$Unique_ID{BAS00168}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{The Minor Leagues}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{
Hoie, Bob}
$Subject{Minor Leagues Minors League International Association Northwestern
Eastern Association Interstate Negro Baseball American draft Farm System}
$Log{
Farm Systems 1936-1969*0016801.tab
Annual Pitching Percentage Leader*0016802.tab
Annual Batting Percentage Leader*0016803.tab
Minor League Career Records*0016804.tab}

Total Baseball:  Other Leagues


The Minor Leagues

Bob Hoie


     The International Association, founded in 1877, is frequently described
as the first minor league. For two major reasons it shouldn't be so regarded.
First, it was barely a league. Structurally it resembled the old National
Association--there was virtually no central authority, no limitation on the
number or location of member teams, no set schedule, and haphazard umpire
selection. The league was so loosely assembled in fact that some member teams
competed at the same time for the championships of other organizations like
the New England Association and the League Alliance. Second, the
International Association was originally established as a rival to the
National League and never officially recognized itself as being subordinate.
It was generally acknowledged that several of its teams were as good as or
better than some in the National League. Various off-the-field problems,
administrative weaknesses, and a lack of solidarity and resolve on the part of
the member clubs assured its subordinate status.
     A strong case could be made for the 1879 Northwestern League as the first
minor league--it had a preset schedule and had no pretensions of rivaling the
National League, but the absence of league-appointed umpires led to frequent
forfeits due to charges of biased "hometown" umpiring, and the league folded
after only two months.
     The Eastern Association was founded in 1881, but this was another loose
alliance with no set schedule.
     The first recognized minor league was another Northwestern League, this
one organized on October 27, 1882. At that time they requested of the
National League cooperation and reciprocity in protecting player contracts.
This was necessary because independent clubs frequently lost their best
players during the course of the season to the National League and later to
the American Association clubs. In response to this request, the National
League, American Association, and Northwestern League signed a "Tripartite
Agreement" in March 1883. This agreement bound the clubs to honor the
contracts of players on reserve lists, assured mutual recognition of
expulsions and suspensions, established territorial rights, and created an
arbitration committee to settle disputes. Minimum salaries were established
and pegged at a higher level in the National League and American Association
than in the Northwestern League or "any other parties to the agreement," thus
by implication assigning a "major" and "minor" status to the leagues.
     The Interstate Association was established early in 1883 and was quickly
accepted as an "alliance" league by the American Association, becoming a
junior partner of the Tripartite Agreement. Both the Northwestern and the
Interstate opened their seasons on May 1, 1883. Each had a formal league
organization, a schedule that was preset before the season opening, and a
complement of umpires appointed and paid for by the league. Both leagues
recognized and accepted their status as subordinate to the two "majors."  In
1884 the Interstate Association reorganized as the Eastern League and became a
fourth member of what now became known as the National Agreement.
     In October 1885 a new National Agreement was adopted which made the
National League and American Association the principal parties and removed
from minor league clubs the protection of the reserve clause. Two years later
the reserve clause was reinstated for the minors, but the major-minor league
distinction had been formalized. Following the collapse of the American
Association in 1892, another National Agreement for the first time established
minor league classifications and gave major league clubs the right to draft
minor league players at fixed prices.
     While these events were taking place, organized baseball expanded
dramatically, going from two leagues in 1883 to seventeen by 1890. Baseball
was played throughout the country, of course, but organized ball was confined
to the northeast quadrant of the United States in 1884; it expanded to the
South in 1885, to Colorado and the upper Midwest in 1886, California in 1887,
Texas in 1888, and the Pacific Northwest in 1890. So in the year that the
American frontier was officially declared closed, organized baseball had
extended to all corners of the country.
     In 1887 an organization called the Negro Baseball League, fearing player
raids by the still moderately integrated minors, sought and received
protection under the National Agreement. The league was to play in eight
cities that also had major league teams, but it folded in less than two weeks.
This was unfortunately characteristic of the era. Many teams and leagues were
underfinanced and were ultrasensitive to changes in the national or local
economy. In addition, being unable or unwilling to pay the required fees for
reserving their players, they lost their better ones at the close of the
season--and those teams that even managed to finish the season could usually
consider themselves lucky. During the nineteenth century, more than one-third
of the leagues that started a season failed to finish it. There was, however,
a solid core of support for minor league baseball. Regardless of how many
leagues started each season--usually about fifteen but sometimes up to
nineteen--ten usually finished; the rest failed. The 1890s were not a period
of expansion nor of stability as throughout the decade an average of 40
percent of the leagues that started a season failed to finish it. A
depression in 1892-1893 and the Spanish-American War in 1898 were significant
factors, but a proliferation of "fly-by-night" operators played a role as
well.
     At the close of the 1900 season, the still minor American League withdrew
from the National Agreement, announcing through that action its intention not
to allow its players to be drafted and not to respect the reserve clause or
territorial rights any longer.
     In September 1901 the National League announced its intention to abrogate
the National Agreement, contending that with the American League invading its
cities and raiding its players the National League could not be expected to
sit back and abide by restrictions which did not hinder its rival.
Essentially this meant that the National, like the American, considered the
players on minor league rosters "fair game".
     In immediate reaction to this, the presidents of seven minor leagues met
in Chicago on September 5, 1901, and in an act of self-protection they
organized the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues. On
October 25 representatives of nine minor leagues met in New York and adopted a
new "National Agreement."  This new agreement established league
classifications, roster and salary limits, and a draft system; it recognized
reserve lists and created a Board of Arbitration which was given the power to
suspend players, clubs, or officials for violations of the agreement. By the
beginning of the 1902 season, the National Association included fifteen member
leagues.
     The American and National Leagues ratified a peace agreement early in
1903, and in late August the presidents of the two major leagues and the
National Association drafted a National Agreement which was initially rejected
by the minors. After some concessions were made by the majors, such as a
prohibition on "farming", the plan was adopted in September. The agreement
formalized relations between the majors and minors and established a National
Commission to serve as a Board of Arbitration.
     These agreements were necessary because the majors and minors were
mutually dependent on each other. The majors needed the minors as a reliable
source of talent, while the minors, many of whom relied on player sales to
stay in business, needed assurances from the majors that they would recognize
their property rights in players.
     Despite this mutual dependence there was a basic buyer-seller conflict.
The majors wanted to acquire players as cheaply as possible, while the minors
wanted to sell them for as much as possible. This same conflict existed
within the minors as well, with the highest-classification clubs wanting to
buy cheaply from the lower minors and sell at high prices to the majors. Thus
the National Agreement, the major-minor agreement, and the National
Association itself were uneasy alliances of clubs and leagues with competing
and often conflicting objectives, and the nearly annual revisions in draft
rules and prices and limits on optional player assignments were required to
maintain the equilibrium necessary to keep the alliance intact.
     The majors favored an unlimited draft--i.e., any player on a minor league
roster could be purchased for a fixed rate. As early as 1896, when
Minneapolis of the Western League was decimated through what were in effect
forced sales, it became clear that some limitations were necessary, so by 1905
only one player could be drafted from a club per year. The draft prices of
top-classification minor leaguers went from $750 to $1,000 in 1905 and then to
$2,500 in 1911. While these prices were not particularly low for average
prospects in that era, they were well below the value of the best prospects in
the minors; thus the draft or the threat of it served as an incentive for
minor league clubs at all levels to sell their better players to major or
higher-classification minor league clubs at competitive market prices. From
the players' standpoint, the draft had the positive effect of allowing them
eventually to advance to whatever levels their ability would take them. The
lower-classification minor league clubs received lower draft prices for their
players but seemed relatively satisfied with the system--after all, this was
an era when the contracts of Tris Speaker, Rogers Hornsby, and Ty Cobb were
sold to major league clubs for $400, $500, and $700 respectively.
     On the other hand, many of the higher-classification minor league clubs
had never really been satisfied with the draft. As early as 1908, this
dissatisfaction nearly caused the two top minor leagues at that time--the
American Association and the Eastern League--to go independent. Several of
the top minor league clubs drew more fans annually than some major league
clubs and represented substantial investments; their owners were
understandably not happy with a system that forced the sale of their top
players for below-market prices to the majors; in addition to the challenge to
club stability and autonomy caused by the draft, the gap between the market
value of the top prospects and the draft price widened throughout the 1910s.
