page_title: History of baseball in the United States
section_title: Rise of the major leagues
hierarchical_section_title: History of baseball in the United States / Rise of the major leagues
caption_attribution_description: English: Cities that hosted MLB teams priors to 1900. Cities with 19th century teams that still play in the city are in black, while the other cities are in red. The leagues that are included are the National League, the Players' League, the Union Association, and the American Association. Data from Baseball Reference.
context_page_description: The history of baseball in the United States dates to the 18th century, when boys and amateur enthusiasts played a baseball-like game by their own informal rules using homemade equipment. The popularity of the sport grew and amateur mens' ball clubs were formed in the 1830-50s. Semi-professional baseball clubs followed in the 1860s, and the first professional leagues arrived in the post-American Civil War 1870s.
context_section_description: In 1870, a schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers. The NABBP split into two groups. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players operated from 1871 through 1875 and is considered by some to have been the first major league. Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years.
  William Hulbert's National League, which was formed after the National Association proved ineffective, put its emphasis on "clubs" rather than "players". Clubs now had the ability to enforce player contracts and prevent players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs in turn were required to play their full schedule of games, rather than forfeiting scheduled games once out of the running for the league championship, a practice that had been common under the National Association. A concerted effort was also made to reduce the amount of gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt.
  Around this time, a gentlemen's agreement was struck between the clubs to exclude non-white players from professional baseball, a de facto ban that remained in effect until 1947. It is a common misconception that Jackie Robinson was the first African-American major-league ballplayer; he was actually only the first after a long gap (and the first in the modern era). Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy Walker were unceremoniously dropped from major and minor-league rosters in the 1880s, as were other African-Americans in baseball. An unknown number of African-Americans played in the major leagues by representing themselves as Indians, or South or Central Americans, and a still larger number played in the minor leagues and on amateur teams. In the majors, however, it was not until the signing of Robinson (in the National League) and Larry Doby (in the American League) that baseball began to relax its ban on African-Americans.
  The early years of the National League were tumultuous, with threats from rival leagues and a rebellion by players against the hated "reserve clause", which restricted the free movement of players between clubs. Competitive leagues formed regularly, and disbanded just as regularly. The most successful of these was the American Association of 1882–1891, sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years, the National League and American Association champions met in a postseason "World's Championship Series" — the first attempt at a World Series.
  The Union Association survived for only one season (1884), as did the Players' League (1890), which was an attempt to return to the National Association structure of a league controlled by the players themselves. Both leagues are considered major leagues by many baseball researchers because of the perceived high caliber of play and the number of star players featured. However, some researchers have disputed the major league status of the Union Association, pointing out that franchises came and went and contending that the St. Louis club, which was deliberately "stacked" by the league's president (who owned that club), was the only club that was anywhere close to major-league caliber.
  In fact, there were dozens of leagues, large and small, in the late 19th Century. What made the National League "major" was its dominant position in the major cities, particularly the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball that was New York City. Large, concentrated populations offered baseball teams national media distribution systems and fan bases that could generate sufficient revenues to afford the best players in the country.
  A number of the other leagues, including the venerable Eastern League, threatened the dominance of the National League. The Western League, founded in 1893, became particularly aggressive. Its fiery leader Ban Johnson railed against the National League and promised to grab the best players and field the best teams. The Western League began play in April 1894 with teams in Detroit (now the American League Detroit Tigers, the only league team that ha
caption: Cities that hosted 19th century MLB teams, with cities that still host their 19th century team in black. With the exception of a team in Washington and a few short-lived teams in Virginia and Kentucky, major league baseball would not expand out of the Northeast and the Midwest until after World War II.
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