One fun thing about watching Game Show Network's "Black and White Overnight" programming block is that you often get a chunk of history as it was happening. Last night, GSN ran a What's My Line? from September of 1959 and one of the guests was Branch Rickey, a major behind-the-scenes figure in the history of baseball. Rickey had a brief career as a player but he moved into coaching and also got a law degree. Eventually, he ran a number of baseball teams, including the Brooklyn Dodgers where he helped bust the color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson. In 1959, he was engaged in an attempt to start a third major league — the Continental League, which was to compete alongside the American and National Leagues. On the What's My Line?, we heard Bennett Cerf ask him, "How about that third league?" and Rickey replied, "Inevitable as tomorrow morning." He had then filled five of the new league's projected eight-team roster. Deals were in place to launch teams in New York, Houston, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Toronto, and Rickey said he had other cities lining up, and that the Continental League would play a full schedule in 1961.
It didn't. Though the Continental League filled out its list with projected teams in Honolulu, Atlanta and Dallas, there were battles with the already-established leagues, battles in Congress and lawsuits. A compromise was finally worked out whereby the National and American Leagues would each expand by two teams, some of them in cities that had been slated to have Continental League squads. (The planned New York team, which had already signed to play in Shea Stadium, became the Mets.) That was the end of the Continental League, and Branch Rickey died a few years later. In 1967, he was elected to the Hall of Fame, largely because of his work in bringing black players into the ranks of the major league.