The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs: The History of an Outlaw Major League, 1914-1915 (review)

When the newly proposed United Football League was presented for public scrutiny in 2009, its innovative features (e.g., Thursday and Friday night games) and propensity to go head-to-head with the firmly established National Football League raised many eyebrows. And yet, almost one hundred years earlier the upstart Federal League of Base Ball Clubs set many precedents for the outlaw leagues in professional sports that followed. Wiggins's detailed account of the Federal League (1914-15) chronicles the history of this ill-fated venture for baseball fans of today.

Effectively combining colorful descriptions of club owners, front office personnel, coaches, and players, along with selected game summaries, Wiggins presents an eminently readable history of a failed enterprise. In his account of the creation and eventual demise of an organization that brought both immediate and long-term changes to Organized Baseball—changes still being felt almost one hundred years later—Wiggins has provided a working model for those who would take on an established major league. These portraits of wealthy men and their desire to become baseball magnates foreshadow current owners of sports franchises driven by the profit motive and psychological needs to be recognized and even admired by sports fans. Wiggins examines how other iconic baseball figures, such as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, were biased against the upstart Federal League.

One of the interesting features of this book is the nostalgic, descriptive language used in the deadball era. For example, Otto Knabe, new Federal League signee, was appraised as a player who was "out to get all the money in this one and one can hardly blame him. . . . He is a manly little fellow, a good ball player and a credit to the profession" (35). Charlie Weegham, backer of the Chicago club, was described as "an illustration for a collar ad—you know—the sleek fellow with goose-grease in his hair" (32). Benjamin Kauff, known as the "Ty Cobb of the Feds," was "On deck with his usual electrifying performances, making a clean theft of home once, besides running wild in the outfield and bagging balls originally labeled 'hits'" (139).

Wiggins's The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs won the 2010 Larry Ritter Award, presented by the Deadball Era Committee of the Society for American Baseball Research for the best book on the deadball era published in the previous calendar year. While Wiggins's book is more descriptive than analytical, it is a valuable contribution to scholarship on the history of early twentieth-century baseball.