France
French Rugby Top 14 (National League)
USAP Perpignan vs ASM Clermont Auvergne
Match scheduled:
Date:: 29-05-2010
Time:18:45 until 20:45
The Final :: French Top 14 :: Match also on France 2 and Canal+ FR / Sportzone will be Joined in Progress
Watch live rugby TV
Competition with other leagues
The NL encountered its first strong rival organization when the American Association began play in 1882. The A.A. played in cities where the NL did not have teams, offered Sunday games and alcoholic beverages in locales where permitted, and sold cheaper tickets everywhere (25 cents versus the NL's standard 50 cents, a hefty sum for many in 1882).
The National League and the American Association participated in a version of the World Series seven times during their ten-year coexistence. These contests were more disorganized than the modern Series, lasting as few as three games and as many as fifteen, with two Series (1885 and 1890) ending in disputed ties. The NL won four times and the A.A. only once, in 1886.
Starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1887, the National League began to raid the American Association for franchises to replace NL teams that folded. This undercut the stability of the A.A.
Other new leagues that rose to compete with the National League were the Union Association and the Players League. The Union Association was established in 1884 and folded after playing only one season, its league champion St. Louis Maroons joining the NL. The Players' League was established by the Brotherhood of Professional Base-Ball Players, the sport's first players' union, which had failed to persuade the NL to modify its labor practices, including a salary cap and a reserve clause that bound players to their teams indefinitely. The NL suffered many defections of star players to the Players' League, but the P.L. collapsed after one season. The Brooklyn, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York franchises of the NL absorbed their Players' League counterparts.
In 1883 the New York Giants and Philadelphia Phillies began National League play. Both teams remain in the NL today, the Phillies in their original city and the Giants now in San Francisco.
[edit] Expansion (1887-1899)
The labor strife of 1890 hastened the downfall of the American Association. After the 1891 season, the A.A. disbanded and merged with the NL, which became known legally for the next decade as the "National League and American Association". The teams now known as the Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Dodgers (originally Brooklyn) and Pittsburgh Pirates (as well as the now-defunct Cleveland Spiders) had already switched from the A.A. to the NL prior to 1892. With the merger, the NL absorbed the St. Louis Browns (now known as the St. Louis Cardinals), along with three other teams that did not survive into the 20th century. While four teams that moved from the A.A. remain in the NL today (Pittsburgh [1887], Cincinnati [1890], Los Angeles [originally Brooklyn; 1890], and St. Louis [1892]), only two original NL franchises (1876) remain in the league: the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves (originally in Boston, and later Milwaukee). The Cubs are the only charter member to play continuously in the same city. The other two pre-1892 teams still in the league are the Philadelphia Phillies and the San Francisco Giants (originally New York), both of which joined in 1883.
The National League became a 12-team circuit with monopoly status for the rest of the decade. The league became embroiled in numerous internal conflicts, not the least of which was a plan supported by some owners (and bitterly opposed by others) to form a "trust," wherein there would be one common ownership of all twelve teams. The NL used its monopoly power to force a $2,400 limit on annual player wages in 1894.
[edit] Partnership with the American League
After eight seasons as a 12-team league, the NL contracted back to eight teams for the 1900 season, eliminating its teams in Baltimore, Cleveland, Louisville (which has never had another major league team since), and Washington. This provided an opportunity for competition. Three of those cities received franchises in the new American League (AL) when the AL opened for business in 1900, with the approval of the NL, which regarded the AL as a lesser league. The AL declined to renew its National Agreement membership when it expired, and on January 28, 1901, the AL officially declared itself a second major league in competition with the NL. By 1903, the upstart AL had placed new teams in the National League cities of Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. Only the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates had no AL team in their markets.
The National League at first refused to recognize the new league, but reality set in as talent and money drained away to the new league. After two years of bitter contention, a new version of the National Agreement was signed in 1903. This meant formal acceptance of each league by the other as an equal partner in major-league baseball, mutual respect of player contracts, and an agreement to play a postseason championship—the World Series.
Major League Baseball narrowly averted radical reorganization in November 1920. Dissatisfied with American League President and National Commission head Ban Johnson, NL owners dissolved the league on November 8 during heated talks on MLB reorganization in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal. Simultaneously, three AL teams also hostile to Johnson (Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and New York Yankees) withdrew from the AL and joined the eight NL teams in forming a new National League; the 12th team would be whichever of the remaining five AL teams loyal to Johnson first chose to join; if none did so an expansion team would have been placed in Detroit, by far the largest one-team city at that time. Four days later, on November 12, both sides met (without Johnson) and agreed to restore the two leagues and replace the ineffective National Commission with a one-man Commissioner in the person of federal Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis.[3]
The National League circuit remained unchanged from 1900 through 1952. In 1953 the Braves moved from Boston to Milwaukee; in 1966 they moved again, to Atlanta. In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, bringing major league baseball to the West Coast of the U.S. for the first time.
