Professional baseball teams hit the scene in 1869 when the Cincinnati Red Stockings played their first game. Several leagues arose over the next 45 years to attack and challenge both the American League and the National League. But 1901 was the landmark year for what would eventually become minor league baseball. The Northwest League of 1883-84 is often referred to as the first minor league, because it was conceived as a permanent organization. During the late 1890’s, we witnessed the Western League challenging the National League’s superiority.
In 1900, Ban Johnson, the Western League’s President, claimed that he would provide better contracts to NL players who were dissatisfied with their current ones and the owner-friendly reserve clause that was always standard text within them. A bitter war ensued between the Western and National Leagues, and it provoked the concern of one Patrick T. Powers, then President of the Eastern League. Powers and the league’s other representatives were concerned about the Eastern League damaged by the ongoing conflict between the two warring leagues. So a meeting between Powers and all league representatives ensued at the Leland Hotel in Chicago on September 5th, 1901.
The result was that minor league baseball was born 105 years ago at that hotel conference table. At that time, I don’t think that newly elected league President Patrick T. Powers had any inkling as to the impact on the future of minor league ball. Suffice it to say, the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL) as it was called in the beginning, began operating with 14 leagues and 96 teams at the start of the 1902 season. Eight years later, when Powers left office the league had exploded to 35 leagues and 246 ball clubs --- impressive growth to say the least.
For the sake of definition, minor league baseball (according to Wikipedia) “refers to professional baseball leagues in North America that compete at levels below that of Major League Baseball.” Just like in Major League Baseball, minor league franchises are run as a business, being independently owned and operated in similar fashion. The teams in minor league baseball are basically divided into two different categories --- affiliates and independents.
Affiliation refers to the agreement that a minor league team has with a major league team for purposes of being a source of future talent at the big league level. It is a system in which talent is developed and made available to play on demand in the majors. On some occasions, the minor league club even uses the same team name as the major league affiliate. There are currently 20 leagues and 246 teams that operate in various cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Independent leagues operate without major league affiliation, and are not members of the Minor League Baseball Organization. The most prominent one of these is the Atlantic League, which is comprised of eight teams and has its headquarters in Camden, NJ. Its teams play in larger metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
On a humorous note, the minor leagues have endured less complimentary nicknames such as “farm clubs”, “farm system”, or “farm teams” for the better part of 70 years since the 1930’s. The inception of the term has actually been credited to Branch Rickey, then GM of the Cardinals, because these small town minor league teams were said to be “growing players down on the farm like corn.” But humorous or not, Rickey was the genius who not only developed the system, but perfected it so as to be a benefit to every major league team.
When Michael Sexton took over the NAPBL in 1910 as President, it was during the time of constant wars between the outlaw Federal League and the majors, and it witnessed the minor league system being caught in the middle, oftentimes raided of all their top talent. In 1914, Sexton led a fight against the Federal League radicals who were trying to get the minor leagues to support them and desert any and all major league affiliation. Despite the ongoing struggles and then later having to endure the rigors of the Great Depression, Sexton remained focused and unmoving in his convictions for nearly 22 years all the while nurturing the system and watching it flourish.
William G. Bramham was elected league President in 1932, and served for 15 years. The NAPBL office was moved to Durham, NC and added another 14 leagues and 102 ball clubs to the organization, but turned over 52 leagues and 388 clubs to George M. Trautman in 1947. Trautman then moved the main office to Columbus, OH and began a 16 year term as President. By 1949, only two years after taking over as President, the organization had grown to 59 leagues and 448 ball clubs. Attendance at games set a record that year when over 39,640,000 fans went to the ball parks to see their favorite team play. The attendance records lasted for 54 years, but the onset of television and the expansion era in the majors witnessed a decline in minor league attendance numbers during the ensuing seasons.
In March of 1963, Trautman died and Frank Shaughnessy was elected interim President. That December, when Trautman’s assistant Philip Piton became President, the organization had shrunk to 20 leagues and 132 ball clubs. To make matters worse financially, attendance had diminished to fewer than 10 million. But Piton dug in, and by the time he vacated the Presidency only eight years later in 1971, there were 23 more clubs in the organization than when he took over the office.
Henry Peters took over as President in December of 1971, moved the headquarters to its fourth location (St. Petersburg, FL) in 1973, and then left two years later, taking over as GM of the Baltimore Orioles in 1975. In January of 1976, Robert R. “Bobby” Bragan was elected President and saw the league expand to 158 clubs. In March of 1978, he moved the office one final time to its current location on Bayshore Drive in St. Petersburg five blocks from where it had been located adjacent to Al Lang Stadium.
John H. Johnson took over in January of 1979 and though the number of clubs in the league hovered between 160 and 170 in number, attendance skyrocketed to over 20 million fans by 1987. Johnson died unexpectedly on January 12th, 1988 and Sal B. Artiaga was elected President in April of the same year. His first year saw attendance balloon to 21,659,000 plus fans and 188 ball clubs. During the 1991 Winter Meetings, Mike Moore was elected President and assumed the reigns in January of 1992.
Moore’s first accomplishment as leader of the league was rewriting the original National Association Agreement which had never been changed in nearly a century of existence. The Agreement is basically the by-laws that define and govern all operations between the NAPBL and the members of the league. According to the website at http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com, the single most important change was the conversion of the National Association to more of a |
