National Association
of Base Ball Players (NABBP)
Baseball's first organizing body grew out of a meeting of fourteen clubs at a New York hotel in January of 1857. Daniel L. Adams of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, which had called the meeting, was elected president of the convention and he was also named chairman of the Committee on Rules and Regulations.
Adams was instrumental in standardizing the basepaths at 90 feet and the pitching distance at 45 feet. His idea that a game should last seven innings was also adopted (and shortly afterward changed to nine innings).
A second convention was held on March 10, 1858, with twenty-two clubs represented. They agreed to form the National Association of Base Ball Players. The "National" wasn't accurate, since all of the teams were from the New York City area, but it was prophetic.
The NABBP established standards both for member clubs and for players. A club had to have at least eighteen players and it had to apply for membership at least thirty days before the annual convention. If accepted by a two-thirds vote, a club was entitled to send two delegates to the convention.
A player was required to be a member of his club for thirty days before taking part in a game, he was not to be compensated for playing, and he was not permitted to be involved in any kind of betting on games in which he played.
A nine-member Judiciary Committee was appointed to investigate possible violations, with a review by the entire convention, where a two-thirds vote could overturn its rulings.
In 1859, teams from New Jersey joined the NAABP, and teams from Pennsylvania were added in 1860. The Civil War temporarily slowed the association's growth, but its membership exploded after the war, to 91 clubs in 1865, 202 in 1866, and more than 300 in 1867.
The NABBP then limited membership to state associations, except in those states that had fewer than ten teams. State and regional associations quickly sprang up, all patterned after the national association.
While the NABBP served an important purpose in standardizing rules and imposing some sort of organization on the sport, it soon became clear that it wasn't strong enough to deal with baseball's increasing professionalism. Often, when the association's Judiciary Committee did take action on a complaint, it was overturned by convention vote.
The final crisis came in 1870, when amateur and professional members of the NABBP clashed at the annual convention. A vote was taken to adjourn sine die--without setting a date for another meeting.
The following March, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was organized. Eighteen amateur teams that had belonged to the NABBP responded by forming the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players, but that organization soon fell apart in a dispute over whether teams should be allowed to charge admission.