     Despite the rumblings of discontent, the establishment of the National
Association ushered in a period of minor league expansion to a fairly stable
core of thirty leagues. While there were still leagues that failed to finish
the season, the failure rate was down to 10-15 percent. For some reason, in
1910 the minors reached a level never to be topped until the post-World War
Two boom era--fifty-two leagues started the season and forty-six finished it.
For the next five years more leagues folded, but each season generally closed
with forty leagues operating. Then, for reasons that ranged from the
automobile, movies, the war in Europe, and the Federal League War, the bottom
started to drop out. Forty-four leagues started in the 1914 season, and by
the end of the 1918 season only one was operating (ten leagues had started
that year--one folded and eight suspended operations due to the war).
     After the 1918 season, with most of the lower minors driven out of
business, the National Association, for the first time dominated by the higher
minors, adopted a resolution demanding that the majors relinquish the right of
the draft and end the practice of "farming out" players. When the majors as
expected rejected these demands, the National Association withdrew from the
National Agreement. Pending a new major agreement, the majors and minors
reached general agreement on property rights in players and territorial
rights, and the National Commission ruled that the major league draft would be
suspended. In addition the minors would not accept major league players on
option, meaning that any players owned or controlled by major league clubs in
excess of the active player roster limit would have to be sold or released to
minor league clubs.
     A.R. Tierney, president of two minor leagues and a leader in the fight
to end the draft, said, "This means that the minor leagues will be able to
build fences for themselves instead of for the major leagues."  He predicted
expansion of the minors and higher sale prices for the players. He was
correct on both counts. With no players on option, the majors needed to buy
more players from the minors, some of whom they had been forced to sell but
now had to buy back at higher prices, and without the draft the minor league
clubs could virtually name their own price. The minors expanded, as the
leagues that had been driven out of business during the war now reentered the
fold.
     The reappearance of the low minors again shifted the balance of power
within the minors. The higher minors had never been happy with the
one-league, one-vote system in the National Association. Club owners were
wary of having their investments affected by the vote of what they perceived
as little more than "fly-by-night" operators, and on occasion they tried to
change the arrangement. But just as the majors needed the minors, so the high
minors needed the low minors. Thus the high minors always stopped short of
enacting measures that might drive their underlings out of the Association.
     As noted previously, many of the low minors needed the revenues they
received from the draft to survive, and although the minor league draft still
existed, it had ceased to be a dependable source of revenue as the combination
of numerous prewar minor league failures and returning military veterans
yielded more than enough talent to fill the higher minors' rosters. In
addition, many of the low-minor clubs did not have the resources to scout for
and sign enough players to remain competitive on the field and/or at the box
office; thus they were dependent on receiving some players on option.
     So while most of the higher minor leagues were prospering as never before
under the new independence, by 1920 the low minors were ready to withdraw from
the National Association if a new agreement with the majors restoring the
draft was not adopted. In addition, some of the higher minor league clubs
were upset that the "no-farming" rules were being circumvented by "gentleman's
agreements" which enabled the major league clubs to "sell" a player to a minor
league club and "buy" him back at the end of the season with little or no
money actually changing hands.
     On January 10, 1921, a new major-minor league agreement was signed which
restored the major league draft with a top price of $5,000 but as a compromise
gave individual minor leagues the right to be exempt from the draft; in
addition major league clubs could option up to eight players for no more than
two consecutive years, and a tax on player sales was instituted to help reduce
the fake player transfers. Quickly the top three minors--the International
League, Pacific Coast League, and the American Association--together with the
Western and Three-I Leagues declared their exemption from the draft; this in
turn prohibited them from drafting from the lower minors.
     The prices the majors paid for top minor league players nearly doubled
between 1919 and 1920, but they skyrocketed during the draft-exemption era.
In 1921 the Giants paid $75,000 to San Francisco for Jimmy O'Connell; in 1922
the Giants paid $72,000 to Baltimore for Jack Bentley and the White Sox paid
$100,000 to San Francisco for Willie Kamm. The majors clearly were not happy
with this situation, and in 1922 they offered to raise the draft price to
$7,500, but this failed to lure back the draft-exempt leagues. In early 1923
the majors, after considering but eventually rejecting the idea of a maximum
purchase price of $25,000 for any minor league player and/or a boycott of
draft-exempt leagues, declared that all players sent to the minors either by
sale or option would be subject to the draft and increased the number of
players who could be optioned to fifteen. Western League clubs immediately
began accepting players on option under these conditions.
     The prices for ballplayers remained high in 1923. Baltimore of the
International League was reportedly offered $100,000 by Brooklyn for Joe Boley
and sold Max Bishop to the Philadelphia A's for $50,000. Salt Lake sold Paul
Strand to the A's for a reported $70,000, Louisville sold Earle Combs to the
Yankees for $50,000, Toronto sold Red Wingo to the Tigers for $50,000 and
Rochester sold Maurice Archdeacon to the White Sox for $50,000, but these were
isolated cases. Baltimore, aided by five years of draft exemption, had built
a powerhouse, but many of the higher-classification minor league clubs had not
been nearly as successful and found that they needed to receive players on
option to fill holes and remain competitive. Therefore at the close of the
1923 season all exempt leagues but the International agreed to the modified
draft which exempted only those players who had come up through the minors.
In 1924, after Baltimore sold Lefty Grove for $100,000 to the A's, the
International League also fell into line.
     The modified draft did nothing to reduce the prices paid for top minor
league stars:  Louisville sold Wayland Dean to the Giants for $72,000 in 1924,
San Francisco sold Paul Waner and Hal Rhyne to Pittsburgh for $100,000 in
1925, and Baltimore continued selling star players to the majors for big
prices--Tommy Thomas to the White Sox in 1925, Joe Boley to the A's in 1926,
John Ogden to the Browns and George Earnshaw to the A's in 1927. In 1927
Portland (of the PCL) sold Billy Cissell to the White Sox for a package of 
cash and players worth over $100,000 and Oakland sold Lyn Lary and Jimmy Reese
to the Yankees for $100,000. With prices like these, clubs could afford to 
lose a Lefty O'Doul or Hack Wilson in the modified draft.
     The major-minor agreement expired at the end of the 1927 season, with the
National Association members deadlocked on the issue of the draft. The majors
and minors were also at an impasse, so the modified draft continued and many
of the higher minor league clubs continued to prosper, both through player
sales and at the gate. The Los Angeles franchise and ballpark were valued at
$2 million, but in the lower minors all was not well through the 1920s. There
were generally twenty-five or thirty leagues starting each year, and an
average of three or four of these would fold during the season. Leagues were
operating that never should have been admitted to the National
Association--for example, one of the four leagues that not unexpectedly failed
in 1924 was the West Arkansas, which included six towns within a
750-square-mile area with a combined population of 16,000.
     In 1929 the rift between the high and low minors widened as the low
minors, rebuffed in their efforts to nullify the modified draft agreement, now
attempted to impose their own draft exemption--essentially exempting from the
draft any player with fewer than two seasons of organized baseball.
     Early in 1931 the majors and minors finally adopted a new National
Agreement, including a provision which eliminated the modified draft and
granted to major league clubs greater control of talent through revised option
and draft rules. The higher minors had originally objected, but the majors
told them to accept the universal draft or they would no longer have any
relations with them--in other words, major league teams would not sell or
option players to or buy players from the American Association, the
International League, or the Pacific Coast League. While such threats had
been taken relatively lightly by the minors in the early days of the
draft-exempt leagues, they were now taken seriously enough that in less than a
month the three recalcitrant leagues capitulated to the majors' terms. In
exchange for all this and largely to secure the support of the low minors, the
majors agreed to sign only collegian amateurs, leaving all high-schoolers and
sandlotters to the minors. Of course, by this time farm systems had developed
to the point that most major league clubs could still sign noncollegian
amateurs through their farm clubs.
     Milwaukee had sold Fred Schulte to the Browns for a reported $100,000 in
1928, but this was the end of an era. There would be no more $100,000 minor
leaguers; in fact there would be few if any minor leaguers sold for as much as
$50,000 again.  At the 1928 National Association
Convention, president Mike Sexton wondered when the majors would own enough
clubs to control the National Association. The farm system, an old idea now
in the process of being perfected by Branch Rickey, had clearly begun to alter
the way the minors operated, and despite the efforts of some--most notably
Judge Landis--the trend couldn't be reversed.
