After visiting some of them, most notably Duluth, Minnesota, and its Wade Stadium, he began contacting potential owners to start the league.

Players with five or more years of professional experience were labeled "veterans" and teams could carry no more than four.

Many forecast an early demise especially in St. Paul where competition with the Minnesota Twins led many local sportswriters to consider it a "beer league."

The league, however, was a relatively moderate success, with only the Rochester franchise struggling to draw crowds to their games.

The Madison Black Wolf, based in the capital of Wisconsin, and Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks, based in Fargo, North Dakota, but named for the metropolitan area that includes Moorhead, Minnesota, joined the league.

Mike Stone left the commissioner's position in 2005 shortly after a dramatic move by several of the league's teams.

This number grew to seven in 2009 as Zion, Illinois, was granted an expansion team known as the Lake County Fielders.

The JackHammers were sold and renamed to the Joliet Slammers, and moved to the Frontier League.

These include players such as J. D. Drew, Kevin Millar, Chris Coste, Jeff Zimmerman, and Rey Ordóñez.

Several former MLB players played in the league including Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd, Darryl Strawberry, Jack Morris, Pedro Guerrero, Jermaine Allensworth, Ken Harvey, Mike Caruso, Bo Hart, Leon "Bull" Durham, and Brant Brown.

Former MLB players and coaches have also coached or managed in the Northern League including Terry Bevington, "Dirty" Al Gallagher, Jackie Hernández, Danny Jackson, Maury Wills, Tim Johnson, Ron Kittle, Hal Lanier, Darryl Motley, Matt Nokes, and Wayne Terwilliger.

When the Northern League consisted of between eight and twelve teams, it played a split season 96-game schedule with two divisions from late May until early September.

When the league dropped to six teams in 2008, it still played a 96-game schedule, but did not split the season and did not have divisions.