$Unique_ID{BAS00165}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Rival Leagues}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Pietrusza, David}
$Subject{Rival Leagues National American Association Federal League}
$Log{}

Total Baseball:  Other Leagues


The Rival Leagues

David Pietrusza


     For nearly a century baseball has been dominated by two leagues, the
National and American, and most fans think that this is the way it has always
been and must forever be.
     Yet it was not always thus.  Throughout baseball history, rivals to the
game's power structure have arisen.  Sometimes they have been relatively solid
structures, such as the American Association and the Federal League; other
times single-season phenomena, such as the Players League or the Union
Association, have emerged.  And of a lesser magnitude, such hopeful
enterprises as the Continental League or the United States League have
quixotically tilted at Organized Baseball.
     In 1876 the National League itself was such a challenge, but the circuit
it confronted, the National Association, was so ephemeral that it evaporated
as soon as the new league appeared.  However, cities spurned by the National
League soon coalesced into the loosely formed International Association.
Generally not recognized as a major league, it nonetheless featured strong
playing talent; but it was organizational incompetence that spelled its doom.
     By 1882 the National League was a going concern, but it had excluded
several of the nation's prime markets; after its inaugural season of 1876 it
expelled New York and Philadelphia for not completing their final western road
trips.  Cincinnati was booted because it insisted on selling liquor in the
stands.  St. Louis and Louisville were two other large cities without big
league teams.  So in 1882 the upstart American Association moved into these
vacant territories.  Featuring Sunday baseball, 25-cent admissions, and strong
drink, the "beer and whisky circuit" quickly established itself as the
box-office equal of the NL.
     Both leagues were making money, so other promoters tried to get in on the
act.  In 1884, twenty-six-year old St. Louis traction magnate (the
contemporary term for a kingpin of trolleycars, wagons, carts, and carriages)
Henry V. Lucas organized the Union Association.  Featuring such lackluster
franchises as Altoona and Wilmington, it lacked balance in both capital and
playing talent (Lucas' St. Louis Maroons ran away and hid from the rest of
the league).  The weakest of all generally recognized big leagues, the Union
Association collapsed at season's end when Lucas cut a deal allowing his
Maroons into the National League.
     The 1880s saw capital's control over labor intensify, culminating in a
wholesale breakaway of top National League players in 1890 and the formation
of the Players National League under the leadership of Giants shortstop John
Montgomery Ward.  Despite a glittering array of talent, the Players League
collapsed at season's end when the investors bankrolling it caved in to
National League bluff and bluster.
     The rise and fall of the Players League resulted in further deterioration
of the never very good feelings between the National League and American
Association.  Open conflict erupted in 1891, and in 1892 the AA dissolved and
four of its franchises--Louisville, Washington, Baltimore, and St. Louis--were
absorbed into a new twelve-team National League.
     Abortive attempts to revive the American Association were made in 1894
and 1900.  The American League, a souped-up version of the minor Western
League, made the successful jump to major league status in 1901 after the
National League abandoned its Washington, Cleveland, and Baltimore franchises
in 1900.
     Once again big profits attracted investors, and an unprecedented spate of
half-baked challenges emerged:  Alfred Lawson's Union League (1908), the
"Burlesquers' League" (1910), "Daniel Fletcher's League" (1910), William
Abbott Witman's United States League (1912-1913), and the Columbian League
(1912).  Most were utter fiascos that never took the field.
     Not so absurd was the Federal League of 1914-1915.  Led by "Fighting Jim"
Gilmore and backed by such men of substance as the baking Ward Brothers in
Brooklyn and restauranteur Charles Weeghman in Chicago (he built what later
came to be called Wrigley Field for his Federal circuit Whales), the Feds
threw a genuine scare into Organized Baseball.  A 1915 lawsuit even threatened
the very basis of O.B.--that it was a localized sport rather than a business
conducted across state lines--but the action was stalled, mortally for the
upstart league, by Federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.  Seven years later
the case wound up in United States Supreme Court, where Justice Holmes wrote
the majority decision affirming O.B.'s immunity from antitrust legislation.
     The Feds were the last serious stateside challenge to Major League
hegemony.  After that, challengers could no longer erect cheap wooden
ballparks; all big league parks were expensive concrete-and-steel affairs.  A
pipe dream called the Continental League gathered a few headlines in 1921 as
it promised unionization of players and an end to the reserve clause, but it
never played an inning.
     Following World War II, Mexico's wealthy Pascuel brothers made big cash
offers to Ted Williams, Bob Feller and Stan Musial, and lured such talent as
Junior Stephens, Mickey Owen, and Sal Maglie across the border before the
league collapsed.  No further confrontation occurred until Bill Shea and
Branch Rickey's Continental League of 1959-1960, stimulated by the departure
of the two National League teams from New York City in 1957.  Ultimately the
Continental League forced major league expansion in 1961-1962, giving birth to
the Los Angeles Angels, a new version of the Washington Senators, the New York
Mets, and the Houston Colt .45's.
     The laughable Global League actually took the field in Latin America in
1969 and claimed "franchises" in America and Japan.  It left scores of players
stranded in Venezuela.
     In the late 1980s "The Baseball League," reputedly backed by Donald
Trump, was rumored, but realistically the immediate possibility for any new
rival big league is less than dim, as the financial resources necessary to
build stadiums and develop talent are prohibitive.