Northeast League
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1995 (original) 2003 (after de-merger with Northern League) |
| Ceased | 1999 (merged with Northern League) 2004 |
| No. of teams | 8 |
| Countries |
 United States Canada |
| Last champion(s) |
New Jersey Jackals |
| Most titles | New Jersey Jackals (4, 2 if strictly Northeast League titles are counted) |
The Northeast League was an independent minor baseball league that operated in the Northeastern United States from 1995 until 1998 and from 2003 until 2004. Between 1999 and 2002, the league was part of the Northern League after the two leagues agreed to merge. The league was superseded by the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball, which its members joined for the 2005 season.
In 1995 Miles Wolff, who founded the Northern League in 1993 and served as its first commissioner, started the Northeast League. For the first season, six teams played and all five were based in southern and central New York. Albany (Albany Diamond Dogs), Glens Falls (Adirondack Lumberjacks), Yonkers (Yonkers Hoot Owls), Newburgh (Newburgh Night Hawks), Little Falls (Mohawk Valley Landsharks) and Mountaindale (Sullivan Mountain Lions) were all given teams and Albany won the first league championship in a 68-game season.
For 1996, things changed slightly. The Mountain Lions were sold to a new ownership group who renamed them the Catskill Cougars and moved them to the North Atlantic League while the Landsharks moved to West Warwick, Rhode Island, expanding the league into New England as the team became the Rhode Island Tiger Sharks. The Hoot Owls also folded and the league added a second New England team, the Bangor Blue Ox, and added Maine to its footprint in place of Yonkers. To replace the Mountain Lions/Cougars, an expansion team was granted to Elmira, New York, which had lost its New York–Penn League team when the Boston Red Sox chose to move the team to Massachusetts and rename them the Lowell Spinners. Like every other professional baseball team to play in Elmira since 1923, the expansion team was named the Pioneers. Albany won the league title again.
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