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,,, running the NA and his other business interests. It would take another two decades of this kind of informal operating agreement before the next evolution in baseball: The minor leagues.

The farm system evolved as much out of need as vision. The early 1930s saw the dawn of the Great Depression. The once fertile fields of the smaller leagues began to dry up as leagues and teams either folded, or found themselves on the verge of extinction. Major league clubs that had deals with lower-class teams couldn't count on their supply of players if the teams folded.

Direct affiliation freed up the teams from salaries that might have put their operations out of business. It also fulfilled the Cardinals presdient Branch Rickey's vision for his organization, of the first formalized "farm" system, a comprehensive development program for talent at all levels of the game, where the major league club had control both over the contract and the manner in which the player was trained. The combination of the Depression and the perception that Rickey's methods were good for improving the level of the game drove the creation of the minor leagues.

Since full affiliation, the NA has operated as the coordination center, ombudsman, and voice of the minor leagues with Major League Baseball. The NA celebrated a hundred years of minor league baseball in 2002, but that anniversary will technically arrive around 2031, when formal affiliation became the rule of the day.

To those early pioneers, there was nothing "minor" about their baseball. The proper circumstances could have caused some leagues to rise to the major league level.

As the great cities of the West arose, it forced the expansion of major league baseball. Had the National and American League not moved on the West and Southwest, the Pacific Coast League might have become a third major league holding the coastal crown jewels like Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

Currently, Minor League Baseball accounts for approximately 73% of professional baseball. The remaining 27% are the teams of "independent" baseball, leagues and teams not affiliated with Major League Baseball.

The future for the leagues and teams of the NA looks bright. The advent of the internet decentralizing commerce away from super cities, and the return of population back to towns great and small across the United States over the past thirty years has brought renewed interest in a night out at the local ballpark. New stadiums spring up each season, and some minor league clubs draw crowds that would even make a few lesser major league operations jealous.

At the center of it all is the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues which has evolved with time to be the heart of minor league baseball,