The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, it is sometimes called the Senior Circuit. The other league of Major League Baseball is the American League, founded in 1901 (sometimes called the "Junior Circuit," or "Junior Loop" because it started 25 years after the NL). The two league champions of 1903 arranged to meet in the World Series and, after the 1904 champions failed to do likewise, the two leagues have arranged to meet in that annual culmination of the American baseball season, failing to do so only in the strike-shortened 1994 season. National League teams have won 46 of the 108 World Series played between these two leagues from 1903 to 2011. The San Francisco Giants are the reigning League Champions. The New York/San Francisco Giants lead the league with 22 National League titles, with the St. Louis Cardinals leading the NL with 11 World Series championships.
Famous quotes containing the words national and/or league:
“It is to be lamented that the principle of national has had very little nourishment in our country, and, instead, has given place to sectional or state partialities. What more promising method for remedying this defect than by uniting American women of every state and every section in a common effort for our whole country.”
—Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)
“Stereotypes fall in the face of humanity. You toodle along, thinking that all gay men wear leather after dark and should never, ever be permitted around a Little League field. And then one day your best friend from college, the one your kids adore, comes out to you.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)