Author(s): Nancy J. Burnett, Lee J. Van Scyoc
The Northwoods league, a summer collegiate baseball league in the US Midwest, has long been thought to show strong competitive balance. The players are unpaid and can only play while maintaining college eligibility so that inter-team competitiveness should be high as teams cannot “buy” talent. We examine several measures of competitive balance to demonstrate the competitiveness of this league across time and compared to major league sports. We find, confirming Schmidt (2002) that league expansion increases competitiveness and that, in general, this league compares quite favorably to major leagues.