Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization that constitutes one of the four major professional sports leagues in North America. It is the oldest league of the four. Teams play in the American League (AL) and National League (NL), which operated as separate legal entities from 1901 and 1876 respectively.
In 2000, the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball.The organization oversees minor league baseball leagues, which operate about 240 teams affiliated with the major-league clubs. With the International Baseball Federation, the league also manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament. Today, MLB is composed of thirty teams: Twenty-nine in the United States and one in Canada. Teams play 162 games each season.
Five teams in each league advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates to 1903. Baseball broadcasts are aired throughout North America and in several other countries throughout the world. Games are aired on television, radio, and the internet. MLB has the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 74 million spectators in 2013. Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869.
The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era; players rarely hit home runs during this time. Baseball survived a game-throwing incident known as the Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series.
Baseball rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson. In the 1860s, aided by the Civil War, "New York"-style baseball expanded into a national game and spawned baseball's first governing body, The National Association of Base Ball Players.
The NABBP existed as an amateur league for twelve years. By 1867, more than 400 clubs were members. Most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the northeastern part of the country. For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1869—when the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.
A schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers after the founding of the Cincinnati club. The NABBP split into an amateur organization and a professional organization. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, often known as the National Association (NA), was formed in 1871.
Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years. The modern Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves franchises trace their histories back to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in the 1870s. In 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (later known as the National League or NL) was established after the NA proved ineffective.
The league placed its emphasis on clubs rather than on players. Clubs could now enforce player contracts, preventing players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs were required to play the full schedule of games instead of forfeiting scheduled games when the club was no longer in the running for the league championship, which happened frequently under the NA.
A concerted effort was made to curb gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt. The first game in the NL—on Saturday, April 22, 1876 (at the Jefferson Street Grounds, Philadelphia)—is often pointed to as the beginning of MLB Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as baseball expanded, NFL football had been surging in popularity, making it economical for many of these cities to build multi-purpose stadiums instead of single-purpose baseball fields.
Because of climate and economic issues many of these facilities had playing surfaces made from artificial turf, as well as the oval designs characteristic of stadiums designed to house both baseball and football. This often resulted in baseball fields with relatively more foul territory than older stadiums. These characteristics changed the nature of professional baseball, putting a higher premium on speed and defense over home-run hitting power, since the fields were often too big for teams to expect to hit many home runs and foul balls hit in the air could more easily be caught for outs.
Teams began to be built around pitching—particularly their bullpens—and speed on the basepaths. Artificial surfaces meant balls traveled quicker and bounced higher, so it became easier to hit ground balls "in the hole" between the corner and middle infielders. Starting pitchers were no longer expected to throw complete games; it was enough for a starter to go 6–7 innings and turn the game over to the team's closer, a position which grew in importance over these decades.
As stolen bases increased, home run totals dropped. After Willie Mays hit 52 home runs in 1965, only one player (George Foster) reached that mark until the 1990s. Routinely in the late 1990s and early 2000s, baseball players hit 40 or 50 home runs in a season, a feat that was considered rare even in the 1980s. It has since become apparent that at least some of this power surge was a result of players using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.
Many modern baseball theorists believe that the need of pitchers to combat the rise in power could lead to a pitching revolution at some point. New pitches, such as the mysterious gyroball, could shift the balance of power back to the defensive side. A pitching revolution would not be unprecedented; several pitches have changed the game of baseball, including the slider in the '50s and '60s and the split-fingered fastball in the '70s to '90s. Since the 1990s, the changeup has made a resurgence, being thrown masterfully by pitchers such as Trevor Hoffman, Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine, Johan Santana, Pedro Martínez and Tim Lincecum.
Recently, pitchers such as Lincecum, Jonathan Sánchez, and Ubaldo Jiménez have been throwing changeups with a split-finger grip, creating a dropping movement, dubbed the "split change."
