On June 7, 1946, the Pittsburgh Pirates voted on whether or not to play their game against the Giants that night.
The United States was working its way back into peacetime shape in the spring of 1946. The front pages were full of stories about strikes and threatened strikes as labor tried to get its piece of the postwar economy.
In baseball, the Pirates trained in San Bernardino, Cal. With about a month left before the season started, they and the White Sox hopped on trains and made their way east, playing 27 exhibition games along the way. Most of the coverage was about baseball and traveling. There were occasional stories about the brothers who were running the Mexican League and making large offers to some major league players.
The Bucs opened on April 16 with a 6-4 win in St. Louis.
On April 18, a United Press story appeared in The Pittsburgh Press:
The American Baseball Guild, an independent labor union, aimed today for recognition as a collective bargaining agent in negotiations with major league club owners to improve the lot of the nation's diamond stars.
Headed by scholarly Robert Murphy, a Harvard law graduate and former (track) athlete himself, the union already has "substantial membership" in 10 major league clubs and is out to organize all professional players in the United States.
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