     The Great Depression caused a contraction of the minors in the early
1930s, but even though a near-record low of fourteen leagues opened the 1933
season, none of them folded. The minors then entered an era of unprecedented
growth and stability, reaching forty-four leagues in 1940, with only two
leagues failing to finish the season between 1933 and 1941. This can be
attributed in part to the substantial involvement of the major leagues through
outright ownership or regular infusions of money through working agreements,
but there were obviously other factors at work. Judge Bramham, on becoming
president of the National Association, instituted a number of reforms, many of
which were aimed at getting rid of "fly-by-night" or "shoestring" operators.
Minor league baseball was better promoted--they had established a public
relations department in 1934--and the advent of night baseball was of
incalculable value in generating attendance, which reached 20 million in 1940.
Interestingly, that year 54 percent of the minor league clubs were not
affiliated with any major league clubs compared to just 37 percent that
operated independently in 1936.
     World War Two caused the minors to drop to just ten leagues in 1944, but
in the first postwar year it was up to forty-three, increasing to an all-time
high of fifty-nine in 1949, and during that time no leagues folded. (In 1946
the Mexican National League, set up by organized baseball to compete with the
outlaw Mexican League, is listed by the National Association as having folded
during the season, but actually it only withdrew from the Association and
continued to operate independently.)
     According to a general consensus, it was the coming of television that
caused the minors to begin to disintegrate. Between 1949 and 1963 the number
of minor leagues dropped from fifty-nine to eighteen. Attendance decreased
even more sharply, going from 42 million to less than 10 million over the same
time period.
     By 1963, the minors had become nothing more than a training ground for
the majors--90 percent of the clubs were major league affiliates, and most of
those that weren't were in the largely autonomous Mexican League. While
television was commonly cited as the cause of the minors' contraction, some
contended it was a natural response to overexpansion. Gerry Hirn, in an April
1954 Baseball Digest article, contended that while the number of minor leagues
had dropped from fifty-nine to thirty-six, that was still too many and the
minors would be stronger and more efficient if only sixteen to twenty leagues
operated. Interestingly, in 1954 three leagues failed to finish the season,
the most failures in peacetime since 1932; they remain the last United
States-based minor leagues that failed to finish a season (the Inter-American
League, which had a team in Miami but was largely based in the Caribbean,
failed to finish the 1979 season--the only year it operated).
     For reasons that aren't entirely clear, minor league baseball exploded in
popularity in the 1980s. Attendance, which had remained stuck at 10-11
million through the 1960s and most of the 1970s, took off in the late 1970s,
topping 20 million in 1987 for the first time since 1953. Louisville, which
dropped out of organized ball after drawing just 116,000 in 1972, topped a
million in 1983. Nashville, which dropped out in 1963 after drawing just
54,000 for the season, drew over half a million in 1980. Buffalo, which drew
only 78,000 in 1969 and saw its franchise shifted to Winnipeg the following
year, came back to set an all-time minor league attendance record with 1.1
million in 1988. The Louisville franchise, which didn't exit in 1981
(what became the Louisville franchise was at that time in Springfield,
Illinois, drawing 120,000), sold for more than $4 million in 1987. In
1990 the far less successful Vancouver franchise sold to Japanese interests
for $5.5 million. Minor league franchises that could be picked up in the
early 1970s by anyone who would pay the outstanding debts were selling
for more than a million dollars.
     The high prices being paid for franchises may have precipitated the
major-minor-league crisis of 1990, reminiscent of the battles early in the
century. The Professional Baseball Agreement which binds the majors and
minors was set to expire at the end of 1990. The majors, who under that
agreement provided substantial financial support for the minors, proposed
a reduction in those subsidies. The majors believed that the now financially
healthy minor league clubs should assume a greater share of operational
expenses. In addition, the majors wanted the Commissioner's office to
have greater control over minor league affairs. The minors felt the majors
were trying to usurp their autonomy and, to add injury to insult, charge
them for the privilege. If there was no agreement, the majors threatened to
place their entire farm systems in spring training complexes in Arizona
and Florida. Some minor league operators threatened to go independent and
even form a third major league.
     In the end, however, the majority of minor league clubs capitulated,
believing that they could not afford to operate without players supplied by
the majors. The majors would still pick up most of the expenses, but the new
agreement (a) eliminated the minors' share of big-league TV revenue, (b)
required that the minors pay a share of their ticket revenues to the majors,
and (c) established minimum standards that must be met by minor league
facilities by 1994 (subsequently extended to 1995). It was generally believed
that these changes, by reducing minor league clubs' profits, might stabilize
or reduce the value of franchises. However, in 1992 the Las Vegas franchise
sold for a record $7 million and some unsuccessful Class A franchises were
sold for well over a million dollars each. And the fans kept coming--in 1992
minor league attendance topped 27 million for the first time since 1951, and
in 1993 Buffalo went over 1 million in attendance for the sixth consecutive
year.
     The positive trend of the past fifteen years is not unprecedented, but
the minors have been riding a roller coaster of success and failure over the
past century--the Newark franchise which sold for a reported $600,000
during the depths of the Depression didn't even exist twenty years later.
Even today the picture is not all positive: between 1987 and 1992 more than
two dozen franchises were shifted, usually due to poor attendance; more than
one quarter of the clubs still draw less than a thousand a game; and it is
generally believed that many clubs still substantially pad their attendance
totals. So the current wave of success is somewhat deceptive and history
tells us it won't last forever. However, regardless of fluctuations in
popularity and economic viability, the minors have been and one can safely
assume will continue to be the primary training ground for major league
players.


The Players

     Great players have passed through the minors, their careers frequently
going in opposite directions and occasionally teaming up or crossing in
unlikely locations such as Easton, Maryland, where in 1924 Jimmie Foxx broke
into organized baseball as a catcher and the player-manager was Home Run Baker
in his last season as an active player. There were many others: Rube Waddell
and Red Faber with Minneapolis in 1911, young Waite Hoyt and ancient Jesse
Burkett with Hartford in 1916, Dazzy Vance and Roger Bresnahan with Toledo in
1917, Chief Bender and Lefty Grove with Baltimore in 1923, and more recently
Enos Slaughter and Billy Williams with Houston in 1960.
     Former Negro Leaguers, their careers going in opposite directions, Ray
Dandridge and Willie Mays were teammates at Minneapolis in 1951 where another
teammate was a seven-year minor league veteran, Hoyt Wilhelm. Wilhelm, a
twenty-eight-year-old knuckleballer with a background that included three
years in Class D ball and three more in the military service, at that time
appeared to be a member of what in that era was a vast army of career minor
leaguers, the best of whom held their own with the acknowledged major league
greats passing through the minors, but who for a variety of reasons--some
good, some not--would themselves spend the bulk of their careers in the
minors.
     For some of these players who were left behind, the DH rule came fifty
years too late, because while they could hit both for average and power, they
generally lacked speed or had defensive shortcomings. For others it is less
clear what, if any, deficiencies kept them in the minors, but from these
groups a few players emerged as true minor league greats whose impact on fans
in minor league cities--Buzz Arlett in Oakland, Joe Hauser in Minneapolis, and
Bunny Brief in Kansas City, to name a few--was as great as that of more
renowned players in major league cities.
     The greatest of the minor league players is generally acknowledged to be
Buzz Arlett.
     Arlett started his career as a right-handed spitball pitcher with the
hometown Oakland Oaks in 1918 and went on to win 108 games, twice going over
25 wins in a season. The Detroit Tigers looked at him, but without the
spitball, which he wouldn't be able to use in the majors, they did not
consider him a prospect. After suffering arm trouble early in 1923, Buzz
switched to the outfield. Although he had been nothing more than a
fair-hitting pitcher, once becoming a regular he annually averaged nearly
.360 with 30 homers and 140 RBIs through the rest of the 1920s, but early in
his career as an outfielder a Cardinal scout labeled him "good hit, no field,"
and it stuck. Finally in 1931 he was purchased by the Phillies. The
thirty-two-year-old switch-hitter batted .313 with 18 homers and 73 RBIs in a
season when the National League introduced a "dead ball" in reaction to the
hitting orgies of 1929-1930. However, at the end of the year Arlett was sent
to Baltimore, where in 1932 he hit 4 homers in a game twice within a five-week
period and led the league with 54 homers for the season, but he would never
return to the majors. He spent another year with Baltimore, when he again won
the home run title, a little over a month with Birmingham, and nearly three
years with Minneapolis, where he had another home run championship. After a
few games with Syracuse in 1937, Arlett's career was over.
