Second Pro League to Begin Play in 1930
by Jorge Nieva for Athletic Weekly
May 12, 1929
Shannon Mukai is a man who gets what he wants. Not in the sense that he’s coddled or avoidant of life’s realities. Rather, Shannon Mukai is a man who makes things happen. He is a man who makes the things he wants to happen, happen. When he was denied entry to the Uplantic Association as a team owner for the third and final time in early 1927, he could not accept that what he wanted – to be a part of major professional baseball in Uplantica – was not happening. Since that day, he has spent his nearly all of his time and much of his personal capital to create a professional league to rival the one that denied him a place.
As he tried and failed three times to lobby the UA board for ownership, Mukai made plenty of connections in the baseball world. Many of those connections found themselves on the outside of the exclusive UA bubble as well. Mukai had already secured a tentative agreement with city officials for a home stadium in Plains City for his ill-fated UA team. He had also found willing investors that believed in his vision even after the UA denied him more than once. Aside from his own investors, Mukai met plenty of wealthy and talented people with baseball dreams of their own.
Of course, Shannon Mukai’s new baseball business connections weren’t ready to jump on board with a whole new league right away, especially when his attempts at creating just a single team had been unsuccessful. But as the weeks went by and the UA’s season captivated the nation’s attention, Mukai’s vision of a rival league began to look more realistic. Beyond looking realistic, it became a near certainty when Mukai allied last fall with Bert Milner of Bert Milner’s Baseball Kings. The Kings are the most well-known and lucrative touring baseball team in history. Whether Milner saw the writing on the wall, or just decided that league baseball is more appealing than the touring model, nobody is sure, but in October the renamed “Lia Puedris Kings” secretly joined the “Plains City Reapers” as the first two teams in the National Professional League of Baseball Clubs.
The NPL did not announce itself to the world until this week. As part of the league’s announcement, we have learned that since last fall the NPL has secured teams with stadiums in Elderwood, Petchon, and Tiny Sea in addition to the “Kings” and “Reapers.” The official press release stated that the NPL would be adding more teams before it starts play in the summer 0f 1930. In a short Q&A with Shannon Mukai, it was revealed that, unlike in the UA, already established teams that choose to join the NPL will be forced to release their rosters and enter into a full NPL league draft of free agents to form their teams. (In the UA, teams had the first crack at UA contract negotiations with any players under their employ as touring teams.) Several players from the Kings defected to the UA during the offseason, and now that the rumors of Milner making a major move have been substantiated, we know that it’s because they were freed up by Kings management to explore their options. Aside from the Kings and a few other big names, most touring teams don’t have formal long-term agreements in place with their players anyway, so this might not have too much impact on the league’s parity as compared to the UA. The idea of a league-wide full roster draft is certainly intriguing, however, in contrast to the free-for-all signing frenzy that ended up filling the original UA rosters.
Since Mukai freely volunteered this draft information, we can speculate that he has already secured more than just the five teams listed publicly today and that they have already agreed to this stipulation. In addition to this rule, teams are required to maintain a home stadium, just like in the UA.
Mukai’s advanced timetable on this new league is somewhat astounding. The UA began play a full five years after its first team officially signed on, and had over a year to prepare its schedule and logistics after the last team joined. The NPL expects to start play in just over a year from now with so much about its structure and operation still unclear. If anyone can accomplish this feat in so short a time, it’s Shannon Mukai. Mukai is a rare case of a K’Taen who has flourished in the greater continent since immigrating west from the D’Aeko peninsula. There is some speculation that someone on the UA board has some distaste for the largely isolated and culturally stark southeastern K’Taen peoples, and that it colored the league’s evaluation and rejection of Mukai’s Plains City team. The UA explicitly forbids “discrimination based on race, religion, or background” in its league charter and guidebook, but opponents point to the example of the league’s close relationship with the oft-criticized Harmonyc Brotherhood to show how serious they are about their claims of inclusion. Whether it is discrimination at play, or just a difference of opinion, the UA board may have created an unforeseen juggernaut when it rejected Shannon Mukai.
We will await further information about the National Professional League as Mukai’s team reveals details in the months ahead. For now we settle in for what will hopefully be another great season of UA baseball and sit with the bevy of questions this announcement brings up: Is baseball’s popularity sustainable? Can another entire league compete with the UA this soon? Is touring baseball dying away? Will the Salvation Brothers and Tiny Sea leadership take kindly to another pro baseball team in their city? What will these teams in Tiny Sea, Petchon, and Elderwood be called? Will the rules of the new league be the same as those in the UA? Will Mukai’s league offer more innovations beyond the roster draft? Where else will NPL teams be located? Will the NPL be able to compete in the media with the wildly popular UA (which already has exclusive media contracts with the biggest communications syndicates in the country)? In due time we will hopefully learn the answers to all of these questions and more. What an exciting time to be a baseball fan!
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