On Saint Patrick's day, March 17, 1871, at Collier's Cafe on Broadway and Thirteenth Street in New York City, representatives from some of the best baseball clubs in the land gathered together to form the very first professional baseball league. They named their new creation; the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players.

Unfortunately the National Association turned out to be an embarrassment to all those who were associated with it. It was a loosely knit organization renowned for it's rowdiness, erratic schedule, open gambling on games, liquor selling in parks, bribery and other forms of chicanery.

The league, which was in fact, run by the players, lasted for only five years. The N.A. was characterized by such things as: teams that would not honor their schedules late in the season when it meant traveling far from home, players that would jump from club to club (sometimes in midseason) and a lack of control of the games by umpires who were usually unpaid. There was a constant turnover of clubs in the five years that the league existed, and one team (Harry Wright's Boston Red Stockings) was so powerful that it totally dominated all opposition, winning the league championship four out of five years.

Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Stockings - 1862

The N.A. was replaced by the National League in 1876. Although the National Association was baseball's first professional league, it has never been considered to be a major league. Here is a listing of the twenty three clubs that played in the N.A. at one time or another:

* Partial Season