1890s

The 1890s were a period of significant change in baseball, in terms of leagues, teams, rules and offensive levels. By the end of the decade, we had a game that is very similar to modern-day baseball, a far cry from the 1880s. The decade began with the formation of a third major league, the Players League, by the Brotherhood, in an attempt to fight the power of the owners. While it was the top league in term of talent, it lasted only one year before folding in a year of poor economic performance for all three major leagues. The fading American Association collapsed after the next season. That left a 12-team National League as the sole major league for the rest of the decade. To try to liven things up, the Temple Cup was introduced as a postseason series, but it was never taken very seriously and was gone by the end of the decade.

The most significant rule change took place in 1893, when the mound was moved from 50' away from home plate to 60' 6" away, the current distance. The switch resulted in increased offensive levels and the 1894 NL season remains the highest-scoring in baseball history. The change was even more explosive in some minor leagues - the Western League produced phenomenally high offensive results, including several new minor league home run records by Perry Werden.

One other major development was the spread of syndicate ball, where the same owners held a stake in two teams. The most notable result of syndicate ball was the pathetic 1899 Cleveland Spiders, baseball's worst team ever (according to most opinions), when the owners moved their top players to the St. Louis Perfectos, leaving Cleveland with the dregs.

By the end of the decade, the NL's hegemony was being threatened by the Western League, which was renamed the American League in 1900.

Years	National League	American Association	Postseason	Other
1890	1890 NL	1890 AA	1890 WS	1890 PL
1891	1891 NL	1891 AA
1892	1892 NL		1892 CS
1893	1893 NL
1894	1894 NL		1894 Temple Cup
1895	1895 NL		1895 Temple Cup
1896	1896 NL		1896 Temple Cup
1897	1897 NL		1897 Temple Cup
1898	1898 NL
1899	1899 NL

Further Reading

• Charles C. Alexander: Turbulent Seasons: Baseball in 1890-1891, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX, 2011.
• William H. Brewster: The Workingman's Game: Waverly, New York, the Twin Tiers and the Making of Modern Baseball, 1887–1898, Luminare Press, Eugene, OR, 2019. ISBN 978-1643882321
• William H. Brewster: That Lively Railroad Town: Waverly, New York and the Making of Modern Baseball, 1899-1901, Luminare Press, Eugene, OR, 2021. ISBN 978-1643884349
• Jean-Pierre Caillault: The Complete New York Clipper Baseball Biographies: More Than 800 Sketches of Players, Managers, Owners, Umpires, Reporters and Others, 1859-1903, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2009.
• Christopher D. Green: "Baseball's First Power Surge: Home Runs in the Late 19th-Century Major Leagues", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 40, Number 2 (Fall 2011), pp. 99-103.
• Bill James: "The 1890s", in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, The Free Press, New York, NY, 2001, pp. 52-70.
• Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin, eds.: The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2019. ISBN 978-1-970159-19-6
• Mitch Lutzke: The Page Fence Giants: A History of Black Baseball’s Pioneering Champions, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2018. ISBN 978-1-4766-7165-9