Charles Henry Weeghman was a German American restaurant entrepreneur and sports executive. Beginning in 1901, he began opening quick-service lunch counters throughout downtown Chicago. After failing to acquire the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club in 1911, he became one of the founders of the upstart Federal League in 1913 as the owner of the Chicago Whales. In 1914, he built the baseball stadium that would later be known as Wrigley Field.

The Federal League of Base Ball Clubs, known simply as the Federal League, was an American professional baseball league that played its first season as a minor league in 1913 and operated as a "third major league", in competition with the established National and American Leagues, from 1914 to 1915.