The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy

"... Trade wars are common in business history. Most baseball fans don’t realize that the business of professional baseball has experienced several trade wars. The Federal League war of 1914–15 was one of those trade wars. In economic terms, a trade war is a contest for markets (in this case, cities) and supplies (in baseball, it’s players). Professional baseball was formed much the way the whites settled the American West: The guy who got there first took the land and refused to give it up unless forced by a stronger and more determined enemy. In baseball, until about 1903 the National League had come out on top when fighting its challengers. Then the new American League confronted the National League at the turn of the century, and the challenger won, forcing the National to give up a piece of the action (territories) and supplies (performers). In 1914 the Feds hoped to do the same thing."
NY Journal of Books

"Almost a century has passed since Major League Baseball faced its last serious challenge from an upstart league, but the short-lived Federal League left its mark. Consisting of eight teams located in Midwestern and Northeastern cities, the Federal League launched in late 1913 to compete with the American and National Leagues (which were suffering their own growing pains at the time) and lasted two seasons. Backed by wealthy owners and an aggressive business strategy that included selling public shares in some cities, the organization struggled to gain players and profits. ..."
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Walter Johnson

 

"Had the Federal League succeeded in its pursuit of Walter Johnson, Joe Jackson, and Rube Marquard, it might conceivably be preparing for a grand centennial celebration instead of having long ago been relegated to a footnote in baseball history. The renegade third 'major' league threw money at virtually every significant player in 1914-15, even inking a number to contracts only to see them slip back into the clutches of their former clubs. The American and National Leagues were not about to let players the caliber of Johnson and Marquard jump without a battle. Both were among the Federal League's headline-grabbing recruits in December 1914. By the time the 1915 campaign opened, however, Johnson and Marquard were back with the Nationals and Giants, respectively. Jackson, disgruntled with the cash-strapped Cleveland Indians, nearly jumped to Chicago in the Federal League late in the '15 season before caving to pressure from his wife and Cleveland owner Charles Somers, who signed Shoeless Joe to a below-market extension and later swapped him to the White Sox."
Baseball America

Sporting Life newspaper from June 1914

The Federal League's Unsuccessful Challenge To Organized Baseball
"Economics focuses on the operation of markets and the competition that exists between those associated with the production and consumption of various goods and services. Focusing on the production side, economics predicts (tautologically as it were) that those entities which are the more efficient and resourceful will prevail over those that are less efficient and resourceful. Competition here has a hard edge, with the less efficient and able being destroyed and/or driven out of the market. The insights of economics are nowhere better illustrated than in the two volumes being reviewed here, which examine an unsuccessful attempt by a group of baseball entrepreneurs, under the umbrella of the Federal League, to take on Organized Baseball in 1914 and 1915. The incumbents were more resourceful in terms of cash, knowledge and strategic verve, in striking out the upstarts."
The Sports IQ

Was the Federal League really a major league?
"The Federal League is different. By 1914, the inaugural season, modern playing rules were in place. The league’s teams played, for the most part, in cities that today host Major League franchises. They played 154-game schedules, just like the American and National leagues with which the Federal League was expressly designed to compete. Just last year, a fantastic book, The Battle That Forged Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy, was published."
The National Pastime Museum