I was going to wait until 1901 or so to bring in the minors, but I decided to start early, just because I don't like players unsigned or sitting on the bench somewhere: I want them to
play, somewhere. (Even after expanded rosters to 20 players and 10 reserves, there were still plenty left over.)
But expanding the majors further (and/or creating a fourth league) wasn't really going to work: there's already sixty clubs, many of them in small towns that, by the late 19th century, would never be able to support big-league baseball (I'm looking at
you, Keokuk). And all teams had to be in what I call "the envelope": the Northeast and Midwest US and eastern Canada, with a line drawn from the Twin Cities to Kansas City to Louisville to Richmond marking the outer border. Baseball IRL didn't expand outside these parameters until the 1950s; no team in any pro sports ventured outside the envelope until the mid-1940s.
I don't know when or where I'm going to "open" the envelope; probably towards the south in the 1930s, maybe? Since there's no segregation in baseball in this timeline, that might be a possibility; any ideas?
So, I created the Minor League Alliance, an eight-team Pacific Coast League and an eight-team Southern Association, which contains three teams from Texas:
I'm not going to talk too much about the MLA -- it exists mainly in the background.
Got it? Let's play ball...!