world. Challenging the baseball establishment would be Tony’s legacy, not his .268 career batting average compiled in 614 major-league games.
Tony might have escaped his forthcoming status as baseball pariah if he hadn’t pursued two additional avenues in 1946 regarding legal rights for ballplayers.
In June 1946 Tony gained a small measure of satisfaction regarding the enforcement of the Selective Service law when a federal judge ruled in favor of Seattle infielder Al Niemiec, a military veteran who had been released early in the 1946 season. Tony had talked with Niemiec in April on a train ride during the opening week of the 1946 Pacific Coast League season, since Niemiec was nervous about keeping his job on the Seattle team. However, the court ruling only mandated that Niemiec receive a full year’s pay, not that he be returned to his former job.[19]
Tony also conducted discussions with Robert Murphy, a labor lawyer who in the spring of 1946 was trying to organize the American Baseball Guild, a union to represent major-league baseball players. Murphy’s effort inspired Tony to pursue a similar venture for PCL ballplayers. His initial bargaining position called for a $400 minimum monthly salary, improved lighting conditions in PCL ballparks, and a reduction in the number of night games, especially the elimination of the Saturday night game that so often preceded a Sunday doubleheader. However, the organizing efforts of both Murphy and Lupien were kyboshed when Murphy failed to convince enough Pittsburgh Pirates players to authorize a strike in early July.[20]
If Tony had been more conciliatory with the baseball establishment, he likely would have played several more years at the major-league level than just the lone 1948 season he would play with the lowly Chicago White Sox. However, would he have still become a baseball lifer? Arguably, this career setback was instrumental in fueling the drive, the “fire in the belly,” for Tony to remain in baseball for another 30 years.
Although Tony was not reluctant to tackle hard work – it was a guiding principle of his life – the road back to the major leagues was longer, and more short-lived once there, than he anticipated.
Notes
[1] “Army Orders 40,000 Draft Rise in January,” New York Times, December 19, 1944.
[2] “Lupien Now Is In Navy,” New York Times, March 6, 1945; “Lupien Discharged, Will Join Phils Today,” Boston Globe, September 9, 1945; “Lupien Makes Test Case Out of Sale to Hollywood Club,” Boston Globe, February 25, 1946.
[3] “Blue Jay Broom Makes Feathers Fly,” The Sporting News, February 21, 1946.
[4] Lee Lowenfish and Tony Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond: The Story of Baseball’s Reserve System and the Men Who Fought to Change It (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 130.
[5] “How the G.I. Bill Compares with Baseball’s Own Code,” The Sporting News, March 7, 1946.
[6] “Tony Lupien Calls Demotion to Minor League Ball Club Violation of G.I. Bill of Rights,” Portsmouth Herald, February 25, 1946.
[7] “Lupien Makes Test Case Out of Sale to Hollywood Club.”
[8] “Lupien Makes Test Case Out of Sale to Hollywood Club.”
[9] “Lupien, Guaranteed a Year’s Job With Phils Under Selective Service Law, Gets Kick in Pants Instead,” Boston Globe, February 25, 1946.
[10] Article in Boston Record, February 25, 1946.
[11] “Lupien to Report to Hollywood – But Will Fight Phillies,” Boston Globe, February 28, 1946.
[12] “How the GI Bill Compares with Baseball’s Own Code.”
[13] “Lupien to Report to Hollywood – But Will Fight Phillies.”
[14] “Lupien Case Threatening Test of Game’s Laws,” The Sporting News, March 7, 1946.
[15] “Tony, Fightin’ Mad But Coast-Bound, Claims G.I. Question Not Personal Issue,” The Sporting News, March 7, 1946.
[16] “Tony, Fightin’ Mad But Coast-Bound.”
[17] “Tony, Fightin’ Mad But Coast-Bound.”
[18] “Coast Clubs at Axe-Swinging Stage; Lupien Checks in With Hollywood,” The Sporting News, March 21, 1946.
[19] “Judge Rips Contract, Orders Year’s Pay for G.I.,” The Sporting News, July 3, 1946; Lowenfish and Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond, 133-134.
[20] Lowenfish and Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond, 138.
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