With all the attempts to squeeze the little guys out of big-time pro baseball, it was Small Town USA that proved to be superior in 1897.
Where there were three pennant races in the old NA, AA and UA, now there were six, with ten-team divisions. And four of those division winners were small towns: Rockford downing the Windy City clubs in the West; Dayton edging out Fort Wayne in the Midwest; Altoona dominating in the Keystone; and Wilmington well ahead in the Atlantic. The Empire Division, with half of its clubs in the New York City area, was won the Eckfords of Brooklyn, while the Northeast was won by Hartford:
Actually, there were two more spots in the Centennial Cup playoffs -- now expanded to eight teams -- with the Phillies and Eurekas claiming the "wild cards" as the top non-division winners in the two conferences, Liberty (West) and Freedom (East).