Gente,

We're also not apologizing for that one.

At any rate, along with the international competitors we already covered in previous updates (Cuba and Mexico), the 20th-century Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña would exist in a world with minor leagues for the first time.

Even that isn't entirely accurate. These leagues existed in the nineteenth century as well, but they were independent leagues that subsisted on the wide variety of talent available to leagues that, unlike the Liga Nacional Puertorriqueña or the American leagues, didn't care about your country of origin.

By 1901, and informed by a vision of the cohesive future of baseball, LNP leadership brought these leagues into affiliation. In exchange for hard-won financial support from team sponsors, they agreed to become both showcases for future Puerto Rican talent, shaped and observed by scouts and coaches from the LNP, and first ports-of-call for Canadian, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and even Southwestern American players who might one day hope to play on the island, which was quickly becoming the baseball capital of the world.

Notably, these are not farm leagues, at least not at the moment. In 1901, there was no Branch Rickey of Puerto Rico to bring that to fruition. But Puerto Rican teams could purchase the contracts of players in these minor leagues for about half the minimum league salary, which LNP leadership hoped would allow them to cut financial ties as time went on.

Suffice it to say they didn't know what they were doing. Without further ado, let's introduce you to the four leagues of the Afiliadas Superiores (AFIL-1) system.

Frontier Baseball League

Catchment: Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
Schedule: 132 games (12 x 11 opponents).
All-Star Game: Yes (36-man rosters).
Playoffs: 3 division winners + 1 wildcard per league; 3 rounds.

Some of you will undoubtedly remember the Texan Base-Ball League of the 19th century. By 1901, the TBL had absorbed the American-side circuits—which is to say, the underperforming half—of the unofficial Liga del Río Bravo, to form a league representing almost all of the American Southwest.

League of the British Isles

Catchment: Uh, the British Isles. (Did we need to explain that?)
Schedule: 120 games (24 games x 5 divisional opponents).
All-Star Game: No.
Playoffs: 4 division winners; 2 rounds.

The successor league to the Great British Base-Off, the LBI would be the LNP's gateway to the Eastern Hemisphere—a role it had played admirably by picking up exemplars of German, Russian, Swedish, Algerian, and Indian baseball talent.

Royal Canadian Baseball League

Catchment: Ontario, Québec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Schedule: 126 games (14 games x 9 opponents).
All-Star Game: Yes (30-man rosters).
Playoffs: 4 division winners; 2 rounds.

The 19th-century edition of the RCBL restricted itself to the two large eastern provinces, and when the LNP asked them to expand across more of Canada, Ontario balked at the possibility of its baseball potency being diluted—so, as a compromise, the RCBL expanded instead. Ontario gained two teams, while Québec moved the Draveurs into its western division to allow Halifax and Moncton into the league.

Canadian hitters, in particular, were famous for a completely different approach from every other area of the 19th-century baseball world. They swung harder than anyone else, which made them susceptible to the strikeout pitches Canadian hurlers cultivated in response, but they had the discipline to wait for hittable pitches and drive them very far indeed. The modern baseball world would simply have to reckon with that kind of power.

Western & Plains League

Catchment: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba.
Schedule: 120 games (24 games x 5 opponents).
All-Star Game: Yes (30-man rosters).
Playoffs: Division winners + division runners-up; 2 rounds.

This was the other half of the Canadian Compromise: the more sparsely-populated Western parts of Canada would get a league—but it would be small, with very few teams, because the LNP couldn't afford to spend much more on propping up a circuit so far away from their general operations.

In time, there would be other minor leagues, and in time, LNP teams would finally absorb all of these teams into their own superstructure, creating a multilevel machine of baseball development that would make Puerto Rico the undisputed masters of the sport.

But that would come later. For now, these were fun places to visit, certainly. (Special prospect Jacques Ceinture actually played in a few games for the Batteries while waiting for his visa to Cuba.) You'd certainly see some fun baseball, especially if you liked inept pitching. But you wouldn't want to stay there very long.

Next time: We release the streaming schedule for the 1901 season.

Gracias por su paciencia,

les Gaceteres

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