Impact Of Christian Von Der Ahe

Introduction

Christian Von Der Ahe helped create the team that is today the St Louis Cardinals. As a German immigrant, he flipped the script on baseball up to that time period by bringing it to the working class people of the United States. His contributions to baseball include that his league was the first to start playing Sunday games. Which was previously not allowed in AG Spalding’s National League. Von Der Ahe also was the first person to promote alcohol sales at baseball games and changed the game into a commercial enterprise. In 1881 Von Der Ahe went toe to toe with the National League, with his creation of the American Baseball Association.

As a German immigrant Christian Von Der did not back down to the NL and promoted Baseball to

The National League had a difficult time in maintaining its “gentlemen’s game” heritage. This is the result of a talent pool comprised of urban poor being forced to play for high society. The customs of these poor players did not match the sophistication of their wealthy patrons. Alcohol misuse was seen as a badge of the urban poor immigrants, mostly the German and Irish, brought drinking habits with them to America. It was assumed that unruly fans from immigrant backgrounds where driving off upright customers. Nativists turned fear of immigrants into anti-alcohol sentiments. This played out in the restrictions placed on alcoholic consumption within National League

In 1880 the Chicago tribune et al Abrams reported that the captain of the Cincinnati Red Stockings was ordered to, “slow-up play between innings so as to allow the crowd to drink more beer,” the profit which was important source of revenue for the club. In 1881 Hulbert, the NL commissioner, kicked the club from Cincinnati out of the league for violating the NL’s alcohol ban, annual revenue of three-thousand dollars for the club, and renting out its stadium on Sundays. The Cincinnati club’s expulsion helped lead to the creation of an alcohol friendly league that would come to be known as the “whiskey and beer” league. Cincinnati’s 1881 expulsion from the National League opened the door for the creation of the American Association, a league that was to become the NL’s greatest rival, and was given the nickname “The Beer and Whiskey League”. The nickname was appropriate considering many of the team owners businesses were involved in alcohol sales, the owners sought out the patronage of the working class masses. Six of eight original owners were brewers or owned saloons. The most famous of these owners was Christian Von Der Ahe, who bought the St. Louis Browns even though he knew nothing about baseball. But he knew that hardworking immigrants and the lower class in general would want to drink at the