Ban Johnson Announces the American League Will Place a Team in Chicago

On March 16, 1900, American League president Ban Johnson announced at the league's spring meeting in Chicago that Charles Comiskey's St. Paul team would relocate to the South Side of the city. The move placed the new circuit directly in National League territory and signaled Johnson's intent to challenge the senior league's monopoly on major-league baseball.

Johnson and Comiskey had been planning the incursion for months. The American League, still officially a minor league in 1900, needed a foothold in the nation's second-largest city to be taken seriously. Johnson negotiated an arrangement with Chicago's National League officials that allowed the new club to set up at the old cricket grounds at 39th and Wentworth, well south of the West Side Grounds where the NL's team played.

The next day, NL president James Hart conceded that Comiskey's club could operate in Chicago without violating the National Agreement, as long as the word "Chicago" did not appear in the team name. Comiskey chose "White Stockings," borrowing the old National League nickname that Cap Anson's teams had carried for decades.

Within a year, Johnson dropped the pretense of minor-league status entirely. In January 1901, he declared the American League a major league and began raiding NL rosters. Comiskey's White Stockings won the first AL pennant that season. The March 16 announcement was the first concrete step toward the two-league structure that would define professional baseball for the next century.