National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues

[edit] Overview

The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, also known as the NABPL, or NA, or, since their rebranding in 2000, "Minor League Baseball" or MiLB. That is a lot of acroynms for one organization. What does it do?

[edit] Purpose

The NA is the governing body of the affiliated professional baseball leagues that serve Major League Baseball. That is something of an irony, as it was formed in 1901 to prevent the other independent professional leagues from being enslaved or put out of business by the warring Western, soon to be called the American League and National Leagues of MLB.

The NA meets annually, usually at the MLB Winter Meetings. They establish policies and guidelines for all of the member leagues in the different [[Classes of Baseball|baseball classes] of the player development, or "farm" system.

An unstated, but very clearly felt, purpose of the NA is to enforce the will of MLB. On issues as diverse as drug testing policies to mandated use of the MLB.com media system, Major League Baseball uses the NA to dictate policy and practice, and to remind many of these burgeoning leagues, whose attendance is beginning to rival many of the smaller MLB clubs, who is in charge.

MLB can enforce this control because of the huge amounts of money that it lavishes on the NA Leagues and clubs. All player salaries, coaches and trainers are employed by the major league club, or paid for, if the league still employs the old custom of "buying" or "selling" the contract of a minor league player.

Yet the beauty of an organization made up of very independently-minded leagues is that they don't always agree, either with themselves or MLB. In a quiet way, primarily because of the huge financial incentives that MLB provides, the leagues remain modestly independent.

[edit] A Brief History in Time

Founded in the fall of 1901, the NA was created with the purpose of keeping the other professional baseball leagues independent. Once formed as MLB, the National and American leagues did their best to extinguish, or at least dominate the other professional baseball leagues. He who has the biggest cities won in an age where financial and political power revolved around New York, Boston, Chicago and the big industrial powerhouses of the North. The MLB leagues were able to leverage their wealth and power to gain huge advantage over the leagues that once were their peers.

By the 1930s, that advantage became a crushing control. The Great Depression hit all aspects of American life hard, but independent baseball was nearly destroyed. Many teams and leagues folded. Most teams and leagues were only able to survive by selling player contracts, usually for a fraction of their real worth. In 1931 Branch Rickey, then general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, envisioned a more controlled player development system that worked in classes, or tiers, to bring players along under the system of the club. His first farm system took ownership of the player contracts, lifting a huge financial burden from the cash-strapped independent clubs.

Within ten years, the depression ended, WWII began, and the farm system became a standardized system for all baseball clubs, and the NA migrated from being an independent body to being the conduit of MLB policy for its newly "affiliated" leagues.

[edit] The Present & Future NA

In 2000, the NA took on the name "Minor League Baseball" or MiLB. In part this was a continuation of the streamlining of the development system, and in part, another way for MLB to control the shifting sands of baseball in a world that is rapidly changing.

The advent of the internet and Federal Express-style overnight delivery have changed the United States. Big companies are no longer in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. With Microsoft in Redmond, Washington and Dell Computer in Round Rock, Texas, big ticket jobs and the income to watch live professional sports in a quality environment have regionalized.

Minor league baseball and the leagues of the NA have been the big beneficiaries, with attendance soaring by more than 13 million since the late 1990s.

The leagues and teams of the NA began a dedicated rebuilding in the late 1990s, developing new ballparks and expanding the food and entertainment to bring in both local and relocating fans from major league markets. Skyboxes, children's play areas, and bathrooms for women that were clean and had make-up mirrors and changing tables became the rule, not the exception.

While MLB was in a period of contraction, in the wake of the crippling 1994 strike, MiLB was on the rise.

For the control-oriented MLB, the NA has served, over the last decade, as a way of both preventing another Pacific Coast League-style bid for major league status by one of the Triple-As, which can draw 10-15,000 a game, and as a way to extend the reach of the MLB brand into the regional markets to sell television packages and reinforce the notion that Major League Baseball is the be-all, end-all in the sport.

Many major league rust-belt markets, most notably Pittsburgh and Milwaukee, as well as the weak expansion markets in Florida, have struggled, while rapidly expanding markets like Sacramento, Albuquerque, and Memphis have exploded. On many nights, the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes will out-seat their major league parent club, the Florida Marlins.

[edit] The Super Market

Rather than adopt a more regional system, MLB has decided to harness the growing regional markets to the old industrial giant system of the early 20th century through television packages. Each year MLB trims down on the free games, and increases the paid-television packaging. Along with that, the teams and leagues of the NA are being increasingly re-arranged to provide a television audience within several hundred miles of the parent club.

The Houston Astros and [Nolan Ryan]], now a minor league owner, elevated the Round Rock Express to Triple-A status, moved the team that was in Round Rock to an expansion Texas League, Class-AA team in Corpus Christi, which Ryan also owns. The result is a "super market" where fans of the local teams are directly connected to the parent in nearby Houston.

Prior to this, teams were all over the country, without regard to where the parent team was. In the new system, the hope is that fans from Round Rock will stay tuned in to watch their developing players make the major leagues.

[edit] Homogenized A

For as much as the system works, the independent streak of NA members still nags. The NA leagues and clubs are being dragged into this Brave New World, albeit slowly. Their resistance of the loss of their regional character is one thing. The bigger is financial. The leagues have done a yeoman's job of marketing themselves, and rely on the local audience to fill seats. The focus on the major league feeder is good for major league clubs, but not always good business for the minor league clubs, who tout big-fish, small-pond players that tend to stay a year-or-three longer and keep the local fans happy.

The struggle between what works for the locals and what works for MLB will keep the NA relationship a tenous one for years to come, unless MLB reacts to the population shifts in the US with a more radical redesign of its system.

For the hide-bound, tradition-first MLB people, that will be a long time in coming.

[edit] Outside Sources

• Band of Brothers - MLN Sports Zone, 04.06.2005 - Brian Ross