Overview

A brief history of minor league baseball.

Ask most baseball fans what they know about minor league baseball, and you'll probably hear that it exists to train young ballplayers until they are able to work themselves upward to the major leagues. While affiliated leagues have evolved to that point in over a century of minor league ball, that wasn't always the case.

The definition of major league and minor league was blurred in the early days of professional leagues. Cities such as Brooklyn, Cleveland and Atlanta were in the minor leagues, while Troy, Providence and Indianapolis had major league teams. Eventually the better players were drawn to the larger cities, with more money and more opportunities. In order to prevent players jumping to other leagues in violation of their contracts, in 1883 the National League, American Association and Northwestern League formed the first agreement regarding player movement and territorial rights. Other leagues soon joined the agreement, and the AA and NL were recognized as major leagues by the others, who accepted a subservient status as "minor" leagues.

In 1901 the National Association was formed, and organized baseball as we know it came into existence. Leagues were separated into classifications for the first time. Leagues that operated outside the framework of the National Association were referred to as "outlaw" leagues. Despite the classifications, it has been argued that certain minor league teams of the era, such as the Baltimore Orioles of the 1920s or the Los Angeles Angels of the 1930s, were better than some "major league" teams.

Major league teams in this era acquired minor league players in one of two ways. Affiliated minor leagues were subject to having their players drafted by major league teams. Some leagues opted out of the draft and instead sold their best players to major league teams. The Baltimore Orioles received $100,000 from the Philadelphia Athletics for Lefty Grove.

This does not mean that Lefty Grove spent five years in Baltimore until he was ready for the majors. Rather, he had a successful career until his owner could receive fair value for Grove's services. Top minor leaguers of the era could make better money that some major leaguers, especially in the Pacific Coast League with its 200-game schedule. A star in the PCL could make far more than he could have with the St. Louis Browns or Washington Senators. Several players had minor league careers of twenty years or more.

In the 1920s the cash-strapped St. Louis Cardinals were a consistent second-division club. Branch Rickey decided that if the team could not afford to buy top minor league players it would develop its own. Rickey began buying minor league teams and their players became property of the St. Louis Cardinals. This method achieved success as the Cardinals won their first World Series in 1926 and were competitive for the next two decades. By 1940 the Cardinals had 32 teams in their farm system! The method worked so well that nearly every major league team copied it.

Minor league baseball reached its zenith in the years following World War II. Baseball was the nation's pastime. The economy was booming, people were looking for entertainment, and there was no television. There were twelve leagues in 1945; by 1949 there were 59 minor leagues operating in 438 cities.

The boom was short-lived. Television brought the biggest stars of the major leagues into the nation's living rooms. Why sit in the summer heat watching an unknown 19-year-old when you could sit in air-conditioned comfort and watch Stan Musial's Cardinals play Willie Mays and the Giants? The lower levels of the minors were hit hardest, and by 1959 only 21 leagues were left.

In 1962 the minors were realigned into the familiar AAA, AA, A and Rookie classifications we know today. The majors financially supported the minors, paying all player salaries and offering financial support. The minors in return gave up all control over player movement. They were now totally under the influence of major league owners, who mostly looked to their own self-interest rather than consider the fans in minor league towns.

The turbulent 1960s were a difficult time for the minors. Some called for their abolition altogether. Baseball seemed to be behind the times, and as football gained in popularity baseball's leaders resorted to gimmicks like multi-purpose stadiums, plastic grass, and the designated hitter.

Something happened, and by the 1980s fans began returning to minor league baseball. Teams which had sold for literally a few dollars in the 1970s were now selling for hundreds of thousands. Some teams began turning a profit. The majors, seeing this, and looking for new sources of revenue, began to demand that minor league ownership bear some of the burden of operations.

In 1991 a new Player Development Contract was signed. The majors tightened their hold on the minors, and new standards were imposed for minor league ballparks. These often costly improvements forced many longtime minor league cities like Waterloo, Iowa or Springfield, Illinois to leave affiliated baseball. But still fans continued to rediscover the joy of the minor league game. The major league players' strike in 1994 soured many fans on the game and they looked instead to the minors for the national pastime of their youth.

At the same time, some groups trying to become owners became frustrated by the strict rules and requirements the majors imposed on minor league operators. Occasional independent teams had existed in affiliated leagues for some time. In 1976 the unaffiliated Gulf States League was formed in Texas and Louisiana. Although the league lasted only two seasons, it provided a starting point for what was to came.

In 1992 Bud Bickel, a Huntingburg, WV, businessman, began plans to form an independent minor league in the Ohio River valley. The name Frontier League was chosen, and although the league's teams were not determined until April, play began in June, 1993 with eight teams in Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio. The Northern League, in larger markets and with former major league players, garnered most of the press, but the Frontier League quietly finished its first season.

Bickel was ousted in midseason, 1993. In 1994 Bill Lee, himself a former independent league player, became the league's first, and so far only, commissioner. Under Lee's guidance the Frontier League has grown to heights undreamt of by Bud Bickel and the original eight owners. The league has successfully kept professional baseball alive in traditional minor league towns left behind by affiliated baseball, while at the same time providing a reasonably priced option to baseball fans in the suburbs of some of the major leagues' most storied franchises.

The Frontier League is a return to the days when minor league teams scouted their own players, called their own shots, and winning was more important than feeding the major league talent machine. Fans grow attached to local heroes. Young men play for love of the game and a chance to prove themselves. It is, as the River City Rascals slogan states, "Baseball From Another Era".