Major League Baseball - Wikipedia. Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization, the oldest of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.

A total of 3. 0 teams now play in the National League (NL) and American League (AL), with 1. The NL and AL operated as separate legal entities from 1. After cooperating but remaining legally separate entities since 1. Commissioner of Baseball in 2. With the World Baseball Softball Confederation, MLB manages the international World Baseball Classic tournament. Baseball's first professional team was founded in Cincinnati in 1. Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the game of baseball.

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 1. Baseball survived a conspiracy to fix the 1. Vampire Diaries Season 2 Episode 14 English Subtitles.

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World Series, which came to be known as the Black Sox Scandal. The sport rose in popularity in the 1. Great Depression and World War II.

When you first saw him, Lt. Columbo, looked like a bum that just came off the street. He had a bumbling demeano. All Boston.com forums were retired May 31st, 2016. Thank you for your participation in this community, and we hope you continue to enjoy other content at Boston.com. Q: WHAT IS MLB EXTRA INNINGS? A: MLB EXTRA INNINGS brings you up to 80 out-of-market regular season Major League Baseball games a week. Even if you live in one city.

Shortly after the war, baseball's color barrier was broken by Jackie Robinson. The 1. 95. 0s and 1. AL and NL, then new stadiums and artificial turf surfaces began to change the game in the 1. Home runs dominated the game during the 1. Major League players in the mid- 2.

In 2. 00. 6, an investigation produced the Mitchell Report, which implicated many players in the use of performance- enhancing substances, including at least one player from each team. Today, MLB is composed of thirty teams: twenty- nine in the United States and one in Canada. Teams play 1. 62 games each season and 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 1. Baseball broadcasts are aired on television, radio, and the Internet throughout North America and in several other countries throughout the world. MLB has the highest season attendance of any sports league in the world with more than 7. This document has undergone several incarnations since 1. MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of Minor League Baseball.

This is due in large part to the 1. U. S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League, which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law. This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years. The chief operating officer is Tony Petitti. There are five other executives: president (business and media), chief communications officer, chief legal officer, chief financial officer, and chief baseball officer. This branch oversees MLB.

Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the league, but it is under the same ownership group and revenue- sharing plan. MLB Productions is a similarly structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media. MLB also owns 6. 7 percent of MLB Network, with the other 3. Direc. TV. Two teams (the Seattle Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays) were also added in the 1.

From 1. 96. 9 through 1. East and West Division. A third division, the Central Division, was added in each league in 1. Through 1. 99. 6, the two leagues met on the field only during the World Series and the All- Star Game. Regular- season interleague play was introduced in 1.

This addition brought the total number of franchises to 3. In early 1. 99. 7, MLB decided to assign one new team to each league: Tampa Bay joined the AL and Arizona joined the NL. The original plan was to have an odd number of teams in each league (1. In order for every team to be able to play daily, this would have required interleague play to be scheduled throughout the entire season. However, it was unclear at the time if interleague play would continue after the 1.

For this and other reasons, it was decided that both leagues should continue to have an even number of teams; one existing club would have to switch leagues. The Milwaukee Brewers agreed in November 1. AL to the NL, thereby making the NL a 1.

Petersburg, FLTropicana Field. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis, MOBusch Stadium. Louis Cardinals)1. AA)1. 89. 2 (NL).

See respective team articles for more information. History. The NABBP existed as an amateur league for 1. By 1. 86. 7, more than 4. Most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the northeastern U. S. For professional baseball's founding year, MLB uses the year 1. Cincinnati Red Stockings, was established.

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 1. 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 2. Jefferson Street Grounds, Philadelphia)—is often pointed to as the beginning of MLB. Competitor leagues formed regularly and also disbanded regularly. The most successful was the American Association (1. For several years, the NL and American Association champions met in a postseason championship series—the first attempt at a World Series. The two leagues merged in 1.

NL, but the NL dropped four teams after the 1. This led to the formation of the American League in 1.

AL president Ban Johnson, and the resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract- breaking and legal disputes. The war between the AL and NL caused shock waves throughout the baseball world. At a meeting at the Leland Hotel in Chicago in 1. A new National Association was formed to oversee these minor leagues. The agreement also set up a formal classification system for minor leagues, the forerunner of today's system that was refined by Branch Rickey. These include the AA, the Union Association (1. Some researchers.

Louis club was deliberately . Louis club was owned by the league's president and it was the only club that was close to major- league caliber. The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. The baseball used American rather than the modern Australian wool yarn and was not wound as tightly as it would become later, affecting the distance that it would travel. Fans were expected to throw back fouls and (rare) home runs. Baseballs also became stained with tobacco juice, grass, and mud, and sometimes the juice of licorice, which some players would chew for the purpose of discoloring the ball.

Additionally, many ballparks had large dimensions, such as the West Side Grounds of the Chicago Cubs, which was 5. Huntington Avenue Grounds of the Boston Red Sox, which was 6. Prior to the institution of this rule, foul balls were not counted as strikes: a batter could foul off any number of pitches with no strikes counted against him; this gave an enormous advantage to the batter. In 1. 90. 1, the NL adopted the foul strike rule, and the AL followed suit in 1. Eight players—Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Claude . The 1. 92. 0 season was notable for the death of Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians.

Chapman, who was struck in the head by a pitch and died a few hours later, became the only MLB player to die of an on- field injury, a tragedy which led directly to both leagues requiring the placing into play new, white baseballs whenever a ball became scuffed or dirty, helping bring the . The following year, the New York Yankees made their first World Series appearance. By 1. 93. 2, only two MLB teams turned a profit.

Attendance had fallen, due at least in part to a 1. Baseball owners cut their rosters from 2.