I am a huge baseball fan, and I am very familiar with the rules and regulations of the game. I also am quite interested in the history of the game. However, I read something yesterday that I can’t understand, & I was hoping someone here could help me out.
In 1972, the baseball season started off with a strike that caused teams to miss the first week of games. I believe Boston missed 6 games because of this, and Baltimore missed 7.
Now skip ahead to the end of the season. After playing 162 games minus the games missed, I see that Baltimore won the American League East by 1/2 game over the Red Sox.
How is that possible? I mean, if Baltimore played one less game than the Red Sox that season, shouldn’t they hae been made to play that extra game? And if Baltimore lost, the American League East would have ended-up in a tie, and a one-game playoff would have taken place.
Does anyone know why Baltimore was delcared the American League East champion, and why Baltimore was not forced to play the same number of games as the Red Sox?
Because the games lost to the strike were canceled - they were wiped off the books entirely and never scheduled to be made up. So Baltimore’s schedule that year was 155 games and Boston’s was 156.
Strikes play havoc with schedules. At the end of the 1981 season, St. Louis and Cincinnatti had the best records in the National League, but neither of them made the playoffs. After the NHL strike was settled a few years ago, the teams didn’t just pick up and resume play, they rewrote the entire remaining schedule. And baseball teams that are out of the pennant race traditionally do not replay late-season rainouts, thus ending the season with fewer than 162 games. So it’s not unusual, although it’s another reason why Boston fans think the team is cursed.
Yep, games cancelled due to strikes are typically not made up (although in 1985 they did because the strike only lasted two days).
It was agreed after the strike that the remaining schedules were to be played and that was that. Normally rainouts and such are not cancelled, but only postponed. (If, later on, it is determined that they will have no effect on the pennant race, they may be cancelled). However, the strike games were cancelled from the start; in effect making it as if they weren’t on the schedule at all. So, a rainout may be made up in case it makes a difference because it’s still really on the schedule; but in 1972, the games were outright cancelled and teams played whatever was left of their schedules.
In the end, Baltimore was declared the champion because they had the higher winning percentage in the games scheduled.
Wait a second! I may be imagining things, but I seem to recall that, during the strike-shortened season of 1972, the AL East was won by the over-the-hill Detroit Tigers, led by Billy Martin- NOT by the Orioles or the Red Sox.
An early 80’s baseball strike also led to twice as many division pennant winners when the division winner from the first half of the season played the division winner from the second half of the season…sort of like two seasons in one.
The Red Sox played the Tigers for three games at the end of the regular season and came in with a 1/2 game lead, but lost the first two games to Detroit to give the Tigers the title.
The Red Sox won the last day of the year to make it look closer.