For 30 years, minor-league professional baseball was a developmental process for Major League Baseball. The only way to pursue a professional playing career was to sign a contract with a Major League team. As soon as this organization determined you were no longer progressing toward the major leagues, your career ended.
This is the way it's done in professional hockey, basketball, and football. Historically, baseball has been different. The tradition of the National Pastime was to allow those willing to sacrifice to play as long as they could, the opportunity to compete on a professional level.
The Northern League is the first league to successfully restore this tradition. It has no affiliation with Major League Baseball or with the parent organization of the minor leagues. This league is generally acknowledged to be the pre-eminent and most respected independent professional baseball league in the United States and Canada.
The Northern League provides opportunities for players who would have otherwise been overlooked. Since 1993, more than 90 players who were under contract to a Northern League team have been sold to major-league organizations or foreign league teams.
Northern League baseball is its own "field of dreams." After a wildly popular inaugural season, the six Northern League teams continued to draw record-shattering crowds during the 1994 season. The league drew 651,452 fans for 203 playing dates in its inaugural season and drew an all-time, short season record of 910,978 in 236 dates in 1994. The Northern League's per-game average of 3,209 in 1993 increased to 3,860 in 1994. In 1995, the Winnipeg Goldeyes broke the single-game short-season attendance record, and both St. Paul and Sioux City set new season attendance records. League attendance could pass the 1 million mark in its fourth year of operation.
The league has proven itself to the public, to the media, and to its investors, surpassing even the highest expectations for its continued success. The league's eight markets have an aggregate population of over 2.7 million households, with an estimated population of more than six million people.
Source: Madison Black Wolf 1996 Official Program, p. 23.