AHC: Divide MLB

Your challenge is to divide Major League Baseball into two or more entirely separate leagues and organizations after 1960. Can it be done?

There was rumoed to be talk of a new league in 1996 if the strike/lockout kept going. That's the first place I'd look. MLB uses the strikebreakers, Cal Ripken Jr. is enticed to play for a rival league and keep his sterak going (while Baltimore chooses not to play so as to keep his consecutive games int he majors streak active.) A very hastily set up 6 team league plays 150 games, it expands to 12 the next year as teams contract in MLB, maybe by 2000 the leagues are playing each other in a true World Series.

Problem is, of course, would baseball survive that?With all that carnage it might have problems keeping players on such high salaries, but maybe.

Perhaps it needs done when baseball is still widely popular - was anyone loony enough (okay, besides Charlie Finley) to even conceive of replacement players in 1972?

Strikes seems like the right POD. Have the Supreme Court stay out and baseball was eventually going to play again somehow. You can have a legitimately different league in 1997. The MLB player's union probably caves and MLB starts up. Then in 1998 a major homerun race gets people really into the game. In 1999, as a showing of good will a true world series between the two leagues is played.