Tri-State League


The Tri-State League was the name of six different circuits in American minor league baseball.

History

The first league of that name played for four years and consisted of teams in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia.
The second league, played from 1904–1914, and had member clubs in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Charles F. Carpenter was president from 1906 to 1913.
During the 1920s, two versions of the Tri-State League briefly existed: a 1924 loop with clubs in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, and a 1925-1926 association located in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.
In the late 1930s another iteration existed for two years, composed of six teams from Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana in its first season, and just four teams excluding Indiana in its second.
The most recent incarnation of the league was the post-World War II Tri-State, a Class B circuit with clubs in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. This league, which played from 1946–55, typically included clubs in Charlotte, Asheville, Knoxville, Rock Hill and Spartanburg; most of its teams were affiliated with Major League Baseball farm systems.
The attendance crisis in the minor leagues of the 1950s - and the defection of clubs like Charlotte to higher-classification loops - eventually took its toll on the Tri-State League. In its last season, 1955, there were only four clubs in the league. Its last champion was the Spartanburg Peaches, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians.

Teams

1887