ROUND · every league

RUND MLB

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History

MLB · FOUNDED 1876

Baseball is the oldest of the majors and the one that keeps the longest memory. Its records are quoted to three decimal places, its arguments run for a century, and a season of a hundred and sixty-two games leaves room for almost anything to happen at least once.

The moments

1. 1876

   The National League

   Eight clubs formed the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs. Two of them — the Chicago Cubs and the Atlanta Braves, under older names — have played every season since, which no other professional club in North America can say.

2. 1903

   The first World Series

   The upstart American League and the older National League agreed to settle it on the field. Boston beat Pittsburgh five games to three. There was no series in 1904, because the New York Giants refused to play one.

3. 1919

   The Black Sox

   Eight Chicago White Sox players were accused of throwing the World Series to Cincinnati. All were acquitted in court and all were banned for life anyway, by a commissioner appointed to make exactly that kind of decision.

4. 1927

   Sixty

   Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs in a 154-game season for the New York Yankees, a figure that stood for thirty-four years and defined what a slugger was supposed to be.

5. 1941

   Fifty-six, and .406

   Joe DiMaggio hit safely in fifty-six consecutive games and Ted Williams batted .406 across the same summer. Neither number has been approached since; nobody has hit .400 in the eighty-five years that followed.

6. 1947

   Jackie Robinson

   On 15 April, Robinson took the field at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers and ended sixty years of segregation in the major leagues. His number, 42, is the only one retired across every club in the sport.

7. 1951

   The shot heard round the world

   Bobby Thomson’s home run won the pennant for the New York Giants in the last inning of a playoff against Brooklyn, after the Giants had been thirteen and a half games behind in August.

8. 1974

   715

   Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth’s career home run record in Atlanta, having spent the winter reading hate mail about it. He finished with 755.

9. 1995

   2,131

   Cal Ripken Jr. played his 2,131st consecutive game and passed Lou Gehrig’s record, in a season that followed a strike which had cancelled the previous World Series. He kept going to 2,632.

10. 2016

    One hundred and eight years

    The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in ten innings of a seventh game, ending the longest wait in the sport. Twelve years earlier Boston had ended a wait of eighty-six by coming back from three games down against the Yankees.

Records that stand

Roll of honour

Club totals count titles won under earlier names and in earlier cities.