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Preseason, 1890
If the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania felt like their world had been rocked in the winter of 1889, they had good reason. The spring before, one of the worst natural disasters in American history had struck their state.
On the last day of May, the rain-swollen Little Conemaugh River wrecked a haphazardly maintained dam and swept down its valley, inundating the city of Johnstown and several nearby villages. The Johnstown Flood killed over 2,200 people and did $17 million in damage, a total that is equivalent to nearly half a billion dollars today.
The remaining residents of Johnstown refused to let their despair overcome them. With the help of thousands of supporters from near and far, they determined to rebuild their city.
A well-to-do businessman named J. Frank Ross was among those who worked to help the Johnstowners reconstruct their city and their lives. Ross lived far from Johnstown, in the Philadelphia Main Line community of Bryn Mawr, but he had relatives living nearby and felt their pain acutely. The good people of Johnstown and the valley need more than physical reconstruction," Ross told a newspaper reporter. "They need things to put smiles back on their faces. They need music and plays and books, and they need base ball."
Ross and his associates first paid for the construction of a clean, modern ballpark for the people of Johnstown. The new grounds were completed by late November, before the worst of a Pennsylvania mountain winter could set in. By then, Ross had come up with a grander plan.
He wanted to create a new base ball league for the Keystone State.
Ross and his fellow founders decided to call their creation the Keystone League. Their plan proved to be a popular one, and within weeks, applications to join the league had arrived from all the good-sized towns in Pennsylvania. Ross's vision was geared toward these cities, rather than the metropolises of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and even Erie's base ball enthusiasts thought they were too big a town for Ross's local league (although two or three larger cities did put in applications).
"I was pleasantly surprised by the number of cities from which I have received applications to join the new league," Ross told the reporter. "I had envisioned a league of ten or twelve clubs, but the response has far exceeded that projection. Some of the cities and towns who submitted applications are quite small and, as enthusiastic as their backers are, they would not be able to compete with a city the size of Scranton or Lancaster on fair terms. So what we have decided to do is create affiliated leagues that will provide players for teams in the larger cities.
"I believe every city and town in our great state deserves a team of its own," Ross declared. "This way, they may have them."
Johnstown, whose plight inspired Ross's plan, was in fact a bit small to support a Keystone League club. However, their application was enthusiastically approved for the second tier of eight teams, in the Commonwealth League. The Independence League and the Liberty League, the two lower tiers, also contained eight teams each.
By the first of January, 1890, the Keystone League was ready to hold a draft to assign players to its eight teams and their affiliates. Pennsylvanians would have a new reason to look forward to the coming of spring.
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