     In addition to his 108 wins, he hit 432 homers, a minor league record
that held up until Hector Espino topped it in 1977. Arlett walked a lot,
didn't strike out much, ran pretty well early in his career, had a .341
lifetime batting average--.350 after he became an outfielder--and was the only
player to finish in the top five in home runs and slugging percentage in his
only season in the majors. In addition, modern statistical analysis,
including range factors, suggests he was nowhere near the defensive liability
he was portrayed as being. He was big (6-4, 230) and gave the appearance of
being lackadaisical, which apparently irritated some of his managers, but the
evidence is strong that Arlett, despite nearly two decades spent in the
minors, was a major-league-caliber player.
     Ike Boone was another player whose hitting feats were not limited to the
minors. Boone was a college teammate (at the University of Alabama) of Joe
Sewell and Riggs Stephenson; his lifetime major league batting average was
.319, and in his only two full seasons in the majors--1924-1925 with the
Boston Red Sox--he hit .333 and .330, but due to alleged defensive
deficiencies most of his career was spent in the minors. In 1929 with the
Missions of San Francisco, Boone probably had the finest season any player has
had in the minors. On the all-time minor league list of single-season
accomplishments, his 553 total bases that year are first, his 323 hits are
second, his 195 runs scored are tied for third, and his 218 RBIs are fourth.
On the all-time Pacific Coast League list, his .407 average is second, and his
55 home runs are tied for fourth.
     Boone's greatness wasn't confined to a single season; in four of his
first eight years in the minors he hit over .400 (he was on his way to perhaps
his greatest season in 1930, batting .448 with 22 homers and 96 RBIs when he
was sold to Brooklyn in late June). His .402 average with San Antonio in 1923
is the highest in twentieth-century Texas League history; his .389 with New
Orleans in 1921 is the fifth highest in the Southern Association; he also led
the International League in batting twice. His .370 lifetime average is the
minor league record for players with ten or more seasons. He had an
exceptional arm, but limited range in the outfield. Although he hit 77 home
runs in a season and a half with the Missions, he was not generally regarded
as a power hitter. He was, however, a great pure hitter; in eleven of his
fourteen seasons in the minors, he hit over .350, and there is no evidence
that he couldn't hit major league pitching.
     Smead Jolley was an atrocious outfielder. Stories of his defensive
lapses are legion, and the statistical evidence suggests those stories are
more than isolated anecdotes. Like Boone, Jolley had a powerful arm but no
speed; like Arlett, he was big and awkward; and like both, he could
hit--majors or minors. In the equivalent of three full major league seasons
with the White Sox and Red Sox, he hit .305 and averaged 15 homers and 105
RBIs. He won six minor league batting championships--leading the Pacific
Coast League in hitting three times (winning the Triple Crown with San
Francisco in 1928) and the International League once. Twice he had over 300
hits in a season, and twice he drove in more than 180 runs. In the thirteen
minor league seasons in which he played over 100 games, he had this run:
.370, .372, .346, .397, .404, .387, .360, .372, .373, .350, .309, .373, .345.
Perhaps because he spent nearly six years in the low minors, the first four as
a pitcher, and had a somewhat nomadic career (he was with thirteen minor
league teams), he has not always been ranked in the top echelon of minor
league greats, yet he may have been the finest hitter of them all.
     Minor league stars generally fit two stereotypes:  one-dimensional
players who could hit but could do nothing else well enough to stay in the
majors--justly or not, Arlett, Boone, and Jolley were consigned to this group.
Then there are those who excelled in the minors but couldn't produce in the
majors. Perhaps the classic example is Bunny Brief.
     Brief, born Antonio Bordetski, may have been the most dominant power
hitter in the minor leagues. In major league trials with the Browns, White
Sox, and Pirates between 1912 and 1917, he was consistently unimpressive--in a
combined 569 at-bats, he hit .223 with 5 homers, 59 RBIs, and nearly 100
strikeouts. In the minors, however, it was a different story. Although he
hit 40 or more homers only twice and never had more than 42, he had eight
league home run championships. Before going up to the majors, he led the
Michigan State League twice; later he led the Pacific Coast League once and
the American Association five times. He also led the Association in RBIs five
times (four in succession), including a league-record 191 in 1921. He had a
six-year stretch (1921-1926) with Kansas City and Milwaukee, where he averaged
90 extra-base hits, 151 RBIs, and a .351 average per season. Brief also drew
a lot of walks. Early in his career he had excellent speed, and although he
played most of his career at first base, he was the best defensive outfielder
of the big minor league sluggers, with good range and an excellent arm--yet
for reasons that remain unclear, Brief never played in a major league game
after his twenty-fifth birthday.
     Nick Cullop was another minor league great who never produced in the
majors. He, like many of the great minor league sluggers, began his career as
a pitcher. In trials with the Yankees, Senators, Indians, Dodgers, and Reds
between 1926 and 1931 he totaled 490 at-bats, hit 11 homers, drove in 67 runs,
hit .249, and struck out 128 times. He was the first farm-system minor league
star, playing 1,450 games in the Cardinal chain from 1932 to 1944. In the
minors, he drove in 1,857 runs, the all-time career high, ten times exceeding
100 in a season. He hit 420 home runs, third on the all-time list.
     Cullop had good speed early in his career and was a good enough
outfielder to play center field into the late 1920s, but he slowed up
considerably in the 1930s. While it is not clear why Brief never did well in
the majors, Cullop struck out a lot even in the minors and didn't walk
much--suggesting that he had holes which could be and were pitched to
effectively in the majors.
     Ox Eckhardt was a great football star at the University of Texas who
after graduation signed with both Austin of the Texas Association and the
Cleveland Indians. The resulting dispute delayed his real professional debut
for three years until he was twenty-six years old. He made up for lost time,
hitting .376 with a league-leading 27 triples for Wichita and Amarillo in
the Western League in 1928. That fall he played for the New York Giants of
the NFL. His baseball contract had been acquired by the Detroit Tigers and
although he was on their spring roster in 1929, 1930, and 1931 he never got
into a game with the big club. In 1929 he was sent to Seattle, where he
hit .354 and again led the league in triples. In 1930 he went to Beaumont,
where he led the Texas League with a .379 average. In 1931 he was sold to the
Missions, for whom he led the PCL with a .369 average. In the spring of 1932
he was with the Boston Braves--he played 8 games at the start of the season
as a pinch hitter and was then sent back to
the Missions, where over the next four seasons he hit .371, .414, .378, and
.399, winning the batting title three times. He went to the Dodgers in 1936,
lasted 16 games batting just .182, and was sent to Indianapolis, where he hit
.353 and .341 over the next two years. He hit .321 with Toledo and Beaumont
in 1938, .361 with Memphis in 1939, and after hitting .293 with Dallas in
1940, he retired with a minor league career batting average of .367 and the
highest career average in organized baseball--.365. (Ty Cobb's minor league
record drops his overall average to .3630; Ike Boone's major league record
drops his organized-baseball average to .3629.)  Eckhardt has the highest
single-season and career batting average in the PCL, and ten times he hit over
.350.
     Unlike many of the minor league stars, Eckhardt did not want for
opportunities to play in the majors--counting a trial with the Indians in
1925, he had six shots, but they resulted in his playing in just 24 major
league games. The reasons for his failure to make it in the majors are not
obscure. Despite being an exceptional athlete with good speed early in his
career, he was a poor fielder with a weak arm and no power. Although he was
6-1, 190, the lefthanded-hitting Eckhardt sliced or punched almost every hit
down the left field line. Reportedly managers tried to get him to pull the
ball--an idea that should certainly have advanced his career in Detroit or
Brooklyn--but it only served to foul up his swing, which he would rediscover
after being returned to the minors.
     A few minor league greats don't fit the stereotypes:  Jigger Statz was
the opposite of most--his strengths were speed and defense. Joe Hauser
appeared to be on his way to a successful career in the majors, broke his leg,
never regained his past form, and went to the minors, where he became the only
player to have two 60-home-run seasons. Hector Espino spent virtually his
entire career in Mexico, and while major league scouts believed he could hit
in the majors, he apparently had no desire to leave his homeland.
