Professional baseball was destroying itself. There were 24 teams who considered themselves "major" in quality and they were killing each other, and also killing the "minor" league teams as well because a) there wasn't enough top-tier talent to go around and b) they were all overpaying for the talent that was available.

As was the case in 1876, a man with a vision was needed - and again that man was William Whitney. While Whitney was no longer the Century League's President, he did retain a lot of influence. He also was a shrewd businessman and most of the other clubs' owners followed his blueprint in running their own clubs. Some (like the deceased James Tice) felt they knew better, but most knew they didn't.

So in the late fall of 1891, William Whitney called for what he termed a "Baseball Summit" meeting in his adopted hometown of Chicago. He invited all the club owners from the Century and Peerless Leagues and the Border Association as well as representatives of the two minor leagues with which the CL had an agreement (the Dixie League and Western Federation) and several other independent leagues. The goal was to hash out a way for all of them to get back to making money and growing the sport as a business.

The first - and biggest - hurdle was simply the fact that all 24 "major" club owners wanted a piece of the pie. Whitney also knew, through his contacts across baseball, which teams were in trouble and which might be able to stick it out. So he concentrated on consolidation. He also knew that all three leagues had established themselves as entities with their own identities. So his first suggestion was to scrap the existing structure in favor of something completely new and without baggage. He suggested an umbrella organization, run by a commission of five men, elected by the entire group and wanted to call it the Federally Aligned Baseball Leagues.

Whitney shrewdly began his presentation by being vague about the composition of his FABL organization. There were three leagues - he knew two was the workable number. He also knew he could get there by combining the three old organizations into two 12-team leagues - and that this would be a bad idea. Once he had some grudging by-in from the group on the generalities of his FABL idea, he prepared to hit them with the parts of the plan some would not like.

First, he wanted two eight-team associations to be equal partners under the FABL banner. In his head he envisioned one being based on his own Century League and the other on the Border Association. Though he was being conciliatory, he despised Miles Bigsby and the Peerless Leaguers as upstarts who had turned a good thing into a nightmare. So he suggested a Federal Association as one league and a Continental Association as the other. Neither name had any real ties to the existing circuits. With that out of the way, he laid out his plan for consolidating the clubs:

  • All 1891 player contracts would be honored under a new "reserve clause" that allowed the clubs to reserve their players for the next season with automatic one-year contract renewals.
  • FABL would sign an agreement with any minor league that wished to be a party to it whereby they would pay a negotiated sum for any player signed by a FABL team from an affiliated minor league.
  • The Pittsburgh clubs would merge, keeping the Miners name and be jointly owned by the current Miners and Hornets owners or by one of them should they agree on a selling price.
  • The Brooklyn clubs would also merge, with Kings owner Sheldon Burton taking control.
  • Miles Bigsby and his nephew Charles Jr. would own a merged club consisting of the Gothams and Imperials, under the Gothams name. Burton would pay Miles a to-be-determined sum for the Brooklyn territory after an audit of the Gotham club was completed.
  • The Philadelphia Maroons would merge with the Keystones with Maroons owner Robert Cramer becoming a minority owner of the Keystones. The Sailors would receive some combination of players and cash as a settlement, and remain as an active club themselves.
  • Three Peerless League clubs: Baltimore, Boston and Detroit would join the new FABL organization.
  • The last Peerless League team, Buffalo would dissolve and ownership paid a flat sum for any players signed by FABL teams.
  • Two Century League clubs: Boston and Cincinnati - would fold and receive the same compensation as Buffalo's ownership.
  • The Border Association came into the meeting with seven clubs as the Cincinnati Monarchs had folded upon owner James Tice's death.

This left sixteen clubs and they were organized as follows:

Federal Association: Boston Brahmins, Chicago Chiefs, Detroit Dynamos, New York Gothams, Philadelphia Keystones, Pittsburgh Miners, St. Louis Pioneers, Washington Eagles

Continental Association: Baltimore Clippers, Brooklyn Kings, Chicago Cougars, Cleveland Foresters, Montreal Saints, New York Stars, Philadelphia Sailors, Toronto Provincials

There were several protests, but Whitney's spies had him well-informed and he knew whom he could squeeze to get things done. Ultimately, the new organization was approved, the club consolidations went off with only a few hitches and the Dixie and Western circuits agreed to affiliation status. 

The groundwork laid out by Whitney that fall would be the basis of baseball for decades to come - there would be evolutionary changes over time, but FABL would still be going strong into the 21st century.