NARA Federal League Case Files (1915) — SABR Digital Archive Collection

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**One of the most important historical primary source collections** for any analysis of baseball's antitrust exemption: the original case files from the 1915 Federal League of Professional Base Ball Clubs antitrust suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois — **before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis** (who would become MLB's first Commissioner six years later, in 1921). The collection contains approximately 120 individual affidavits, exhibits, briefs, subpoenas, and court orders, including sworn affidavits from a Who's Who of early-20th-century baseball: **Cornelius 'Connie Mack' McGillicuddy** (Philadelphia Athletics owner-manager), **Joseph 'Joe' Tinker** (Federal League player-manager and HOF inductee), **Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown** (HOF pitcher), **Charles Ebbets** (Brooklyn Dodgers owner), **Clark Griffith** (Washington Senators owner-manager and HOF inductee), **A. G. Mills** (former NL President), **Joseph Lannin** (Boston Red Sox owner), and **James A. Gilmore** (Federal League President), among many others. **The 1915 case settled before Judge Landis ruled** — the Federal League dissolved as part of a settlement in December 1915, with most Federal League owners bought out except the Baltimore Terrapins, whose subsequent independent suit (Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore, Inc. v. National League, 259 U.S. 200) reached the Supreme Court in 1922 and produced the baseball antitrust exemption doctrine. **The 1915 case files are the actual primary record that the 1922 case proceeded against**, providing extensive contemporaneous documentation of the early baseball monopoly structure that the SCOTUS decision then exempted from antitrust law. **Digitized by SABR** via partnership with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Background

One of the highest-value collections in the entire archive. The 1915 Federal League antitrust suit case files are the primary record of the conflict that produced baseball's antitrust exemption — the original litigation, before Judge Landis (the future Commissioner), with sworn affidavits from leading baseball figures of the era. Source material for any historical narrative on the early monopoly structure of organized baseball, the integration of the Federal League into the establishment, Landis's pre-Commissioner judicial posture toward baseball (he sat on the case for nearly a year without ruling, allowing settlement to occur — many historians read this as Landis siding with organized baseball without saying so), and the origin of the 1922 Federal Baseball Club v. National League SCOTUS exemption. Individual affidavits to prioritize for content review: Connie Mack (A's owner — establishment perspective), Joe Tinker (Federal League player-manager — labor / rival-league perspective), James Gilmore (Federal League President — institutional rival perspective), A. G. Mills (former NL President — historical baseball governance perspective), Charles Ebbets and Clark Griffith (established-league owners). The collection is preserved as a ZIP rather than individually extracted — extraction of the full 1.6 GB consumes significant storage; individual files can be extracted as needed. The SABR-NARA-Federal-League-Digital-Archive-Guide.pdf is extracted into this folder and provides the SABR finding aid for the collection.

Key provisions

  • Collection structure: Approximately 120 individual PDF files, organized by case-file number (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, ..., 101-110, ..., up to the higher numbers). Individual files include affidavits from named baseball figures, exhibits, intervention motions, chancery subpoenas, and service writs.
  • Judge: Kenesaw Mountain Landis, U.S. District Judge, N.D. Ill. — later baseball's first Commissioner (1921-1944).
  • Procedural status: Case filed January 5, 1915; settled in December 1915 without a Landis ruling; the Baltimore Terrapins' subsequent independent suit reached SCOTUS in 1922 as Federal Baseball Club v. National League.
  • Highlighted affidavits visible in finding-aid filenames: Cornelius McGillicuddy (Connie Mack, A's), Joseph B. Tinker (Federal League player-manager), Leo Hoerschemeyer / Hoernschemeyer, Otto Knabe, Edward John Konetchy, Mordecai Brown, Herbert V. Juul, Charles H. Ebbets (Brooklyn), Clark C. Griffith (Washington), A. G. Mills (former NL President), J. H. Farrell, Joseph J. Lannin (Boston), James A. Gilmore (FL President), William D. Perritt, Ennis T. Oakes, Lloyd H. Rickart, Harry Goldman, plus the Washington American Separate Answer, the Chancery Subpoenas and Service Writs, and the Index to Affidavits and Exhibits.
  • Digitization: SABR digitized the files in 2013 via partnership with NARA.

Notable provisions

[Individual document review deferred — 120 files, ~1.6 GB. SABR Digital Archive Guide PDF (extracted alongside this README) provides the indexing framework.]— SABR-NARA Federal League Case Files

Further context

NARA Federal League Case Files (1915) — SABR Digital Archive

One of the most important historical primary source collections in the entire archive.

