Old Time Family Baseball

For two seasons, 1914 - 1915, the National and American Leagues faced competition from a rival for the last time. The Federal League entered organized baseball in the hopes of capturing a share of the profits from the National Pastime. Although the league folded after its second season, it changed baseball forever even 100 years later. Although the league has dozens of great stories there are three that impact baseball in the 21st century. Here they are:

• “The Friendly Confines” - When Charles Weeghman agreed to finance the Chicago FL franchise - the Whales - he needed a place for the team to play. At the time, the Cubs owned the West Side of the city and the White Sox the South Side. The North Side was wide open. So ground was broken on Weeghman Field on February 23, 1914 at the corner of Clark and Addison. The first game was played on April 23, 1914. After the league ended the AL and NL let Weeghman buy the Cubs. He moved them to his ball park. When he sold the franchise to William Wrigley in 1918 the park was included. Wrigley Field is the last landmark of the Federal League. Oh, and the Cubs have never won a World Series there.

• Kenesaw Mountain Landis - In January 1915, Federal League owners saw the writing on the wall and realized that they had no chance to defeat the AL and NL. So in the other national pastime they sued claiming that organized baseball was an illegal trust. They brought the case to the Federal court in the Northern District of Illinois. The judge was a known trust-buster. Unfortunately, he was also a huge baseball fan. So Kenesaw Mountain Landis, worried about destroying baseball, sat on the case. He waited out the season never ruling on the case. And then the Federal League disappeared. Four years later when the AL and NL were looking for a man to clean up the game in the wake of the Black Sox scandal they knew exactly whom to call - the trust-busting Cubs fan who saved their leagues.

• Anti-Trust Exemption - Every few years, the owners and Commissioner are threatened by lawmakers to have their anti-trust exemption withdrawn, most recently during steroid hearings in 2005. They are the only professional sports league in the U.S. with the special right. It was granted by the Supreme Court in 1922. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the majority opinion wrote that baseball as a sport did not manufacture a good or provide a service so it did not violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. How did this case get before the nation’s highest court? After the FL collapsed the owners of the Baltimore franchise refused a buyout (unlike their colleagues in Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, and Newark) so they sued the NL. The case is Federal Baseball Club v. National League.

So a solemn nod to the last league to challenge organized baseball. They lost, but baseball gained.

Sources: SFgate.com, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Marquette Law School, and wikipedia.org

When not thinking about dead baseball leagues, Josh Eisenberg thinks about dead people, running Obit of the Day, another Tumblr site. Josh interned at the Baseball Hall of Fame in college, wrote his senior paper on the Federal League, roots for the Yankees, married a Red Sox fan, and named his sons for Lou Gehrig and Elston Howard. Feel free to contact him at [email protected]

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