     Of the great minor league stars, Statz spent the most time in the
majors--683 games--and the most time with one club:  all of his eighteen minor
league seasons were with Los Angeles. His 3,473 games in organized baseball
were a record until broken by Pete Rose in 1983.
     Statz was a great fielder; virtually all of his contemporaries considered
him the best or one of the best they had seen. Playing very shallow, he
reminded many of Tris Speaker. The statistics offer strong support for his
claim to greatness. In four full seasons in the majors, he led the league in
chances-per-game once and was second the other three years. Between 1922 and
1932 in the majors and minors he had a stretch of ten seasons in which he
played in at least 100 games and never finished lower than second in
chances-per-game. He had excellent speed, but during most of his career with
the Angels they were a hard-hitting club that did not feature the running
game, but that changed in the mid-1930s, and in the three seasons following
his thirty-sixth birthday he stole 157 bases. His game was not just limited
to speed and defense. A classic leadoff man of his era--a good contact
hitter, small and fast--he hit .285 in the majors and .315 in the minors,
collecting over 2,300 runs, 4,000 hits, 700 doubles, and 500 stolen bases in
his organized-baseball career.
     On April 7, 1925, the day of Babe Ruth's "big bellyache," Joe Hauser a
twenty-six-year-old first baseman beginning his fourth season with the
Athletics, broke his leg in a non-contact play while fielding during a
preseason game against the Phillies at Baker Bowl. He had a .304 average for
his first three major league seasons and had hit 27 homers with 115 RBIs in
1924. The injury kept him out for the entire 1925 season. In 1926 he tried
to come back but hit only .192. After an excellent season with Kansas City,
he went back to the majors but didn't do much in stints with the Philadelphia
A's and Indians. He went back to the minors and had 4 1/2 remarkable seasons.
In 1930 with Baltimore he set a professional record with 63 homers; then he
dropped to 31 in 1931 but still led the league. In 1932 he went to
Minneapolis, where he led the American Association in homers with 49. In 1933
he broke his own home run record with 69, and he was off to a great start in
1934--33 homers, 88 RBIs in 82 games--when he broke his kneecap, knocking him
out for the season. He continued to play until 1942 but never came close to
achieving the success he had in the early 1930s.
     Hauser did not hit for a high average, and it has been suggested that he
took enormous advantage of short right field fences in Baltimore and
Minneapolis--no one would argue that point, since 50 of his 69 homers in 1933
came at home--but many greats played in Oriole and Nicollet Parks, and none
came close to Hauser's two record-breaking seasons, which remain the two
highest home run seasons in the high minors.
     Hector Espino holds the minor league career home run record with 484, and
all but 3 of those were hit in Mexico. At the end of the 1964 Mexican League
season, the twenty-five-year-old first baseman, who had led the league with 46
homers and a .371 batting average, was sold by Monterrey to the St. Louis
Cardinals' Jacksonville farm club. He hit .300 with those 3 homers in 100
at-bats and was invited to spring training by the Cards for 1965, but he never
reported and was eventually returned to Monterrey. In the late 1960s, the
California Angels coveted Espino, who had led the Mexican League in hitting in
1966-1968, but they were never able to consummate a deal. Espino was a legend
in Mexico, but it has never been clear why he never tried the majors--he has
given conflicting answers. Possibly he enjoy being a big fish in a small
pond--it wasn't the money, since he never made more than $18,000 a year in
Mexico. He was notorious for marching to his own drummer, occasionally
leaving clubs for a midseason vacation, and perhaps he was unwilling to
sacrifice that independence.
     Espino could hit for power and average--he led the Mexican League in
batting five times and home runs four times--and scouts said he could have
done the same in the majors, but like many players he played too long. His
power started a sharp decline after his thirty-third birthday, and he was
virtually helpless at the plate during his last two or three seasons.
Nevertheless he ranks as perhaps the greatest minor league player who never
played in the majors.
     Great players do not have to be distributed evenly among all positions or
across all eras, but the emphasis being on great hitters, the result is a
number of outfielder-first baseman-designated hitter types, most of whom
played in the high-scoring 1920s and 1930s.
     Ray French was perhaps the best middle infielder in the minors. He spent
twenty-eight years in the minors, most of it in the Pacific Coast League. He
played 2,736 games at shortstop and was a brilliant fielder. In the fourteen
seasons that he played more than 100 games at short, he led the league in
chances-per-game seven times. He was not an outstanding hitter, but his
fielding kept him around long enough for him to collect 3,254 hits--seventh on
the all-time minor league list.
     The two best nineteenth-century minor leaguers were first baseman Perry
Werden and pitcher Willie Mains. Werden had good speed and power. He had
several good years in the majors (twice leading the league in triples), won
six minor league home run titles, including two seasons when he went over 40,
and his .341 lifetime average was exceptionally high for that era.
     Mains was the first minor league pitcher to win 300 games, reaching that
figure early in 1905. A seven-time twenty-game winner, he was also an
excellent hitter in an era when pitchers were frequently expected to take a
shift in the outfield. Most of his career was in the New York State League,
but in an interesting example of the mobility of players in the game's early
years, in 1892-1893 Mains had back-to-back seasons in Portland, Oregon, and
Portland, Maine.
     A highly productive but not great player who deserves mention is Spencer
Harris, a little lefthanded-hitting outfielder who holds the minor league
career records for runs, hits, doubles, total bases, and walks. He reached
those levels primarily because he kept playing until he was forty-eight years
old. He did lead the American Association in homers in 1928 while at
Minneapolis, but he was aided enormously by the friendly right field fence at
Nicollet Park. (He averaged 17 homers a year in ten seasons with Minneapolis
but only 6 a year in his sixteen other minor league seasons.)  He was never
thought of as the top player on his many minor league clubs--just as a good
solid player of the type that formed the backbone of the minors for so many
years.
     There have been few minor league pitching stars of the magnitude of the
great hitters. Perhaps this is because pitching is a one-dimensional
skill--no pitchers were kept in the minors because they couldn't hit or field.
Many of the outstanding minor league pitchers stayed there because they didn't
have great stuff. Bill Thomas, who won 383 games, and Hal Turpin, who won 271
without ever getting shots at the majors, had the same statistical
profile--they struck out few, walked even less, and allowed a lot of hits.
     Two pitchers that didn't fit that profile, however, were Joe Martina and
Dick Barrett. Martina was a power pitcher who spent most of his career with
Beaumont and with his hometown New Orleans Pelicans. He held the minor league
career strikeout record until ageless George Brunet broke it while toiling in
the Mexican League in 1981. Martina was a workhorse, pitching over 250
innings thirteen times and was a seven-time twenty-game winner. He got his
first and only big league opportunity at age thirty-five with the world
champion Washington Senators in 1924.
     Kewpie Dick Barrett didn't really find himself until he joined Seattle of
the PCL in 1935, ten years into his professional career. A little lefthander
with less than pinpoint control (he holds the minor league record for career
bases on balls), he had good stuff and eight 20-win seasons.
     Frank Shellenback is most frequently named as the greatest minor league
pitcher. The Pacific Coast League career leader in wins with 295, Shellenback
won 10 games with the White Sox as a nineteen-year-old rookie spitballer in
1918. After a poor start the following season, he was sent to Minneapolis.
In February 1920 the baseball rules committee outlawed the spitball and other
trick pitches. Each major league team was allowed to designate two spitball
pitchers who would be able to continue using the pitch in the majors.
Unfortunately for Shellenback, he was on the Vernon roster by this time and at
age twenty-one would be consigned forever to pitching in the minors if he
couldn't get by without the spitball. Throughout much of his career, articles
would be written that usually declared that Shellenback would be a major
league star if he was eligible to play there. He did have a great six-year
stretch with Hollywood (1928-1933) when he went 142-59. He was a very popular
player with the Stars as well as Vernon and a fine hitter with good power, but
a review of his record suggests he was never as good as everyone thought he
was--he led the PCL in wins twice but never led in another category. He had
only five 20-win seasons.
     Because of the spitball ban, Shellenback was viewed as a tragic figure,
but he wasn't alone. Spitballer Paul Wachtel won 203 games in the Texas
League after the ban, including five 20-win seasons. Rube Robinson won 148
games in the Southern Association, including two league-leading 26-win
seasons. Wheeler Fuller, who never pitched in the majors, won 156 in the
Eastern League after the ban.