In 2000, the leagues merged into a single organization led by the Commissioner of Baseball.The organization oversees minor league baseball leagues, which operate about 240 teams affiliated with the major-league clubs. With the International Baseball Federation, the league also manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament. Today, MLB is composed of thirty teams: Twenty-nine in the United States and one in Canada. Teams play 162 games each season.
Five teams in each league advance to a four-round postseason tournament that culminates in the World Series, a best-of-seven championship series between the two league champions that dates to 1903. Baseball broadcasts are aired throughout North America and in several other countries throughout the world. Games are aired on television, radio, and the internet. MLB has the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 74 million spectators in 2013. Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1869.
The first few decades of professional baseball were characterized by rivalries between leagues and by players who often jumped from one team or league to another. The period before 1920 in baseball was known as the dead-ball era; players rarely hit home runs during this time. Baseball survived a game-throwing incident known as the Black Sox Scandal in the 1919 World Series.
Baseball rose in popularity in the 1920s, and survived potential downturns during the Great Depression and World War II. Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson. In the 1860s, aided by the Civil War, "New York"-style baseball expanded into a national game and spawned baseball's first governing body, The National Association of Base Ball Players.
The NABBP existed as an amateur league for twelve years. By 1867, more than 400 clubs were members. Most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the northeastern part of the country. For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1869—when the first professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.
A schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers after the founding of the Cincinnati club. The NABBP split into an amateur organization and a professional organization. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, often known as the National Association (NA), was formed in 1871.
Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years. The modern Chicago Cubs and Atlanta Braves franchises trace their histories back to the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in the 1870s. In 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (later known as the National League or NL) was established after the NA proved ineffective.
The league placed its emphasis on clubs rather than on players. Clubs could now enforce player contracts, preventing players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs were required to play the full schedule of games instead of forfeiting scheduled games when the club was no longer in the running for the league championship, which happened frequently under the NA.
A concerted effort was made to curb gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt. The first game in the NL—on Saturday, April 22, 1876 (at the Jefferson Street Grounds, Philadelphia)—is often pointed to as the beginning of MLB Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as baseball expanded, NFL football had been surging in popularity, making it economical for many of these cities to build multi-purpose stadiums instead of single-purpose baseball fields.
Because of climate and economic issues many of these facilities had playing surfaces made from artificial turf, as well as the oval designs characteristic of stadiums designed to house both baseball and football. This often resulted in baseball fields with relatively more foul territory than older stadiums. These characteristics changed the nature of professional baseball, putting a higher premium on speed and defense over home-run hitting power, since the fields were often too big for teams to expect to hit many home runs and foul balls hit in the air could more easily be caught for outs.
Teams began to be built around pitching—particularly their bullpens—and speed on the basepaths. Artificial surfaces meant balls traveled quicker and bounced higher, so it became easier to hit ground balls "in the hole" between the corner and middle infielders. Starting pitchers were no longer expected to throw complete games; it was enough for a starter to go 6–7 innings and turn the game over to the team's closer, a position which grew in importance over these decades.
As stolen bases increased, home run totals dropped. After Willie Mays hit 52 home runs in 1965, only one player (George Foster) reached that mark until the 1990s. Routinely in the late 1990s and early 2000s, baseball players hit 40 or 50 home runs in a season, a feat that was considered rare even in the 1980s. It has since become apparent that at least some of this power surge was a result of players using steroids and other performance enhancing drugs.
Many modern baseball theorists believe that the need of pitchers to combat the rise in power could lead to a pitching revolution at some point. New pitches, such as the mysterious gyroball, could shift the balance of power back to the defensive side. A pitching revolution would not be unprecedented; several pitches have changed the game of baseball, including the slider in the '50s and '60s and the split-fingered fastball in the '70s to '90s. Since the 1990s, the changeup has made a resurgence, being thrown masterfully by pitchers such as Trevor Hoffman, Greg Maddux, Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine, Johan Santana, Pedro Martínez and Tim Lincecum.
Recently, pitchers such as Lincecum, Jonathan Sánchez, and Ubaldo Jiménez have been throwing changeups with a split-finger grip, creating a dropping movement, dubbed the "split change."
