MLB: The shortened 2020 season would be historic

An 82-game regular season schedule would be the shortest in MLB since great-grandpa’s day

Even if Major League Baseball manages to complete an 82 to 84-game schedule in 2020, it will still be the shortest MLB season in nearly 150 years.

Not since 1883 have major league teams contested a championship over a season of fewer than 100 games…and that includes the strike-shortened seasons of 1981 and 1994.

In fact, it’s been more than 120 years since the length of a regular season dropped below 150 games.

The 1981 and 1994 seasons were both truncated by strikes. In 1981 play stopped on June 11 and did not resume until Aug. 10, creating a two-month stoppage. Yet even under that exigency teams averaged about 107 games.

The decision was made that year to divide the season into pre-strike and post-strike halves, a champion in each of the four existing divisions being declared for each half. The divisional champions met in a preliminary post-season round, the winners advancing to the League Championship Series and from there to the World Series.

In 1994, the strike was called following the games of Aug 11, and this time there was no settlement. That led to the cancellation of the postseason. But at that point teams had played between 110 and 115 games.

The last time a regular major league schedule called for teams to compete in fewer than 85 games was in 1882, when the Chicago White Stockings won their third straight National League pennant with a record of 55 wins and 29 losses in 84 games.

The league consisted of eight teams in those days, each team playing each other a dozen times on a home-and-home basis, six at each location.

That was less than a dozen years after the National League was founded in 1876 with a 64-game schedule. That would, however, soon change. No team has played as few as 82 games since 1882. Teams first topped the 100-game level in 1884, and by the late 1880s, the expectation was that a full schedule would consist of 132 games.

The 154-game schedule that ruled into until 1960 was created in 1898, when the league consisted of 11 teams. That season every team played every other 14 times, seven at each site. The 162-game schedule became standard in the American League in 1961, and in the National League one season later, in both cases due to expansion.

The only exceptions to that standard occurred during World War I. In August of 1918, when federal officials declared baseball “non-essential,” the game was ordered shut down on Labor Day. That reduced most teams to a schedule of about 126 games. Although the war ended that winter, owners drew up only a 138-game schedule in 1919, fearful that fans would be slow to return to the stadia.

In fact, the opposite happened. The average per game attendance of 5,215 in 1916, the last full season prior to the country’s entry into the war, rose by 12 percent, to 5,815, when the war ended.

Although many factors have influenced the length of the schedule over the years, a pandemic has never been one of them. Before the 154-game schedule became institutional around the turn of the century, the most common limitations were travel and weather.

In the mid 1880s, when the schedule commonly called for 110 games, the usual starting date was mid-April, the schedule extending about 10 days into October. Then and for decades more while train travel was the mode of transport, the schedule followed a predictable format. In the National League, the four “eastern” teams – the New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies – spent the first month playing one another, as did the four “western” teams, the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Pittsburgh Pirates. The same was true in the American League.

In mid-May all four eastern teams boarded trains and headed west for what could be as much as a month-long circuit. In June the western teams returned the favor. That cycle repeated itself again in July and August, culminating in a final post-Labor Day swing of the western NL teams to the East Coast.

In between swings, the western and eastern teams re-engaged one other for periods of a week or two. When the “eastern” National League teams were in the west, the “western” American League teams were in the east.

When teams played fewer than 154 games to conclusion – and that was often the case – the most common reasons were rain, darkness, or the need to make a train connection. Either of the latter two elements often forced a tie that might not easily be played off at a later date.

Nor did the won-loss records accurately reflect the actual number of contests. Just to cite one example, in 1904 although both league schedules called for teams to play 154 games, only the Cleveland Indians and Brooklyn Dodgers actually played that number. Due to ties, the Detroit Tigers took the field for 162 games, and the New York Giants for 158.

The longer schedule was one of the reasons contributing to the growth in pitching staffs and rosters generally. Back in 1882, when the Chicago White Stockings played an 82-game season, they got by on just two pitchers and 10 position players. They were able to do in part because only 39 of their games — less than half — were played on the day following a game.

Only three times all season – in mid-May, mid-August and late September – did the White Stockings play on four consecutive days.