League of the Free Frontier
Before the Free Frontier was more than a dream shared by tens of thousands of unwitting comrades, there was the Liga del Río Bravo, a small and much more Hispanophone baseball circuit that operated in the rough-and-ready reaches of border towns in northwestern Mexico, New Mexico and Arizona, and the Texan Base-Ball League, whose teams played in small, out-of-the-way cities and had a reputation for letting Puerto Ricans and Cubans find ways onto their rosters.
By the 1900s, when the United States’ defeat in the War in the Caribbean smote a mighty blow to the then-dominant factions of the American political system, the states of the frontier had begun to develop an independent political conscience, and one that would soon see them organize into an autonomous region that defied an increasingly isolationist federal government.
Appropriately enough, given that the Free Frontier looked outward from America towards the rest of the world, it sought help to revive the old baseball circuits that had inhabited its territory, and received help from the Puerto Rican, Cuban and Mexican governments in making it happen.
So was born the League of the Free Frontier, whose merry multinational rosters reflected the optimism of a future nation that spoke Spanish, English and German with equal enthusiasm and that would consider all its citizens properly equal, long before the country whose flag it had once flown.
Western Association
Phoenix Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
The only venomous lizard native to the United States, the gila monster is one of Arizona’s most emblematic animals—a perfect symbol for its capital’s baseball side.
- Wild card berths: 1902.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Incredibly, Prescott’s team is not named for fearsome cats, but for a nearby creek where prospectors struck gold in the nineteenth century.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1894, 1895, 1897, 1901, 1904.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Out of geographical similarity or that human weakness known as hubris, the citizens of Tempe named their abode after a valley near Olympus.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1896, 1902, 1903.
- Association pennants: 1896.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
While road agents were by no means unique to the oldest incorporated town in Arizona, some of its most practiced bandits did have a fondness for the area.
Santa Fe Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1894, 1895, 1896, 1897.
- Association pennants: 1894, 1895, 1897.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1894.
Like many other cities in what was once New Spain, the first European settlers of Albuquerque named their outpost on the Camino Real after the viceroy at the time.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Surprisingly, the town is actually named after the Luna family who received the original land grant, but everyone involved in the founding of this baseball team saw the pun immediately.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1901, 1903, 1904.
- Association pennants: 1903.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
It may not be the official state flower, but Iliamna rivularis—sometimes locally called vara de San José—is considered one of the most beautiful exemplars of New Mexican flora.
- Wild card berths: 1901, 1903, 1904.
- Circuit titles: 1902.
- Association pennants: 1902.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1902.
Artists began settling in the area of Taos since before the 20th century, but it would take decades until they conglomerated into a sizable settlement.
Abilene Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1887, 1895, 1897, 1902.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
While no town in the region is free from the influence of itinerant clergy, Abilene in the twentieth century became the site of one of their principal training centers.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1903.
- Association pennants: 1889, 1890, 1891, 1893.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1889, 1893.
Nestled away in the northern Frontier, Amarillo’s baseball players were quite successful before they discovered the beautiful natural sites near their chosen home base.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1904.
- Association pennants: 1904.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1904.
Supposedly, the Lubbock side got its nickname from the players’ tendency to slouch and lie down in the dugout—an unfortunate side effect of not waiting until Lubbock acquired a different reputation later in the century.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1894, 1896, 1901.
- Association pennants: 1901.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Like dozens of towns throughout the United States, Wichita Falls came into its own as a hub for commercial railroads, whose businesses would be seized by the fronterizos.
Eastern Association
Odessa Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1889, 1901.
- Association pennants: 1901.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1901.
Among what the Spaniards brought to the Western Hemisphere, horses have some of the most complex heritages—literally, since they were bred into having pretty gaits.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Whether caused by natural methane or electrical charge from igneous rock, or genuine paranormality, the lights of Marfa are one of the town’s most enduring legends.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1897, 1902.
- Association pennants: 1897, 1902.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1897.
Look: a league in the Southwest simply needs at least one team dedicated to the men who made a living out of droving, wrangling, or the other busequine arts.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1903, 1904.
- Association pennants: 1887, 1888, 1892, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1903.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1887, 1888, 1892, 1894, 1896, 1903.
Given its location in the Concho Valley, it is not especially surprising that San Angelo chose the prickly pear cactus for its mascot: intimidating, and yet nourishing.
San Marcos Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1888, 1891, 1892, 1895, 1896, 1897, 1901, 1903, 1904.
- Association pennants: 1895, 1896, 1897, 1904.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1895.
Like other Frontier towns, Luling could have chosen various symbols—watermelons, pumpjacks, or once being “the toughest town in Texas”—but went differently.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Few towns in the Frontier are as connected to German heritage as New Braunfels, whose people signed the only honored treaty between Europeans and Indigenous people.
- Wild card berths: 1904.
- Circuit titles: 1887, 1890, 1893, 1894, 1902.
- Association pennants: 1887.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
San Marcos became one of the most important university towns in the Free Frontier, in large part due to its pioneering role in large-scale forensic analysis of decomposition.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1889.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Most people do not associate the city of Waco with scientific discoveries—and most people would be incorrect, as a massive concentration of Columbian mammoths proves.
Galveston Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1894, 1895, 1896.
- Association pennants: 1894.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
In a failed attempt at reclamation, Beaumont adopted an ironic nickname that emphasized the city’s flatness, as opposed to its role as one of the Frontier’s busiest ports.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Galveston would be many things over the course of its history—including a regional capital—but its libertine era would remain its most famous to outsiders.
- Wild card berths: 1901.
- Circuit titles: 1887, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1897, 1902, 1903.
- Association pennants: 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893.
- Championships of the Frontier: 1890, 1891.
Nacogdoches, the most successful team in the Eastern Association, would get its baseball team’s name when its hecklers helped launch a particularly notable comedy career.
- Wild card berths: 1902, 1903.
- Circuit titles: 1901.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of the Frontier: None.
Tyler is actually better known for its rose production, which includes a rather garish festival considered classist by old-guard Fronterizos, but they preferred a unique moniker.