March 31, 1909 – The National Baseball Commission adopted a new rule regarding ineligible players. The new rules were targeting players who violated their signed contracts by failing to report or leaving a club that holds the rights to their players’ contract. According to the Boston Globe article on April 1, 1909 players who violated their contract obligations were to face suspension for 5 years, and players that joined “outlaw organizations” were to be suspended for 3 years. Baseball _reference.com says that these leagues are: “An outlaw league is a league that does not honor the contracts and agreements of Organized Baseball.”
These rules had the intent of keeping the best players in the NL and AL and eliminating competition that often came along driving player salary prices up.
The NL in fact thought of the American League as an outlaw league in 1900. The Federal League in 1913 and 1914 was a minor league that declared themselves as a major league of baseball challenging the established National and American Leagues of baseball.
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