~120 individual case files from the 1915 Federal League antitrust suit, filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Illinois before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis (who became baseball's first Commissioner six years later). The case settled in December 1915 without a Landis ruling; the subsequent Baltimore Terrapins' independent suit (also pre-existing in this archive) reached SCOTUS as Federal Baseball Club v. National League in 1922 and produced the antitrust exemption doctrine.

Files in the collection

Sworn affidavits from a Who's Who of early-20th-century baseball:

  • Cornelius "Connie Mack" McGillicuddy (Philadelphia Athletics)
  • Joseph "Joe" Tinker (Federal League player-manager, HOF)
  • Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown (HOF pitcher)
  • Charles Ebbets (Brooklyn Dodgers owner)
  • Clark Griffith (Washington Senators owner-manager, HOF)
  • A. G. Mills (former NL President)
  • Joseph Lannin (Boston Red Sox owner)
  • James A. Gilmore (Federal League President)
  • ...and many more.

Plus exhibits, intervention motions, chancery subpoenas, service writs, and orders.

How this is stored

  • ZIP master: SABR-NARA-1915-Federal-League-Case-Files.zip (1.618 GB) is preserved at the top of this folder. SHA256: f5942d455edff38eb70e623817e1051dfc9e46f97f49e78eea0604dacb09aa7f.
  • Extracted files: files/ subdirectory — full extraction completed 2026-05-18. 124 files total (121 numbered case files in sequence 1-121, no gaps, plus 3 top-level finding-aid/guide documents).
  • Per-file inventory: see MANIFEST.md alongside this README. Every file has its own SHA256 hash recorded there, with document-type categorization (affidavit, answer, intervention, reply_affidavit, court_record, letter, brief, order, subpoena, hearing, transcript, settlement) and a high-priority-affidavit reading list of canonical baseball figures.
  • Finding aids extracted at top level: SABR Digital Archive Guide and the NARA Preliminary Finding Aid (PDF + Word versions).

Digitization credit

SABR digitized this collection from NARA originals in 2013.

Related documents

  • 1922-05-29_caselaw_federal-baseball-club-v-national-league.md — the SCOTUS case that descended from the 1915 settlement.

References

  1. Primary source: sabr.org — National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); digitized by SABR, retrieved 2026-05-17.
  2. Confirmation source: sabr.org — Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Business of Baseball Files / NARA. **SABR's NARA digitization project** — a ~1.6 GB compressed archive of original case files from the National Archives. Approximately 120 individual affidavits, exhibits, court filings, subpoenas, and orders from the 1915 Federal League antitrust suit before Judge Landis (then U.S. District Judge in Chicago, later MLB's first Commissioner). The SABR-NARA-Federal-League-Digital-Archive-Guide.pdf (extracted alongside this README) contains the SABR finding aid.
  3. File fingerprint: SHA256 f5942d455edff38eb70e623817e1051dfc9e46f97f49e78eea0604dacb09aa7f.

Evidence trail

Per archive editorial standards §1.3 and §1.4, verified documents require two independent confirmation sources and an archive.org snapshot. This panel is the integrity record the archive holds for this document.

File integrity

SHA256
f5942d455edff38eb70e623817e1051dfc9e46f97f49e78eea0604dacb09aa7f
Filename
SABR-NARA-1915-Federal-League-Case-Files.zip
Format
OTHER · 1.51 GB
Retrieved
2026-05-17 by claude/cowork-9167cb28 (uploaded by alex)
Primary URL
https://sabr.org/research/business-of-baseball/files

Confirmation sources (1)

Publisher Retrieved URL Notes
Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Business of Baseball Files / NARA 2026-05-17 https://sabr.org/research/business-of-baseball/files **SABR's NARA digitization project** — a ~1.6 GB compressed archive of original case files from the National Archives. Approximately 120 individual affidavits, exhibits, court filings, subpoenas, and orders from the 1915 Federal League antitrust suit before Judge Landis (then U.S. District Judge in Chicago, later MLB's first Commissioner). The SABR-NARA-Federal-League-Digital-Archive-Guide.pdf (extracted alongside this README) contains the SABR finding aid.

Most recent status change

needs_review on 2026-05-19 by claude/cowork-fidelity-audit-2026-05-19.

Pass B: collection folder renamed from `1915_nara_federal-league-case-files/` to `1915_filing_federal-league-case-files-nara/` (off-spec `_nara_` doctype → canonical `_filing_`; 'nara' moved into the slug as a source marker). schema_version bumped to 1.1.0 to reflect compliance with the Pass B-introduced collection-pattern documentation in METADATA_SCHEMA §5. Non-schema fields `file.extracted_files` and `file.extracted_total_bytes` consolidated into `file.processing_notes`. No status change; no semantic loss.

Source provenance