Major League Baseball’s history is long and often full of twists and turns. And in the earliest days of professional baseball, it wasn’t organized very well. As a result, some cities, so small that they make the current small markets look like Metropolises, had teams.

The first Major League, according to some, was not the National League (formed in 1876) but rather the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (notice how it says “players” and not teams or leagues- this was before owners had lots of leverage). It was a haphazard enterprise formed in 1871. Teams could buy their way in, schedules weren’t set in stone, gambling was rampant, and the level of play fluctuated greatly. For that reason, some organizations such as the Hall of Fame and MLB’s official record books don’t consider it a major league. Others, such as SABR and Baseball-Reference, do. As a result, there are some very small cities that show up on baseball-reference.com. And I don’t mean “small” as in “Hartford, Connecticut”… I mean “small” as in “they were smaller than the capacity of modern-day ballparks”.

Take a look (after the jump):

Fort Wayne Kekiongas: The First Home Team

If you hold the National Association as the first Major League, then the beginning of MLB history came on May 4, 1871 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The homestanding Kekiongas- named for a Native American settlement that had existed nearby- hosted the Cleveland Forest Cities on a cloudy, 56 degree day. Cleveland’s lead-off hitter, Deacon White, hit a double off of Fort Wayne’s Bobby Matthews to start the game and the history of the Major Leagues. Matthews would recover, however, allowing only three more hits in the game for the 2-0 shutout. James McDermott, a man so obscure we don’t even know what handedness he was, hit the first RBI in MLB history, driving home Bill Lennon in the bottom of the 2nd inning with a two-out single.

Fort Wayne, however, wouldn’t last the season, despite their opening-day victory. They went 7-12 and then folded. Besides the team’s poor performance, the city was too small: it’s population in 1870 had only been 17,718 people, after all. Even today, it only numbers a few hundred thousand. It has had minor league teams (including today’s Fort Wayne TinCaps) and had a All-American Girls Professional Baseball League team in the 40s and early 50s, but MLB baseball never returned.

Rockford Forest Citys: Cap Anson Played Here

Cap Anson was the 19th century’s greatest and most popular ballplayer, playing 27 consecutive seasons before finally retiring from playing in the field in 1897. He was a pitcher, he was an infielder, a catcher and he managed. He also was probably one of the biggest racists in the history of baseball- the creation of the “gentleman’s agreement” of segregation was at least partially because he refused to play any team that had a African-American ballplayers, even in exhibition games.

That, however, is a tale for another time. What matters here is that Anson was the star of the Rockford Forest Citys in 1871. Rockford, Illinois was a small place of only 11 thousand people at the time, and that, along with it’s 4-21 record and Anson jumping to Philadelphia for a $1,250 contract (that’s about $242.3 thousand today), relegated it to the dustbin of MLB history. However, Rockford would later be home to, amongst others, the AAGPBL’s Rockford Peaches, of League of Their Own fame.

Middletown Mansfields: 5-19 and Out

Middletown, Connecticut (2005 population: 47,438) is now mainly a college town for Wesleyan University, and it is part of Springfield’s metropolitan area. But in 1872, it hosted the Mansfields,who went 5-19 before folding. Of note is that HoFer Jim O’Rourke got his start with the team.

Elizabeth Resolutes: Not-so-resolute

Elizabeth, New Jersey had a population of about 20 thousand in the 1870s, but it’s unlikely any city of any size would have supported the 1873 Resolutes, who went 2-21. Not surprisingly, they folded after the year.

Keokuk Westerns: Not Heaven, just Iowa.

Keokuk, Iowa probably has the distinction of being the smallest current city to have once hosted a MLB team, as they played host to the Westerns in 1875, the final year of the National Association. The population in the 1870s was somewhere in the 12,000s, but today, it is a town that has a population in the high 10,000s, smaller than a lot of AAA stadiums.

The ’75 Westerns went 1-12. After the season, the National Association was dissolved and replaced with the National League, a more centralized and big-money organization that kicked out cities like Keokuk forever.

Well… more or less.

Come back tomorrow to read about some of the smallest cities to be in the Major Leagues since the National League was founded.