1900 New York State League

A collapse by Rome in the final week launched Utica into the championship of an exciting rumble and denied Rome a second consecutive flag. Utica's spark was .366-hitting leadoff batter John Dobbs, sold to Cincinnati after the season. It would be seven years before Utica would be over .500 again.

Last place Oswego left that city for good, July 30th, the franchise temporarily settling in the abandoned Atlantic League facilities in Elmira. Ilion, the city that gave its semi-pro players to the Schenectady club the year before, replaced Elmira in 1901.

Note the winning percentage of this pennant race. Each week all the wins and losses of each team add up to a .500 winning percentage. The New York State League shows a .500 winning percentage for each week played and, for example, so does the Connecticut League, or any league prior to 1969. The New York State League season ends with a record of 445-445 for .500. The Connecticut League ends at 385-385 for .500.

But you'd never know which league was "stronger" unless you dedicated a portion of each league's schedule to inter-league play.

That's what happened in 1997 when inter-league play was inaugurated into the majors. Today, schedules are interrupted to fit in approximately 250 inter-league games. These games are necessary because major league baseball never had a policy of moving franchises to keep up with nation-wide demographic changes, and because 1969's geographic divisions made 40 to 60 percent of all regularly scheduled games irrelevant from a pennant race perspective. After eight years the data has fallen as thus:

AL NL Games Edge To AL Win %

1997 97 117 214 NL .453

1998 114 110 224 AL .508

1999 116 135 251 NL .462 Lost world series

2000 136 115 251 AL .541

2001 132 120 252 AL .523 Lost world series

2002 123 129 252 NL .488 Lost world series

2003 115 137 253 NL .454

2004 126 124 250 AL .504

959 987 1946 NL .493

As you can see, the league that has shown the edge in inter-league play has had a team win the world series 63 percent of the time. It's not a huge correlation. What I find interesting is that when this correlation failed in 2001 and 2002, the world series went seven games.

The 1900 New York State League appears to be the most exciting pennant race for any minor league up to this date. It's almost shocking. It matches a style we see on the major league level between 1948 and 1966 - the era that gave us a most talented brand of baseball (I'll tell you why in the Game Dots section). I have it on my short list of "research to do" to check the game-by-game boxscores for this league - or at least for the cities of Cortland, Utica, and Rome from August 1st to season's end, a small amount of research that would take not one day of library work. Basic rosters of teams takes only a few minutes. Basic rosters should be done by sampling the players used in four games during the season: opening day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. This gives you a fair picture of the players on the team, especially if you're interested in star players. Even if injured, they usually make an appearance during the big holiday games.