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THE RISE OF THE MIDWESTERN BASEBALL ASSOCIATION

When the Midwestern Baseball Association began play in 1882, it was not intended to be a thorn in the side of the already established professional league, the APBL. It was created to give the Midwestern United States its own professional baseball league, with standards to match and salaries that came close to that of the “Grand Circuit”.

Things were calm for the first four years of the two leagues’ co-existence, as there was relatively little player movement during the four-year countdown before the first MWBA free agent class took place. It was assumed that APBL front offices would see their junior upstarts as inferior and unworthy of attention, but in the winter of 1885 that changed quickly as notable MWBA stars entering their first taste of free agency were snapped up by APBL clubs offering better salaries:

• Halvard Westegren, 1885 Team of the Year at C, moved from St. Louis to the New York Athletics
• George Shay, SS of the year all four MWBA seasons, moved from Cincinnati to the Athletics
• Henry Oliver, 2x 20-game winner, moved from Lake Michigan to New Jersey
• Charles Fried, Indianapolis’ best hitter and key infielder, signed with Excelsior
• Frank O’Meara, 1885 20-game winner, moved from Milwaukee to Manhattan
• Charles Beals, Detroit’s ace, was signed by APBL champions Brooklyn
• Key Cincinnati starter Joseph Bryant signed for New Jersey

This all caught the collective MWBA brass completely off-guard. APBL front offices saw the MWBA product as inferior, so surely they saw the players as inferior too? At the annual end-of-season meetings in October of 1886, a plan of action was discussed. There were two courses the league could have taken: take steps to keep players from moving to the other league or get revenge on the APBL by bringing in some of their best players. The MWBA chose the latter, and how!

Just two weeks after the meetings were over, Detroit shocked the eastern baseball establishment by signing professional baseball’s now most famous player, Alva Burgess, from the Boston Shamrocks by offering a 33% raise from what the dominant team of the APBL was paying him. In Burgess’ 11 years with Boston he’d won three APBL pennants, two Batsman of the Year awards, two MVPs, eight Team of the Year nods, and was widely seen as the best overall player in the league.

One week later, Boston was poached a second time when Louisville swooped in and offered 31-game-winner Frank Singleton a whopping 60% raise on his Shamrocks pay packet. Singleton was a seven-year vet who’d split his time between Brooklyn and Boston, and in that short time had won 163 games - 23 per season - opposed to just 81 losses. He’d led the APBL in wins three straight seasons, won multiple titles, and was the ace of Boston’s feared pitching staff.

And just like that, the APBL’s best pitcher and best hitter had switched leagues before winter had even set in. The events were an embarrassment for the APBL due to not only the nature of having lost both their Batsman and Pitcher of the Year in the space of a week, but Boston was the league’s marquee team, having finished 1886 with a record of 88-24 while easily earning a place in the President’s Cup. The era of open competition between the two leagues for talent was now on.

Not only was the competition for talent on, but now that the MWBA showed they could compete financially people were beginning to think that maybe the baseball talent in the Midwest was just as good. Indeed, the MWBA’s marquee players were as good as anything the APBL put on the field.

At the start of the MWBA, rumors told of an incredibly talented 22-year-old from Rushville, IL named Jacob Milburn who was supposedly every bit as talented as Konrad Jensen…





He joined the amateur St. Louis Baseball Club out of high school in 1878, and over the rest of the 1880s he proceeded to do this to the MWBA:





If you’re keeping track, that’s Milburn leading the MWBA in hits, average, OBP, slugging, and obviously OPS in all the league’s first seven seasons. Not surprisingly, he was Batsman of the Year all seven times as well. Milburn was a credible fielder on top of that, but not as good as Jensen.

A closer look at him reveals that he’s another one of the outliers generated by the game engine that happens when you tick the amateur draft off.





As the MWBA had a marquee batter, they quickly found out they had a marquee pitcher as well: German-born Hans Ehle, better known as “Der Kaiser”…





Ehle was not an MWBA original. He started 1882 in the GLBC with the Columbus Capitols, having joined them right as he was graduating high school. He was regarded as a pitcher with impressive potential and looked decent in his first season. However, as he transitioned into adulthood and his frame filled out, his pitching gained velocity (1882: 84-86, 1884: 90-92) and as the rules of baseball allowed pitchers to start throwing overhanded in 1884 (Note: the same year it happened in real life baseball) he really took off:





That ridiculous third season led to him being purchased by Milwaukee – where else would a German go but Wisconsin – for $4,000. As pitchers worked to maximize the effect of the new rules removing restraints on pitching styles, it led to an immediate spike in strikeouts and Ehle’s dominance went from noticeable to terrifying:





As you can see, he’s probably another 1800s outlier generated by the game…





With young men like the above on the MWBL’s side, it was no longer 100% certain that the APBL had the best players in baseball, and that could only make things more interesting going into the 1890s.