Midwest League Reference Book

Midwest League Cities

This page links to pages on MLWguide.com about the cities which have hosted teams in the Midwest League and its predecessors, the Illinois State League and the Mississippi-Ohio Valley League. It also has a summary of each town's participation in our league.

Who's had the best teams? Appleton. Waterloo's second. In a shorter term, Danville and Grand Rapids (West Michigan).

Burlington's had the least success of the long-term league members. Keokuk had bad teams, period.

While our league lives in America's heartland, its teams live in towns and cities. This page is an index to pages documenting each MWL town's participation in the league. You'll find lists of team officers. You'll find yearly results. You'll find affiliation information. You'll find yearly leaders in a number of hitting and pitching categories. These are a start on a team history for each town.

The following lists summarize each town's MWL history. The links are to pages with more detailed information about the town's participation in our league. Many of these pages linked below are incomplete. Things will improve; it's a big project, and I'm not rushing to complete it.

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kentucky

Michigan

Missouri

Ohio

Wisconsin

Notes

Five ways to count a season successful:

• MWL Seasons = Seasons the town (has) fielded an MWL/M-OVL/ISL team.
• Wins Leader = Seasons the franchise led the league in wins.
• League Champs = Championships won by this franchise.
  • This count includes 8 championships awarded without playoffs.
• Playoff Winner = Seasons the team won the championship playoff.
• Playoff Finals = Seasons the team reached the last game in the playoff.
• Playoff Qualifier = Seasons the team qualified for championship series.

Some of the material on this page originated as the September 28, 1999, Midwest League Tidbit on the Midwest League Mailing List.

Source Notes

I compiled the tables from the Wolff & Johnson Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, then compared it with other sources.

While the League's Media Guide has a similar table, its intentions are enough different that it misses my point. Where the information differs, I'm quite confident my table is correct.