     Perhaps the greatest minor league pitcher was Tony Freitas, a little
lefthander who spent all or part of fifteen seasons with Sacramento. He had
great control, could get the strikeout, and had nine 20-win seasons (plus two
19-win seasons). If he hadn't lost three years to the military, he probably
would have won 400 games in the minors. Freitas had an impressive major
league debut, going 12-5 in less than a full season with the 1932 Philadelphia
A's, but that was the last success he would have in the majors.
     Four other pitchers worthy of mention are Sam Gibson, George Boehler,
Bill Bailey, and George Brunet.
     Gibson was an underappreciated pitcher who spent most of his career in
the PCL--twelve years with San Francisco. He didn't make his
organized-baseball debut until he was twenty-three years old. After two
promising seasons with Detroit, he never had much success in the majors, but
he was extremely effective in the minors. He had six 20-win seasons (plus
three 19-win seasons) and, pitching in a high-scoring era, he had eight
seasons where his ERA was below 3.00.
     Boehler was a hard-throwing workhorse who spent most of his career in the
Western League. Twice he pitched over 400 innings, six times over 300.
Unfortunately he was terribly inconsistent:  with Tulsa in 1921-1923 his
seasonal win totals were 4-38-7. He was consistently ineffective in a number
of major league trials.
     Bailey had seven league-leading strikeout seasons in four different
leagues (International, Texas, Southern, Western) but only three 20-win
seasons. After a promising September debut with the Browns in 1907, he
pitched over 200 games in the majors with five teams spread over fifteen years
with no success.
     Brunet pitched in organized ball for thirty-three years (1953-1985), and
astonishingly he was a regular-rotation pitcher for all but the last year.
When he was forty-eight years old, he had a 1.94 ERA pitching regularly in the
Mexican League. He never won more than 17 games in a season, had only two
200-strikeout seasons (they were twenty-one years apart), but he had a
credible major league career and holds the minor league career strikeout
record.


The Teams

     There have been a number of debates about the greatest minor league
teams. The 1937 Newark Bears, the 1934 Los Angeles Angels, the 1920-1925 Ft.
Worth Panthers, and the 1919-1925 Baltimore Orioles usually draw the most
support. All were dominant teams with good players.
     The Bears included Charlie Keller, Joe Gordon, George McQuinn, Atley
Donald, and five other players who would go to the majors the following year.
They won the International League pennant by 25 1/2 games with a 109-41
record. The Angels included Frank Demaree, Jigger Statz, Gene Lillard, and
Fay Thomas, and they compiled an astounding 137-50 record. The Panthers (or
Cats) won six straight pennants and five Dixie Series. They were led by the
home run hitting of Big Boy Kraft and a fine pitching staff that included
spitballer Paul Wachtel and Joe Pate.
     It is doubtful that any of the three could have competed successfully in
the majors. It is occasionally claimed that the 1937 Newark Bears were the
Yankee B team and could have finished second in the American League, or at
least in the first division. But that ignores the talent that was in the
majors. The Red Sox finished fifth in 1937 with a club that included Jimmie
Foxx, Joe Cronin, Lefty Grove, Pinky Higgins, Doc Cramer, Ben Chapman, Jack
Wilson, and Bobo Newsom, all of whom, it is safe to say, would have started
for the Bears. The same is true of the Angels, whose pitching staff chose
1934 to have career years, and of the Cats, who played well as a team but had
few players that were even considered minor league standouts.
     The Orioles were a different story. Thanks to the draft exemption, Jack
Dunn was able to assemble a powerhouse comprised of players ready and capable
of playing in the majors. The 1922 team was probably the best minor league
club ever assembled. It had Jack Bentley, Max Bishop, Fritz Maisel, and Joe
Boley in the infield, and Otis Lawry, Merwyn Jacobson, and Jimmy Walsh in the
outfield. The catcher was Lena Styles, and the pitchers were Lefty Grove,
John Ogden, Tommy Thomas, Rube Parnham, and Harry Frank with Bentley
occasionally seeing action in that capacity.
     Grove, Ogden, and Thomas combined for 60 wins and six years later would
win a combined 56 games in the majors. Parnham, a free spirit who pitched
when he wanted, was around long enough to win 16 (the following year he won
33). Frank won 22, but his career would soon be cut short by illness.
Bentley hit .350 and won 13 games; he went to the Giants in 1923 as a pitcher
but hit .427. Bishop and Boley, who hit .261 and .343 respectively, went on
to become the double-play combo with the 1929-1930 world champion Philadelphia
A's. Styles was just twenty-two years old and hit .315, but that was his peak.
Maisel (.306), Walsh (.327), Jacobson (.304), and Lawry (.333) had all played
briefly and/or ineffectively in the majors but would all go on to have great
careers in the International League. A twenty-year-old rookie utility player
on the team was Dick Porter, who hit .279 and would have seven excellent
seasons with the Orioles before going on to have several good years with the
Indians.
     As good as the Orioles were and as good as some of their players became,
it is doubtful that even they could have finished in the first division of the
American or National Leagues in 1922. Yet the strongest evidence of the
attraction of minor league baseball and the hold it has long held on fans who
were exposed to it is that those great Oriole, Bear, and Angel teams are far
better known and more fondly remembered than hundreds of more talented
second-division and higher major league clubs.


The Farm System

     Farm teams are nearly as old as organized baseball. In 1884 the Boston
Beaneaters of the National League owned a team called the Boston Reserves in
the Massachusetts State Association. The Reserves, also called the Colts,
were apparently intended to serve as a source of replacements for disabled
members of the major league club. It has also been suggested that the farm
team was a device to keep more players under contract and out of the hands of
the Union Association that year. Whatever the origins of the idea, during the
next decade a number of major league clubs operated such reserve teams, but
they usually competed in local semipro leagues rather than in organized
baseball and were viewed more as quick sources of replacements rather than as
training grounds for players.
     With John B. Day's joint ownership of the New York Gothams of the
National League and the New York Metropolitans of the American Association as
early as 1883 and with the proliferation of interlocking ownerships of major
league clubs in the 1890s, it was only natural that some major and minor
league clubs would come under joint ownership as well. The first instance of
any significance, however, occurred when John T. Brush, owner of Cincinnati in
the National League, entered the Indianapolis club in the newly formed Western
League in 1894. While this was not the first case of joint major-minor league
club ownership, Brush appears to have been the first to grasp the potential of
such an arrangement. Indianapolis served as a place to develop talent that
was not quite ready for the majors. The team gave Cincinnati an expanded
roster as players were frequently shuffled to and from Indianapolis during the
season; it also served as a source of profit because Indianapolis drew well at
the gate, having become the dominant club in the Western League, with three
pennants and two second-place finishes in five seasons (1895-1899).
Indianapolis' success was aided in no small part by Brush's practice of
drafting players from other Western League clubs and sending them to
Indianapolis, thus simultaneously weakening the opposition and strengthening
the Hoosiers. Efforts were made by the other Western League club owners to
control "farming" or to modify the draft rules to stop Brush, but none were
successful.
     Perhaps copying Brush's strategy, in 1896 several National League clubs
obtained minor league affiliates:  Pittsburgh had Toronto, Boston had
Wilkes-Barre, and Cleveland had Ft. Wayne. Philadelphia had a Philadelphia
farm club in the Pennsylvania State League, and when that league folded, they
shifted the junior club to the Atlantic Association. The New York Giants had
the first farm "system", with the New York Mets in the Atlantic Association
and Syracuse in the Eastern League.
     When the National Agreement was adopted in 1903, it banned the "farming
out" of players, but "farming" as defined in the agreement referred only to
those efforts by major league clubs to exceed the limits on players who could
be optioned through subterfuge--"fake transfers" such as loans or sell/
buy-back arrangements with minor league clubs where title to a player was
never actually surrendered.
     The independent minor league operators saw farming as a curse for two
reasons. First, it reduced their autonomy and potential revenue by placing
more players under major league ownership, thus reducing the majors' need to
buy or draft players from the minors. Second, clubs accepting players from
the majors, either openly through options or secretly, might gain an unfair
competitive advantage on the field. So while in 1905 the New York Giants'
request to establish a working agreement with Bridgeport was validated by the
National Commission, most of the legislation was focused on restricting
farming, normally by limiting the number of players who could be optioned and
the number of times each player could be optioned. For example, in 1904 a
rule was adopted which required a player sent out on option to stay with the
minor league club for the remainder of that season. In 1907 the rule was
relaxed so that a major league club could option a player and recall him, but
only once in a season. In 1911 a team could have no more than eight players
out on option at one time.
