Text B Professional sport&labor relations
9-7 Team Cincinnati
Civic pride and commercial rivalry led Cincinnati to form the first known fully professional team in 1869.Cincinnati businessmen competed with those in Chicago，St.Louis，and Milwaukee for the hinterland trade，and baseball provided ameans to publicize themunicipality.Cincinnati hired the best players from Eastern clubs and sent them one national tour from coast to coast.Salaries ranged from$600 to$2，000.Chicago countered the next year with a professional team of its own.Merchants raised$15，000 in a joint stock company to field the White Stockings1.
The National Association of Base Ball Players2 split over the issue of professionalism at the 1870 rules convention.As a result，the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players3 was formed in 1871.Employer-employee labor differences erupted in 1889，as labor relations in professional baseball reflected similar tensions in the industrial workforce throughout the United States.Aswith other early labor unions，the players banned together asworkers in an attempt to win greater freedom and better salaries from their employers.