That’s part of it, but a lot of it is jets. In the olden days, prior to safe air travel, teams had to spend a lot of time travelling by train. Trips out “West” (in those days, “West” meant Chicago or St. Louis) took a really long time. More travel days were needed. The schedules were much more jumbled up. Today, easy, fast jet travel makes it easier to just play one game per day.
Like all matters in sports, the elimination of scheduled doubleheaders was done for money. Every doubleheader is one less home game to sell tickets for. I miss the old Sunday doubleheaders, if they came back the season could be trimmed by a couple weeks on either end and no more snowy April games or cold November World Series games.
Cleveland used to host a football doubleheader in the preseason from 1962 to 1971. They were massively popular and sold more than 80,000 tickets every year except the first which only attracted some 77,000. Of course 4 different teams were involved. The Browns usually played the Packers in the second game.
In 1960 baseball games lasted two and a half hours. By 2010 they’d gone up to three hours long. Now that they’ve tried to cut down on a lot of the batter’s choreography stepping in and out of the box and glove dances the games are down to about two and three quarter hors. But two of them back to back are still going to take a while.
As I recall, the union negotiated to have less double-headers as apparently players generally don’t like to play two games in one day. They used to be scheduled. I recall in early 80s most teams playing two on the Fourth of July. The Montreal Expos also often played a double-header at home on Canada Day July 1st. Today, they are make-up for rainouts and such. Other than the 2020 season, the last scheduled double-header I can find was in 2001. The 2002 CBA has not allowed it since. It’s a reason I think that the season often starts in the last days of March where it used to start more during the second week of April when I started my interest in baseball. Checking in 1985 for example, the Cardinals’ first game that year was April 9. This year it was March 30, ten days earlier.
I attended many double-headers in my time. Dad and I would make the two hour drive to Montreal and seeing two games just it made it more worthwhile, not to mention you got two games for the price of one. I’d say nearly half the games I attended were part of a double-header.
For some reason, I had a faulty memory about a six-game series between the Montreal Expos and LA Dodgers in the early 1990s that consisted of doubleheaders on three consecutive days. In my false memory, I thought that it was originally scheduled this way before the season even started. What actually happened was that a three-game series between the two teams earlier in the season had to be postponed because of the Rodney King riots.
See July 6-8 on this page: 1992 Los Angeles Dodgers Schedule | Baseball-Reference.com
I remember that well because I had tickets with two friends to go to one of the games that was canceled. The MLB relaxed the rules for roster sizes during that series so a lot of extra minor leaguers were called up.
July 20, 1969 - I was at a doubleheader at Montreal’s Jarry Park - Expos vs Mets. Between games, they broadcasted the audio of the moon landing. (I don’t think the monochrome scoreboard was able to show live video at the time).
Like raaaaain….
It’s rare for all three Southern California teams to play at home in the same weekend but they are now with a hurricane coming. Sunday’s games are canceled and the teams will play split doubleheaders on Saturday. If you have a Saturday ticket, you can use it for the early game.
I don’t remember those 3 consecutive double-headers in 1990. But I do remember the Expos playing a crazy amount of twin bills in September 1979, I think there was 8 of them, due to rainouts, including two in three days in New York. They swept the Mets those five games.
some text
A very rare actual double header (one ticket for two games, not two separate games) will be played today between the Marlins and the Mets. They had to squeeze in the rain canceled game because it has playoff implications for the Marlins.
I went. My ticket, purchased this morning on StubHub, cost me the princely sum of $1.79. Add a few bucks for shipping and handling, or whatever they’re calling the fees they tack on. Still, divided by two games, it was pretty darn cheap.
I paid a hell of a lot more for parking than I did for my ticket to the games. So it goes.
There were approximately 75 people in the stands for the first game. My section was almost completely empty, There weren’t that many more for the second game. Oh well, I had a good time anyway.