     Working agreements became quite common during this period. The major
league club furnished the minor league club with its surplus
players--youngsters in need of more experience or veterans past their prime
who could still strengthen a minor league club--and/or cash. In return the
major league club could obtain promising players from the minor league club.
During this era the formal working agreement between major and minor league
clubs was usually of short duration--a year or two at most--suggesting that
major league clubs targeted certain minor league clubs that had two or three
players they might be interested in and established a working agreement in
order to get first claim on those that developed satisfactorily. There were
also informal working agreements, generally based on friendships between major
and minor league club operators, and it was usually through such arrangements
that the "fake transfers" banned by the National Agreement took place. In the
early 1900s, for example, there was substantial traffic in players between the
White Sox and Milwaukee of the American Association and between the Dodgers
and Baltimore in the Eastern League. (Brewer manager Joe Cantillon was a
long-time friend of Charles Comiskey, and Brooklyn manager Ned Hanlon was also
a minority owner of the Orioles).
     The most efficient and only legal method of circumventing the rules
relating to major league control of players was through joint ownership of
major and minor league clubs. By 1912 Charles W. Somers owned Cleveland and
Toledo, and Charles Ebbets owned both Brooklyn and Newark. This enabled the
Indians to hold title to sixty players and the Dodgers to sixty-one. In 1913
a National Commission confidential bulletin directed major league clubs to
divest their interest in minor league clubs by January 1, 1914, but neither
Somers nor Ebbets complied until several years later (in fact, Somers secretly
acquired New Orleans in 1913). In 1921 the joint ownership of major and minor
league clubs was again permitted, and the New National Agreement, although
retaining option limits, dropped the antifarming provisions that had been in
it since 1903.
     In 1921 the Cardinals, who had already acquired an interest in Ft. Smith
of the Western Association and Houston of the Texas League, acquired a half
interest in Syracuse of the International League. This was the beginning of
Branch Rickey's farm system, but initially it attracted little attention as it
didn't appear to represent anything particularly new. Major league clubs had
long been signing young talent directly off the sandlots and developing it in
the minors. In 1910, for example, Cleveland signed Roger Peckinpaugh out of
the Cleveland City League, gave him a brief trial, and then optioned him to
New Haven and Portland in successive seasons before recalling him when he was
deemed ready for the majors. This practice had developed to the point that
Mike Sexton, president of the National Association, in 1921 spoke out against
the fact that the majors and higher minors had preempted the low minors'
traditional role of discovering and signing young talent.
     As we have seen, major league clubs had occasionally owned minor league
clubs, primarily to expand the number of players under their control, but
these were always higher-classification clubs, where talent was refined rather
than developed. Rickey's approach was original because he was the first to
assemble a system of teams at various levels or classifications. This enabled
him to sign young talent and, through a hierarchy of minor league clubs, to
develop and retain continuous title to a large number of players, his theory
being that out of quantity comes quality. It didn't take long for the system
to begin producing talent--the Cards, who had never finished higher than third
in this century, won the World Series in 1926 with a team that included future
Hall of Famers Jim Bottomley and Chick Hafey as well as regulars Taylor
Douthit, Tommy Thevenow, Les Bell, Ray Blades, Flint Rhem, and Art Reinhardt
plus reserves Watty Holm, Jake Flowers, Specs Toporcer, Ernie Vick, and Bill
Hallahan--all of whom were products of a farm system that was less than seven
years old. In addition, Billy Southworth was acquired from the Giants for
Heinie Mueller, another product of the Cardinal farm system.
     During those seven years when the Cardinals were discovering, signing,
and developing unprecedented quantities of players at little expense, the
other major league clubs were essentially operating as they always had,
signing some players out of the amateur ranks, optioning them out for
seasoning, and buying top prospects from minor league clubs, even though the
new draft rules were driving the prices of such players to unprecedented
levels. For example, the Yankee team the Cardinals defeated in the 1926 World
Series had just one home-grown player--Lou Gehrig, who was signed out of
Columbia University in 1923 and optioned to Hartford until ready. Although
this had been an inexpensive acquisition, the Yankees subsequently had
purchased, for $50,000 each, Earle Combs from Louisville, Mark Koenig from St.
Paul (with whom the Yankees had a working agreement), and Tony Lazzeri from
Salt Lake. In 1925, the year the Pirates won the World Series, they acquired
Paul Waner and Hal Rhyne from the San Francisco Seals for $100,000 and also
signed Joe Cronin off the San Francisco sandlots for little more than train
fare to his first assignment--Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
     But the escalating prices of players and the success of the Cardinals
finally encouraged other clubs to begin acquiring minor league clubs. Shortly
after the Cardinals acquired the half interest in Syracuse in 1921, William
Wrigley, owner of the Cubs, acquired Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League,
but he treated them virtually as separate investments. By 1927, however,
major league acquisition of minor league clubs was causing concern in the
minors. The first formal notice came late that year, when the American
Association adopted a new Constitution which effectively prohibited major
league ownership of its clubs (excluding Columbus, which was already owned by
Cincinnati). At the National Association meeting in December 1928, Mike
Sexton wondered aloud when the majors would own enough clubs to control the
National Association. Early in 1929 major league clubs owned or controlled
twenty-seven minor league clubs. At that point Judge Landis, who until then
had been remarkably quiet on the issue of farm systems, opened fire. He began
granting free agency to minor leaguers "covered up" by various major league
organizations. Later in 1929, Landis denounced the farm system, and announced
his intention of destroying it. In response, Sam Breadon, owner of the
Cardinals, cited letters from seven minor leagues saying the farm system was
beneficial to them. Interestingly, in 1921 Landis had said, "The object of
organized baseball is to facilitate the development of skill among ball
players". No one could seriously argue that this wasn't the purpose of the
farm system, but by 1929 Landis was accusing Rickey and Breadon of "raping the
minors", robbing smalltown America of its precious heritage of independent
minor league baseball.
     Through the 1930 s Landis tried to make good on his threat to destroy the
farm system, but since it was not contrary to baseball law, he had to pick at
the edges--by levying fines against teams having an interest in more than one
team in a minor league or by granting free agency to players who were "covered
up" through violations of the option rules or "secret agreements."  Attracting
much attention in Landis' crusade was his granting of free agency to
seventy-four Cardinal farmhands in 1938, and to ninety-one Detroit minor
leaguers in 1940, but these shots were fired after the war was lost.
     More important than the fireworks that erupted between Landis and Breadon
at the 1929 major league meeting was Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert's declaration
at the same meetings that no ball club could afford the prices being paid for
minor league players; Ruppert added that he was "going to be forced into
owning minor league clubs, and so is every other major league owner in this
room."  At the time he spoke, the Yankees had already purchased the
Chambersburg club of the Class D Blue Ridge League. In November 1931 Ruppert
purchased Newark of the International League for a reported $600,000 and soon
thereafter hired Baltimore general manager George Weiss to develop a farm
system. Thus the farm system, a concept that had been created largely out of
necessity by Branch Rickey because the Cardinals didn't have the financial
resources to compete with other clubs for top minor league prospects, had in
less than a decade been embraced by the wealthiest club in baseball as being
the most efficient method of acquiring talent. There would still be an
occasional Joe DiMaggio or Ted Williams, signed by a minor league club and
sold to the majors, but the major league club that didn't establish a farm
system did so at its own peril--it cannot be coincidental that the eight teams
which were the slowest to get on the bandwagon and had the thinnest farm
systems in the 1930s--the Phillies, Athletics, Senators, White Sox, Giants,
Cubs, Braves, and Pirates--were, aside from the Browns, the eight least
successful teams in the 1940s. (The Browns and Reds established extensive farm
systems in the 1930s, and overall they were the two most improved clubs of the
1940s.)
     While several clubs caught on to what the Cardinals were doing, none
could catch up as Rickey, taking advantage of the Depression, which had
created a large pool of young men with few career options, signed players by
the hundreds at tryout camps. Whereas during the 1920s the Cardinal system
had only increased from three clubs to five, by 1936 it had expanded to
twenty-eight teams--remarkable considering that there were only twenty-six
minor leagues that year (the Cardinals had two teams each in the Nebraska
State, Georgia-Florida, and Arkansas-Missouri Leagues). The Cardinal system
finally topped out with thirty-three clubs in 1937--more than the two
next-largest farm systems combined. Rickey's belief that out of quantity
comes quality was proven on the field by the 1942 world champion Cardinals.
