page_title: Minor League Baseball
section_title: Presidents of Minor League Baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Minor League Baseball / Presidents of Minor League Baseball
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of the front of the Minor League Baseball Front Office
context_page_description: Minor League Baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the Americas that compete at levels below Major League Baseball and help prepare players to join major league teams. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses. Most are members of the umbrella organization formally known as National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, which operates under the Commissioner of Baseball within the scope of organized baseball. Several leagues, known as independent baseball leagues, have no official links to Major League Baseball.
  Except for the Mexican League, teams in the organized minor leagues are generally independently owned and operated but are directly affiliated with one major league team through a standardized Player Development Contract. These leagues also go by the nicknames the "farm system", "farm clubs", or "farm teams" because of a joke passed around by major league players in the 1930s when St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey formalized the system, and teams in small towns were "growing players down on the farm like corn".
context_section_description: Patrick T. Powers, 1901–1909
  Michael H. Sexton, 1909–1931
  William G. Bramham, 1932–1946
  George Trautman, 1947–1963
  Phil Piton, 1964–1971
  Hank Peters, 1972–1975
  Bobby Bragan, 1976–1978
  John H. Johnson, 1979–1988
  Sal Artiaga, 1988–1991
  Mike Moore, 1991–2007
  Pat O'Conner, 2008–present
caption: Minor League Baseball Headquarters, St. Petersburg, Florida
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