1900 Central League

This intermediary league, set up to fill the void left when Western Association president Thomas Hickey dropped many eastern 1899 outposts in favor of ex-Association cities which had been abandoned in the late 1890's, was really the first step in the creation of the famed Illinois-Iowa-Indiana League - the Three-Eye League - which survived until 1961. The league moved its base South-east of Peoria before springboarding back into such towns as Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and baseball hotbed Rock Island the next year. Ottumwa and Burlington however, were nearly always excluded from this ring of cities after 1899.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that Hickey adopted the "Western League" tag that Ban Johnson dropped in favor of 1900's great minor: the American League. A new league in 1903 would take the name "Central League" even though the only city connected to that venture would be Terre Haute.

Bloomington's 41-11 record on July 8th "killed interest" and led Peoria and cellar-dweller Jacksonville to disband that day (Springfield had moved to nearby Jacksonville, May 21). The league drew up a last-minute split season schedule for four teams which somehow made it to the Labor Day finish line.

Note how closely Bloomington and Danville are on June 9th before Danville fades back. This probably indicates the league was split into an east-west division with Decatur, Danville, and Terre Haute in the east and Peoria, Bloomington, and Springfield in the west. Teams in this league probably played "sectional ball" until May 17th, when flat lines on the graph intimate that western Bloomington and eastern Danville probably faced each other, beating each other up in the first round of "intersectional play." The Danville drop-off after June 9th probably indicates the next time those two teams faced each other: this time Bloomington appearing to win most if not all of those games.

"Sectional" and "Intersectional" parts of a schedule exist to this day (Note how AL east teams in the 1980's often opened in AL west cities...) although schedule-perfection is hampered by the uneven numbers of teams in divisions. It is a mechanism not only for keeping travel mileage to a minimum, but for keeping pennant races close - until which time the best of one geographical grouping must face the best from the other geographical grouping.