The American League became a major baseball power through the vision of Ban Johnson and the short-sightedness of National League owners.
Johnson had operated the League and its predecessor, the Western League, since 1894, always with one eye toward major status. When the National League contracted following the 1899 season from 12 teams to eight -- and then when club owners engaged in a fratricidal bit of warfare over syndicate ownership -- Johnson filled the breach of public confidence, establishing challenging clubs in National League bastions such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. He proclaimed his new league to be "major" on Jan. 28.
Johnson benefitted from a bit of syndicatism on his own league's part. Charles Somers, who owned the Cleveland franchise, agreed to finance the Philadelphia and Boston teams as well. But Somers acted quietly, allowed the teams to stock themselves competitively, and proved a stabilizing force while avoiding the problems that syndicatism had brought to the National League.
The Americans were able to outbid the Nationals for many of the best players. Stars like Napoleon Lajoie, Clark Griffith, Hugh Duffy and Jimmy Collins were early jumpers. More than 100 former National Leaguers wore American League uniforms that spring. The new league further benefitted from a hotly contested pennant race ultimately won by Griffith's Chicago White Sox, who finished four games in front of Collins' Boston Pilgrims.
Rather than fight the American League, the Nationals staged theirown civil war for the league presidency. By the time the National League prepared itself for combat with the American League, the war was effectively settled, and Ban Johnson had won.
Baltimore's John McGraw unsuccessfully attempts to sign black second baseman Charlie Grant to a major league contract by passing him off as a Cherokee Indian.
Henry Clay Pulliam is elected president of the National League Dec. 13 following a brawling five-day deadlock between Nick Young, candidate of the syndicators, and Albert Spalding, who is supported by the reformers.
President McKinley is mortally wounded while attending a trade show in Buffalo Sept. 6; he dies eight days later and Theodore Roosevelt becomes president.