Union Association
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1884 |
| Ceased | 1884 |
| No. of teams | 12 |
| Country | United States |
| Last champion(s) |
1884-St. Louis Maroons |
The Union Association was a league in Major League Baseball which lasted for only one season in 1884. St. Louis won the pennant and joined the National League the following season. Chicago moved to Pittsburgh in late August, and four teams folded during the season and were replaced.
Although the league is conventionally listed as a major league, this status has been questioned by a number of modern baseball historians, most notably Bill James in The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The league had a number of major league players (on the St. Louis franchise, at least), but the league's overall talent and organization was notably inferior to that of the two established major leagues. James found that the contemporary baseball guides did not consider the Union Association to be a major league either. The earliest record he could find of the Union Association as a major league was Ernest Lanigan's The Baseball Cyclopedia, published in 1922.
For example, the league's only "star" player, Fred Dunlap, led the league in batting average with .412 (86 points higher than his second-best season and 120 points higher than his career average), on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs scored, hits, total bases, and home runs (with just 13, typical for the era). After the league folded, Dunlap never hit more than .274 or more than 10 home runs until he retired in 1891, another measure of the inferior quality of the Union Association. In point of fact, if the 1884 season is excluded from his career total, Dunlap's career batting average was a mere .276.
Of the 272 players in the Association, 107 (39.34%) never played in another major league, while 72 (26.47%) played very briefly (less than 300 at bats and/or 50 hits) in other major leagues, and 79 (29.04%) had longer careers but little success in other major leagues.
A relatively modern comparison could be the World Football League of the early 1970s contrasted with the National Football League. The WFL similarly resorted to putting clubs in small cities or cities with established teams, and collapsed in the middle of its second season.
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