The National League is Born

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - The National League of Baseball Clubs was formed TODAY in BASEBALL (1876). What became known as the National League survives to this day, and it owes as much to the marketing of sporting goods as it does to play on the field exciting enough to get people to pay to watch. One of the chief architects of new league was Albert G. Spalding of Rockford, Illinois. He was thinking of the sale of baseball equipment as much balls and strikes.

As Leonard Koppett wrote in Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball Spalding thought he had a better way to run a professional baseball organization than the loosely held National Association founded in 1871. He didn't have much faith that the east coast dominated Association would survive, and he wanted desperately for professional baseball to survive so teams and their fans would buy baseball equipment from him. He and William Hulbert of Chicago began to put together a plan. The problem was Spalding and Hulbert were part of the National Association; Spalding played for Boston, and Hulbert was in the front office of the Chicago White Stockings.

The two needed a solid plan before the start of the next season to attract select east coast National Association teams. They got commitments from midwest teams in Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Louis to join Chicago. That's where the February 2, 1876 meeting came in. The gathering was held at the Central Hotel in Manhattan with representatives from Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Hartford. They all agreed and the National League was born. Play began that spring with those eight teams. As Koppett wrote, "It established a pattern that became the model for all commercialized spectator team sports from then on."

Contributing Sources:
Leonard Koppett, Koppett's Concise History of Major League Baseball, New York, 1998
Baseball-Reference