Tri-State League

The Tri-State League was the name of five different circuits in American minor league baseball.

History

The first league of that name played for four years (1887–1890) and consisted of teams in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia.

The second league, played from 1904–1914, and had member clubs in Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Charles F. Carpenter was president from 1906 to 1913.

During the 1920s, two versions of the Tri-State League briefly existed: a 1924 loop with clubs in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, and a 1925-1926 association located in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

The most recent incarnation of the league was the post-World War II Tri-State, a Class B circuit with clubs in Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. This league, which played from 1946–55, typically included clubs in Charlotte, Asheville, Knoxville, Rock Hill and Spartanburg; most of its teams were affiliated with Major League Baseball farm systems.

The attendance crisis in the minor leagues of the 1950s - and the defection of clubs like Charlotte to higher-classification loops - eventually took its toll on the Tri-State League. In its last season, 1955, there were only four clubs in the league. Its last champion was the Spartanburg Peaches, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians.

Tri-State League (ice hockey)

The Tri-State League is a defunct NCAA Division I ice hockey-only conference. The league was the first attempt at creating a conference for hockey programs and, while it did not succeed in its goals, succeeding conferences were able to learn from the mistakes made and flaws in its design to form effective and long-lasting divisions.

History

Formed in 1950 by the six colleges, all located in the Northeast, the Tri-State League was named for the three states represented by the schools: Massachusetts with Williams, New York with Clarkson, Colgate, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence and Vermont with Middlebury. In the first season each school played one another once, resulting in 5 conference games for every team. After the 1950–51 season, however, Colgate left the conference, leaving the league with only five member teams. The following year seven western teams formed the MCHL and while it wasn't a direct rival to the Tri-State League it had several advantages over its eastern counterpart. For one the MCHL contained the majority of the regional schools playing D-I ice hockey so its league champion would almost assuredly be invited to the NCAA tournament whereas the Eastern region had more than 30 schools playing at the top level, giving the Tri-State League a much smaller footprint. Its influence grew even smaller after the second season when Williams left the conference, not only reducing its numbers to four, but no longer making the conference's title geographically correct.