Organizing the Boys of Summer: The Evolution of U.S. Minor-League Baseball, 1883-1990

Abstract

The authors use life-history data on analyze the organizational evolution of U.S. minor-league baseball. The article introduces the concept of "structural mutualism" to account for the structural effects of required league membership on team foundings and deaths. This term refers to cooperative behavior that occurs among the teams within a league, that benefits each team, and that league membership promotes. Net of conventional density-dependence and population-dynamics mechanisms, strong evidence is found that structured mutualism affects team foundings and deaths. When structured mutualism is conceived of as variable, the concept may have more general applicability to other sets of membership organizations.