Tri-State League

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

The first league of that name played for four years (1887-1890) and consisted of teams in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia. The second, which played from 1904-14, had member clubs in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 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 1925-26 association located in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

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.

References

*Johnson, Lloyd and Wolff, Miles, editors: "The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball." Durham, N.C.: Baseball America, 1997.