| Introduction | First Quarter-century | Seasons Summary | League Championship Summary | |
Introduction
The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL), often known simply as the National League, was the first major sports league in Baseball and in all of sport. (The sport was spelled with two words in the 19th century.)
By 1875, the National of Professional Base Ball Players (NA), often referred to as the “National Association”), founded four years earlier, was suffering from a lack of strong authority over clubs, unsupervised scheduling, unstable membership of cities, dominance by one team (the Boston Red Stockings), and an extremely low entry fee ($10) that gave clubs no incentive to abide by league rules when it was inconvenient to them.
William A. Hulbert (1832–1882), a Chicago businessman and an officer of the Chicago White Stockings of 1870–1889, approached several NA clubs with the plans for a professional league for the sport of base ball with a stronger central authority and exclusive territories in larger cities only. Additionally, Hulbert had a problem: five of his star players were threatened with expulsion from the NA because Hulbert had signed them to his club using what were considered questionable means. Hulbert had a great vested interest in creating his own league, and after recruiting St. Louis privately, four western clubs met in Louisville, Kentucky, in January 1876. With Hulbert speaking for the four later in New York City on February 2, 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was established
The teams from the NA that formed the NL were the Boston Red Stockings, the dominant team in the NA (later the Boston Braves, then the Milwaukee Braves, now the Atlanta Braves, not to be confused with the present-day Boston Red Sox of the later American League), Chicago White Stockings (now the Chicago Cubs, not to be confused with the current Chicago White Sox of the American League), Hartford Dark Blues, New York Mutual, Philadelphia Athletics, and St. Louis Brown Stockings.
FanSeeStats classifies the National League as a Major League as it attracts the best players worldwide, are home to that Big Sports richest teams, are exclusive in who can join the league, and are ambitious in their scope and marketing.
Table of Contents for History broken down by Quarter Century or Half Century
First Quarter-Century of Play (1876-1900)
Between 1876 to 1900 we see # teams come and # teams go. Teams that were the oldest.
Classification
Seasons Summary
1870s
1880s
| Year | Champion | # of Teams |
| 1880 | | |
| 1881 | | |
| 1882 | | |
| 1883 | | |
| 1884 | ||
| 1885 | ||
| 1886 | ||
| 1887 | ||
| 1888 | ||
| 1889 |
1890s
| Year | Champion | # of Teams |
| 1890 | | |
| 1891 | | |
| 1892 | | |
| 1893 | | |
| 1894 | ||
| 1895 | ||
| 1896 | ||
| 1897 | ||
| 1898 | ||
| 1899 |
League Championship Summary
Future Features