At the turn of the 20th century, Will Harridge worked as a ticket agent for the Wabash Railroad Company and was in charge of booking and transportation for American League teams and umpires.

By 1931, Harridge was directing AL policies as the league’s third president.

“Harridge’s life was like something straight out of Horatio Alger,” wrote the Sporting News upon his death. “He was a poor boy who climbed to the top through diligence, courage and integrity. In his case, the story wasn’t fiction.”

Lee MacPhail grew up watching his father become a Hall of Fame executive in Major League Baseball. He wanted to do the same, despite his father’s warnings against it.

“Since my dad (Larry MacPhail) was in baseball, I grew up in the game and it never occurred to me I wouldn’t be going into it after college,” he said.

An ambitious, driven leader, American League founder Ban Johnson was baseball’s most influential executive for more than a quarter of a century.

Johnson was a sportswriter for the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette in the early 1890s who became an outspoken critic of the rowdy atmosphere in the National League. He also decried Cincinnati Red Stockings owner John T. Brush for being too interested in turning profits and acting as a “representative of interests best divorced from baseball.”