History Book - Baseball’s first strike

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, March 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: the WORLD History Book. This week marks the fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries of events some of us lived through.

EICHER: But first, something we definitely did not: We’ll hear about one of the world’s most famous instances of religious persecution 530 years ago.

Here’s WORLD correspondent Collin Garbarino.

MUSIC: JACOB OBRECHT’S “SALVE REGINA”

COLLIN GARBARINO, CORRESPONDENT: On March 31, 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, issued the Alhambra Decree. The new law stated Jews living in Spain had three months to convert to Christianity or leave the county. The penalty for disobedience? Death. Earlier that year, Spain had finished driving the Muslims from the Iberian peninsula. Ferdinand and Isabella hoped to ensure their new Spain would have one religion for one unified people. Here’s Rabbi Berel Wein explaining the choice faced by Spain’s Jews.

RABBI BEREL WEIN: The expulsion decree of 1492, which drove the Jews out of Spain, affected 500,000 people. They were caught in a terrible vise—whether they should convert, whether they should leave everything—don’t forget, people were there—their families were there for 800 years. They had businesses, they had the language, they had the customs—and just pick up and go. So they split the difference. Half the Jews converted and half of the Jews left.

Thousands of Jewish families fled the country, leaving behind most of the wealth they’d amassed over the centuries. These Sephardic Jews found themselves scattered around the Mediterranean. And many experienced more toleration in Muslim lands than they did in Christian Europe.

But things weren’t always easy for the Jews who stayed behind and converted to Catholicism. Many Catholics distrusted these “conversos,” believing their profession of Christianity to be a false one. Rumors of Crypto-Jews persisted for generations, and these formerly Jewish families became a favorite target of the Spanish Inquisition.

In 1968, the Spanish government formally revoked the Alhambra Decree.

From 500-year-old religious persecution to 50 years of labor disputes.

MUSIC: “TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME”

On April 1st, 1972, Major League Baseball’s players went on strike, kicking off the league’s first labor-related hiatus. Players claimed owners had taken advantage of them, and they asked for better pay and increased pension benefits. Some Americans were shocked that baseball players were demanding more money when the average baseball salary was more than three times the income of the average family. Some players made more than 20 times. New York Mets pitcher Tom Seaver tried to explain that it wasn’t about the money.

TOM SEAVER: A lot of ball players—it sounds funny—a lot of ball players would play this game for nothing, and that’s the truth. But those same ball players won’t play the game if they feel like they’re getting cheated or if they feel like they’re not being treated fairly.

But not everyone felt the same. Legendary slugger Mickey Mantle, who had retired a few years earlier, didn’t have much sympathy.

MICKEY MANTLE: Well, I don’t feel like any of the owners ever took advantage of me. I feel like they were very good to me. I guess that maybe some players feel like the owners took advantage of them and probably there has been cases. But whenever you’re getting 200,000 or 150 or 100 thousand dollars a year salary for six months work—I don’t feel like the owners are taking advantage there.

That first players’ strike lasted 13 days—canceling 86 games. And it wouldn’t be the last time owners and players refused to play ball. Less than a year later, the owners locked out the players over salary arbitration. In the last 50 years, Major League Baseball has had nine work stoppages, with the most recent one getting sorted out earlier this month.

From a fight over salary, to a fight over islands in the South Atlantic.

MARGARET THATCHER: We are here because for the first time for many years British sovereign territory has been invaded by a foreign power.

Forty years ago this week, Argentina attempted to annex one of Great Britain’s few remaining colonies, the Falkland Islands. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher condemned the attack and demanded the British government protect its citizens who lived 300 miles off the coast of South America. The Times summed up the patriotic fervor of the British public with the headline “We Are All Falklanders Now.”

THATCHER: I must tell the House that the Falkland Islands and their dependencies remain British territory. No aggression and no invasion can alter that simple fact. It is a government’s objective to see that the islands are free from occupation and are returned to British administration at the earliest possible moment.

The 10-week war proved astonishingly successful for Britain and terribly embarrassing for Argentina. Argentina’s mishandling of the war hastened the demise of its military junta and the restoration of democracy. On the other hand, Thatcher’s popularity in Britain soared, and her Conservative Party won the 1983 elections in a landslide, preserving Ronald Reagan’s staunch ally in the fight against communism.

MUSIC: “JERUSALEM”

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Collin Garbarino.

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