Waivers

Diving into the history of baseball's waiver rule

Waivers

There’s nothing more uniquely American than the wavier system.

I’m not aware of any professional sport leagues outside the United States and Canada that has a structure like this. Waivers, if you’re not familiar with them, are a system that allows other teams in a sports league to bid on the services of a player that the team that controls the player would otherwise demote or release.

The history of waivers is fraught with controversy — and they’ve been around for a long time. By that, I mean much longer than you expect.

We can find waiver controversies in the 1950s, for example. There was a major concern after the 1952 season, for example, when the New York Yankees were able to sweep up numerous National League players:

From The Tribune (Coshocton, Ohio), October 22, 1952, page 8

If you’re curious:

• Ewell Blackwell went to the Yankees partway through the 1952 season and played briefly with them in 1953, though he only appeared in 8 games. He was only 30 years old.

• Johnny Mize went to the Yankees as early as 1949. He was 40 in 1953, but managed to appear in 81 games with 118 plate appearances.

• Johnny Hopp went to the Yankees in late 1950, and actually ended the 1952 season with the Detroit Tigers.

• Johnny Sain, of “pray for rain” fame, went to the Yankees in 1951, and was the only player on this list to have a remotely good season for them. His 1953 season, at age 35, was actually pretty good — but he had a hard time winning in 1955, and wound up going to Kansas City. He went together with Enos Slaughter to Kansas City for Sonny Dixon, who never did much, and some cash (as if the Yankees needed money).

Of course, if you’re familiar with baseball in the 1940s, you know that all four of these players were stars at one point in time. It certainly looked at the time like the Yankees were picking up all the big names in an unfair manner.

Now, in theory there was a free market for these players. In reality, however, waivers seem to have been a formality, and collusion likely ruled the day:

From The Shreveport Journal (Louisiana), September 12, 1951, page 20

Now, if you go backwards through time, you’ll see further accusations of collusion through the waiver system. Take this, for example:

From The Springfield Union (Massachusetts), May 19, 1941, page 25

Radcliff, by the way, played well for Detroit at the end of the 1941 season, but his age caught up with him in 1942 and 1943. He then joined the military and effectively ended his baseball career.

You can find mention of waivers as far back as 1920:

From Long Branch Daily Record (New Jersey), December 4, 1920, page 5

Neither Buck Herzog nor Claude Hendrix ever played again in the majors after 1920.

In fact, you can find direct mention of the waiver system all the way back in 1905:

From The Detroit Free Press, November 25, 1905, page 10

It becomes a little bit more difficult to figure out precisely when this waiver system started. I’d probably need to start digging through Sporting Life and The Sporting News issues from the 19th century.

It is clear that waivers were a key part of player management after peace was declared between the American and National Leagues in 1903:

From Burk, Robert F., Never Just A Game: Players, Owners & American Baseball to 1920, pages 163-164

However, there is also evidence in this same book that waivers existed back in the days of the National League, American Association and Union League:

Ibid, page 76

So where did waivers start?

I’m not sure. I do think, however, that they are the natural consequence of having a centralized league system, one in which clubs are “franchises” instead of actually independent organizations.

As you may or may not recall, I wrote a somewhat lengthy piece a few months ago on the start of the National League and the reasons why there was never a promotion and relegation system:

The best way to understand how waivers work is to think of player contracts as agreements with the league instead of each individual team. When a player moves from one team to another, the contract stays the same.

This is in stark contrast to what you see in, say, soccer leagues in Europe. In that case, players who move from one team to another need a new contract for each new team. In other words, the teams are truly independent entities in those leagues, as opposed to being franchisees with carefully demarcated territories.

Now, the big question is whether the waiver system actually promotes a strong competitive balance between teams. In theory it does this — but does it accomplish this goal in reality? What do you think?