California League

California League

California League logo
Sport	Baseball
Founded	1941
No. of teams	8
Country	USA
Most recent champion(s)	High Desert Mavericks (2016)
Classification	Class A-Advanced
Official website	Official Website

The California League is a Minor League Baseball league which operates throughout California. it is classified at the Class A-Advanced, three steps below Major League Baseball. Most players reach this level in their third or fourth year of professional play.

All of the current teams are playing in stadiums that have been built or extensively renovated since 1990. League attendance continues to increase each season, with over one million fans attending games per year, part of a general nationwide growth and expansion to smaller towns, cities and regions below those in the National League or American League with minor league baseball at various levels of play in growing popularity in the last few decades. The League is divided into a Northern Division and a Southern Division.

The California League will contract from ten to eight teams in the 2017 season as the Bakersfield Blaze and the High Desert Mavericks will cease operations.

There were various attempts in the late 1800s and early 1900s to form a "California League" on the West Coast, considering the distance of the two current major leagues which generally had teams only in the Northeast and were restricted at first until World War I by long distance train travel. The first organized California League lasted from 1887–1889, then another followed in 1891, and 1893, and finally in 1899–1902. After the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, an organization of minor leagues was formed in 1902, (following the "truce" and agreements between the older National League of 1876 and the newly "upstart" American League of 1901), the California League operated outside the NAPBL system as an independent league in 1902 and again from 1907–1909. This led to huge differences in the quality of teams competing with each other. In 1907, the San Francisco team was 3-34, while later in 1908 San Francisco was 9-67 and Oakland was 4-71. Oakland and San Francisco competed in every year of these various state leagues, with San Francisco having two teams during 1887-88.