The National League was established on February 2, 1876 as a successor to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP or National Association (NA)), as a means to concentrate quality of talent and reduce the number of poor-drawing games played against low-quality competition in small towns (such as the 1875 Keokuk Westerns, located in the small Iowan town of Keokuk, which only had about 12,500 people).
[1] The NA also suffered from lack of strong authority over clubs, unsupervised scheduling, unstable membership of cities, dominance by one team (the Boston Red Stockings), and an extremely low entry fee ($10, equivalent to $277 in 2023) that gave clubs no incentive to abide by league rules when it was inconvenient to them.
Six teams from the NA would be established as charter members of the National League, including the Boston Red Stockings (renamed as the Red Caps, surviving today as the Atlanta Braves), Chicago White Stockings (surviving today as the Chicago Cubs), Hartford Dark Blues, New York Mutuals, Philadelphia Athletics, and St. Louis Brown Stockings.
Opening Day took place on April 22 featuring a game between the Boston Red Caps and Brooklyn Hartfords.
The final day of the season was on October 21, featuring a game between the Hartford Dark Blues and Boston Red Caps.