page_title: Minor League Baseball
section_title: Independent baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Minor League Baseball / Independent baseball
caption_attribution_description: English: Hawks field at Haymarket Park. Home of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Lincoln Saltdogs.
context_page_description: Minor League Baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball and help prepare players to join major league teams. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses. Most are members of the umbrella organization formally known as National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which operates under the Commissioner of Baseball within the scope of organized baseball. Several leagues, known as independent baseball leagues, have no official links to Major League Baseball.
  Except for the Mexican League, teams in the organized minor leagues are generally independently owned and operated but are directly affiliated with one major league team through a standardized Player Development Contract. These leagues also go by the nicknames the "farm system", "farm clubs", or "farm teams" because of a joke passed around by major league players in the 1930s when St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey formalized the system, and teams in small towns were "growing players down on the farm like corn".
context_section_description: Independent leagues are those professional leagues in the United States and Canada not under the purview of organized Minor League Baseball and the Commissioner of Baseball. Independent baseball existed in the early 20th century and has become prominent again since 1993.
  Leagues operated mostly autonomously before 1902, when the majority joined the NAPBL. From then until 1915, a total of eight new and existing leagues remained independent. Most joined the National Association after one season of independence. Notable exceptions were the California League, which was independent in 1902 and from 1907 to 1909; the United States Baseball League, which folded during its independent 1912 season; and the Colonial League, a National Association Member that went independent in 1915 and then folded. Another independent league, the Federal League, played at a level considered major league from 1914 to 1915.
  Few independent leagues existed between 1915 and 1993. Major exceptions included the Carolina League and the Quebec-based Provincial League. The Carolina League, based in the North Carolina Piedmont region, gained a reputation as a notorious "outlaw league" during its existence from 1936 to 1938. The Provincial League fielded six teams across Quebec and was independent from 1948 to 1949. Similarly to early 20th-century independent leagues, it joined the National Association in 1950, playing for six more years.
  Independent leagues saw new growth after 1992, after the new Professional Baseball Agreement in organized baseball instituted more stringent revenue and stadium requirements on members. Over the next eight years, at least 16 independent leagues formed, of which six existed in 2002.
caption: Haymarket Park, home to the Lincoln Saltdogs, an independent baseball team in Lincoln, Nebraska
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