The Union Professional League was a professional baseball league that played for less than two months in 1908. The league was founded by businessman Alfred Lawson (1869–1954), who had briefly pitched for the
Boston Beaneaters
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most po ...
and the
Pittsburgh Alleghenies
The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...
in the National League (founded 1876) in 1890; he would later become known for his philosophy known as Lawsonomy and for his success in the aviation business.
History
The league was established in December 1907. Lawson had founded an outlaw baseball league before the 1907 season; he called it the Atlantic League, a name also used by multiple other eastern leagues in baseball history. Lawson took three Atlantic League teams with him when he founded the Union Professional League. The final list of teams included clubs from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Newark, New Jersey;
Elizabeth, New Jersey
Elizabeth is a city and the county seat of Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.New J ...
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philade ...
and
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
.
Lawson decided to run the new league without utilizing a salary cap, multi-year contracts or a reserve clause. To keep players from contract jumping, Lawson intended to withhold a large amount of each player's weekly salary until the end of the season. Biographer Jerry Kuntz wrote that sportswriters "dubbed the effort the 'Onion League,' because it was cheap and smelled bad."
Play opened in late April 1908, and the league ran into problems almost immediately. The entire east coast was dealing with frequent rain. The Washington club, for example, experienced nine rainouts in May, with six of them occurring in a nine-day stretch. This, combined with the fact that the league had not attracted star players from the established leagues, contributed to poor attendance and low revenue. As players sometimes went unpaid, they began to leave the league. The league folded in June of its inaugural season.