How to Start A New Major League
The Ban Johnson Method
Legitimacy
Legitimacy is the key.
Just like a dynastic change in Chinese history, or like any major modern political change, the key to establishing a new major sports league is establishing legitimacy.
And nobody understood that better than Ban Johnson.
The question, though, is how does one establish the legitimacy of a new sports organization? How can a complete outsider come in and upset the existing league structure? What steps does a budding enterpreneuer need to take to ensure that his efforts are not simply eaten up by the powers that be?
To answer those questions, let’s take a closer look at Ban Johnson’s work in forming the American League.
Grassroots
The first key is to establish your league as a grassroots organization.
You can’t do this if you try to start right at the top. It’s far better to take a league that has already been established and help it grow.
I think it’s safe to say that Ban Johnson didn’t intend for the Western League to challenge the National League for supremacy when he took over as commissioner in late 1893. After all, the league was on the verge of folding, didn’t even play half the season, and featured teams located in what at the time were small midwestern cities.
Johnson’s brilliance was in moving slowly. He did what he could from the start to entrench his league and make it profitable — even going so far as to take the 1893 champion Sioux City ballclub and move them to St. Paul, Minnesota.
There was no race by Johnson to push his small league to major league status immediately. In fact, the truth of the matter is that all of the rumors of a second major league forming in the 1890s, rumors that dominated the baseball pages during the offseason, came to naught.
After all, it’s much easier to start with something that already exists than to start from scratch.
Longevity
You’ve also got to establish a track record of success.
Ban Johnson understood this. He was able to keep the Western League together through those tumultuous 90s, keeping things stable and orderly despite all the wild rumors floating around baseball.
By 1899, the only other franchise change in the Western League was Toledo, which was replaced by Buffalo.
This is absolutely essential for legitimacy. Attempts to form new leagues at the highest level in all sprots usually result in teams that go bankrupt before the end of their first or second season. Such instability brings the critics out in droves, calling into question the professionalism of the entire organization. It’s better to ask constituent members to make a sacrifice for the good of the whole than to allow them to feast on the flesh of their fallen brothers.
In short, nobody wants to follow a league if the teams can’t complete the season.
Cunning
You can’t challenge the big boys if you can’t take advantage of their weaknesses.
You might notice in one of the 1894 articles I quoted above that there were rumors of a Chicago team being placed in the Western League.
Do you know who wanted a team there?
None other than James. A Hart, who we met a few weeks back.
Remember that Hart was owner of the Chicago National League club at this time.
I admit that I don’t fully understand why Hart was so eager to get Chicago represented in the Western League. It seems pretty clear that he wanted a feeder club for his National League team — but was he really so ignorant about territorial rights?
Maybe he was worried about the not-so-sly allusions in the press to a rival major league making Chicago its cornerstone:
At any rate, Johnson was able to take advantage of Hart’s desire, convincing him to allow a Chicago club into the newly christened American League in 1900.
That, of course, was the great Trojan horse that Johnson needed. And it was all thanks to his deep understanding of other men.
Media
No new league can operate successfully without media coverage.
It simply won’t work. It doesn’t matter how much money you put into it. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. You need the media on your side.
The reason is simple. Fans can’t care about your product if they don’t know about it. And fans don’t know about it until sources they trust tell them about it.
Former sportswriter Ban Johnson understood this keenly. And, as we’ve noted before, it didn’t take long for American League coverage to overtake National League coverage in Chicago.
This isn’t to say that you have to have the entire media on your side from the start. There will always be skeptics. However, you do need somebody on your side to have success.
My wife and I moved to Nanjing, China in August 2008. I had a semester of studying abroad in China, followed by an internship. We arrived not long after the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics.
I remember reading numerous reports in the American press about a new baseball league being formed in China. I was interested, and naturally went to the Chinese press to see what I could find.
I purchased copies of every sporting newspaper I could find (and there are several in China: you’d be surprised at the variety of coverage in a communist state!). I couldn’t find a single mention of the new baseball league — not one.
It’s kind of like a riddle. If a sports league forms and nobody knows, does the league actually exist?
Timing
Last, and most important, is the timing element.
Ban Johnson was smart. He knew that he needed to move slowly, and that he couldn’t break the terms of the National Agreement right away.
He needed that first successful season in Chicago to give him a foothold. He then needed to move into the territory that the National League had just abandoned, setting up shop in Baltimore and Washington D.C. And he then needed to take those first halting steps into National League territory, establishing rival organizations in Philadelphia and Boston to test the waters.
Jumping straight into the other markets would have been foolish. He needed that legitimacy and longevity — and, most importantly, he needed to convince the press that he was serious.
Now, even though Johnson did everything right, he still almost lost it all as soon as it began. And we’ll get into that story in the months to come.