Every player on the active roster, except for second-line pitchers Harry
Gumbert and Whitey Moore, was a product of the Cardinal farm system, and
Gumbert had been acquired in exchange for Cardinal farm graduate Bill McGee.
In addition, the sale of players developed by the Cardinals kept the coffers
full--in 1940-1941 alone, Johnny Mize, Joe Medwick, and Mickey Owen were
exchanged to other clubs for $240,000 and nine players.
     Thus from the perspective of the majors the farm system was a success,
and the minors seemed to be flourishing--going from fourteen leagues in 1933
to forty-four by 1940. Sam Breadon, responding to another barrage of attacks
by Landis in the late 1930s, claimed that the farm system had brought
stability and strength to the minors, but there were other factors at
work--the proliferation of night games, better promotion, and an influx of
good young talent resulted in a per-club increase in attendance of 40 percent
from 1937 to 1940. During that same period the portion of minor league clubs
affiliated with the majors actually dropped from 61 to 46 percent. Rickey's
theory that out of quantity comes quality might have had practical merit
during a depression, or again immediately following World War Two when there
was an influx of returning veterans. However, under normal circumstances huge
farm systems were not cost-effective. While the minors were still expanding
in the late 1930s, the Cardinals began pruning back their farm system of more
than thirty teams; again while the minors were expanding in the late 1940s,
farm systems were contracting--in 1948 there were six farm systems of twenty
or more teams; by 1951 there were none. The portion of minor league teams
affiliated with major league teams dropped from 62 percent in 1946 to 47
percent in 1951 as major league farm systems collectively dropped from 280 to
175 clubs and outright major league ownership of minor league clubs dropped
from 125 to 75.
     In 1950 there were 232 minor league teams not affiliated with the majors.
This was the highest number of independent teams in organized baseball since
the early teens. Nine of the fifty-eight leagues had no teams with major
league affiliations, and more than a dozen others had only one or two
affiliates. These leagues operated virtually outside the player-development
chain, existing much as a semipro team or league does--to provide
entertainment and reflect civic pride. Their only source of revenue was
through the turnstiles, and just as forty years earlier automobiles and the
movies helped drive out the marginal teams and leagues, now TV did the same.
This can be clearly seen as the heavily populated Northeast, the first region
to be heavily penetrated by television, suffered the first wave of league
failures.
     Over the next few years, attendance declined sharply, most of the
independent clubs folded, and farm systems continued to contract. In 1956 the
majors established a "stabilization fund" of $500,000 to aid clubs and leagues
in lower classifications, but the free-fall of leagues, clubs, and attendance
continued. In 1959 the majors discontinued the stabilization fund and
established a fund of $1 million to finance a player-development and
promotional program for the minors. In 1962 the majors and minors adopted the
Player Development Plan that, by requiring each major league club to have five
farm teams, would guarantee the operation of at least one-hundred minor league
teams, which the majors felt was adequate for their player-development
purposes. The plan also included the Player Development Contract under the
terms of which the parent major league club became responsible for all spring
training costs and all or most of the salaries of players, managers, and
coaches. After major league expansion in 1969, major league clubs were only
required to support four farm clubs each, but their financial support of each
was increased. By 1976 there were only 106 minor league teams with major
league affiliations, the lowest peacetime total since 1935. American League
expansion the following year created the need for additional minor league
affiliates, and in subsequent years major league clubs have expanded their
farm systems--all of them back up to a minimum of five clubs by 1984. With the
dramatic increase in minor league attendance and the resulting increase in the
value of franchises in the 1980s, a new Professional Baseball Agreement was
ratified by the majors and minors in 1990 that required the minors to assume a
greater share of operational expenses but the majors continued to pay the
salaries and meal money of all uniformed personnel (including umpires). And
farm systems continued to grow--by 1993 each major league club (except
expansion clubs Florida and Colorado) had at least six farm clubs and the
number of minor league teams with major league affiliations was up to 193
(including 19 in the Dominican Rookie League), the highest total since 1950.
     In 1928 Mike Sexton had asked how long it would be before the majors
owned enough minor league clubs to control the National Association. Other
than during World War Two, when the minors were severely constricted, major
league clubs never have "owned" more than 28 percent of the minor league
clubs; however, possibly as early as 1934, probably by 1935, and certainly by
1936, the majors through outright ownership, working agreements, or other
interlocking devices "controlled" the National Association, and this situation
was generally acknowledged throughout baseball by 1938.
     Until about 1960 there was still some room for independent clubs and
career minor league players, but since then the minors have existed almost
exclusively to develop talent for the majors. While this has dismayed many
minor league fans and traditionalists, it should be remembered that the
principal role of the minors within organized baseball has always been to
develop talent for the majors, and to receive money in exchange. The farm
system, which owed its success in no small part to the greed of some minor
league operators, was merely a different device by which talent moved to the
majors and money moved to the minors.


Minor Leagues
-------------------------------------
             LEAGUES        DIDN'T
YEAR         STARTED        FINISH
-------------------------------------
1883             2
1884             7             4
1885             8             4
1886            10             1
1887            15             6
1888            17             7
1889            15             5
1890            17             7
1891            14             3
1892            12             3
1893             7             5
1894             8             2
1895            18             8
1896            14             7
1897            17             7
1898            21            11
1899            14             4
1900            15             6
1901            14             3
1902            17             2
1903            20
1904            24             2
1905            32             5
1906            33             3
1907            37             4
1908            40            11
1909            34             4
1910            51             6
1911            51            10
1912            47            11
1913            42             4
1914            43             6
1915            33             8
1916            27             6
1917            21             9
1918            10             9
1919            15             1
1920            22             1
1921            26
1922            30             2
1923            31             3
1924            29             4
1925            25             3
1926            30             4
1927            24
1928            31             3
1929            26             2
1930            23             2
1931            19             3
1932            19             4
1933            14
1934            20             1
1935            21
1936            26
1937            37
1938            37
1939            41
1940            44             1
1941            41
1942            31             5
1943            10             1
1944            10
1945            12
1946            43             1
1947            52
1948            58
1949            59
1950            58             1
1951            50             1
1952            43
1953            38
1954            36             3
1955            33
1956            28
1957            28
1958            24
1959            21
1960            22
1961            22
1962            20
1963            18
1964            20
1965            19
1966            19
1967            19
1968            20
1969            21
1970            21
1971            20
1972            19
1973            18
1974            18
1975            18
1976            20
1977            19
1978            18
1979            18             1
1980            17
1981            17
1982            17
1983            17
1984            17
1985            18
1986            17
1987            18
1988            19
1989            19
1990            19
1991            19
1992            19
1993            19
-------------------------------------


Minor League Clubs/Major League Affiliations
--------------------------------------------
           Minor     Affiliated
           League       with       Owned by
Year       Clubs       Majors       Majors
--------------------------------------------
1936        184         115           38
1937        251         154           39
1938        267         163           48
1939        292         149           47
1940        310         143           60
1941        304         143           61
1942        206         116           46
1943         66          42           23
1944         70          57           21
1945         85          68           33
1946        316         197           79
1947        406         247          103
1948        452         280          125
1949        461         243          116
1950        446         210           99
1951        373         172           75
1952        324         166           65
1953        292         152           50
1954        269         156           49
1955        243         155           40
1956        217         150           33
1957        209         153           32
1958        173         157           34
1959        150         132           30
1960        152         126           18
1961        147         129           21
1962        134         121           22
1963        127         114           22
1964        136         108           19
1965        136         110           28
1966        138         116           32
1967        141         118           36
1968        142         119           39
1969        155         128           46
1970        153         120           39
1971        155         127           45
1972        148         125           49
1973        147         117           38
1974        145         113           27
1975        137         109           26
1976        148         106           24
1977        150         113           23
1978        156         118           24
1979        155         119
1980        155         125
1981        152         133
1982        160         136
1983        162         139
1984        164         140
1985        168         140
1986        162         143
1987        172         149
1988        188         168
1989        197         177
1990        202         183
1991        207         184
1992        212         192
1993        213         193
--------------------------------------------