1898 Eastern League

The first minor league since the various "International Associations" of the 1878-1889 period to feature two Canadian teams for the whole season, this league actually added a third Canadian team, July 7th, when longtime league president Patrick T. Powers had a temporary team in Ottawa replace Rochester. This league itself became the International League in 1912 when Ed Barrow finally replaced Powers and a new National Agreement between the major and minor leagues created double-A ball.

In July, stagnant attendance figures - common in the 1890's at every level - led president Powers to cut all player and manager salaries across the board by twenty percent. In a show of good faith he cut his own salary twenty-five percent. This action was good enough for all but about ten players who quit outright, including Wilkes-Barre star outfielders Rasty Wright and Joe Knight. Ex-major leaguer Dan Brouthers, extending his pro career with Toronto, also quit.

The defection of star players mid-season had the effect of tightening the pennant race in unexpected ways and mid-July all eight teams placed within 5.0 games of one another. Dan Shannon's Wilkes-Barre club, hurt hardest, lost it's early lead: a fast start attributable to Wilkes-Barre being the only club of quality among the "southern" four cities. Notice how Montreal's win percentage is more straight-line than Waterbury's hover victory in the Connecticut League that same year. Therefore, Charles Dooley's Montreal club, in its first full season, won the pennant with a charged run behind the Dan McFarlan (28-18) - Fred Jacklitsch battery.

Long an Eastern League staple, Rochester in 1898 had been in fact a "new" team: made up of remnants of the failed 1897 Scranton franchise. The original Rochester Eastern League team went belly-up mid-1897 and became Montreal. Despite these two failures, Rochester would field a team again for 1899 under the effervescent veteran manager Al Buckenberger and would coast to a pennant.

Financial troubles also zeroed in on Syracuse that month and an offer by the players (led by pitcher George Blackburn and second baseman Bill Eagan) to purchase the franchise was seriously considered, but rejected. Syracuse would remain a wobbly franchise until temporarily dropping out of the Eastern League in 1901.