The American and National Leagues have coexisted under Major League Baseball’s umbrella throughout the life spans of you, me, and all present-day fans.
It might seem a reasonable assumption that both sides have lived peacefully for eternity, but such a deduction would be dead wrong. The truth is that the AL exploded onto the scene in 1901 as a so-called “outlaw” league, triggering a bitter two-year war with the established NL.
“We have grown large and strong enough not to be dictated to,” declared the American League’s founder, Ban Johnson. His clubs raided National League rosters with impunity, and the NL raided right back. Salaries for players escalated dramatically.
The combatants finally signed a peace agreement prior to the 1903 season. Several of the treaty’s nine points dealt with the disposition of players and their contracts, the matter of primary concern (then and now) to most big-league owners. But the pact also contained a seemingly innocuous geographic provision: “There shall be no consolidation in any city where two clubs exist.”
And that’s why Chicago still has a pair of major-league teams today.
The American League had established five of its eight franchises in National League cities by 1903, the easiest way to wage direct war against its stronger foe. These were the multi-club battlegrounds (followed by their 1900 populations):
New York (3,437,202)
Chicago (1,698,575)
Philadelphia (1,293,697)
St. Louis (575,238)
Boston (560,892)
The final three cities were too small to comfortably support a pair of big-league franchises, yet the 1903 agreement specifically prohibited mergers. Logic called for the consolidation of Boston’s two clubs, given the weakness of the city’s NL squad (second-worst in the majors in attendance in 1902). But the treaty required every team to push ahead on its own.
The resulting dilemma would become painfully apparent after the onset of the Depression. The AL’s St. Louis Browns drew only 1.18 million fans to their home games between 1930 and 1939. (That’s not an annual average; it’s a 10-year total of 1.18 million.) Five other clubs attracted fewer than 4.1 million patrons during the 1930s, including four in multi-team markets — both Philadelphia clubs, the NL’s Boston Braves, and the other St. Louis franchise, the NL’s Cardinals.
“It is not exactly a secret that St. Louis cannot support two major-league clubs,” observed Branch Rickey, who possessed special knowledge of the market’s inadequacies, having spent three decades as a player, manager, and general manager for both St. Louis teams. His observation applied equally well to Boston and Philadelphia.
The problem finally resolved itself in the 1950s, when clubs belatedly began to flee to new markets. The first three cities to lose teams were Boston (Braves to Milwaukee in 1953), St. Louis (Browns to Baltimore in 1954), and Philadelphia (Athletics to Kansas City in 1955).
That left only two multi-club cities — New York and Chicago — from the original five.
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New York’s holdings would briefly be cut to a single franchise, the AL’s Yankees, after the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants fled west in 1958. But the National League’s eventual return to the city was taken for granted, an expectation fulfilled by the creation of the Mets in 1962.
But what about Chicago? Did it really deserve to be a two-team city?
Those attendance figures from the 1930s certainly raised a few questions. The National League’s Cubs were a box-office powerhouse, attracting 8.79 million fans between 1930 and 1939. (The only team that drew better was the Yankees at 9.09 million.) But the American League’s White Sox lagged far behind at 4.11 million.
The balance of power has been remarkably consistent ever since. Neither team succeeded on the field — the Cubs won their last World Series of the 20th century in 1908, the White Sox in 1917 — but it was the Cubs who always owned Chicago’s heart.
The White Sox were reduced to making occasional threats about leaving town. They came reasonably close to leaving for Milwaukee in 1969, Seattle in 1975, and Tampa in 1988, but they never pulled the trigger.
Perhaps they should have called the moving vans.
Recent stats indicate that the Cubs are as dominant as ever in the Chicago market, relegating the White Sox to the status of an afterthought:
The Cubs have outdrawn the Sox in every single season since 1993. Total home attendance from 1993 through 2022 (excluding the Covid seasons of 2020 and 2021): Cubs 79.15 million, Sox 54.17 million.
My fan support index (FSI) tracks the relationship between a team’s attendance and its victory total. A score of 100 indicates support commensurate with a team’s quality on the field. A higher number exceeds expectations, while a two-digit index is a sign of lethargy. The average FSI for the Cubs since 1993 has been 122.5, which is 22.5 percent above normal. The Sox are 17.8 percent below average with an FSI of 82.2.
The ultimate test of Chicago’s loyalty came in 2005, when the Sox won their first world championship in 88 years. They attracted 2.34 million fans, putting them 17th in big-league attendance. The Cubs were thoroughly mediocre on the field (79-83) that season, yet were 32 percent busier than the Sox at the box office (3.10 million).
The majors currently have four multi-team markets. All of the franchises in New York and Los Angeles are financially strong. Nothing wrong in either of those regions. San Francisco-Oakland, on the other hand, is much too small for two ballclubs, as we recently discussed. The Athletics may soon resolve that problem by moving to Las Vegas.
That leaves Chicago. We take it for granted that an area so massive (metropolitan population of 9.44 million as of 2022) deserves to be represented in both the American and National Leagues. But let’s face facts. Chicago is considerably smaller than the New York (19.62 million) and Los Angeles (12.87 million) areas, and it has virtually ignored one of its two teams for decades.
Ban Johnson not only made a demographic decision when he granted a franchise to Chicago; he also made a military move. He had a war to fight.
That was 12 decades ago, though, and the smoke has long cleared from the battlefield. The time may have come for the American League to raise the white flag and search for a better home for the White Sox.