SWC75
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Baseball is trying a 60 game regular season. Will the champion of such a season be regarded as a valid champion?
Baseball has had 5 shortened seasons before (since the season was standardized at 154 games in 1904 and then expanded to 162 games in 1961-62):
In 1918 the season was abruptly ended on September 2nd due to the war at the request of the White House, who agreed to allow the World Series to be played immediately afterwards between the two teams atop the standings at that time. Under public pressure, the government had a “work or fight” order for every able-bodied male to help the war effort form that point on and baseball didn’t count.
www.thisgreatgame.com
The Red Sox won the AL title with a 75-51 record while the Cubs won the NL at 84-45. The Indians were 2 ½ games behind the Red Sox and the Senators were 5 ½. The Cubs ran away with the NL race, winning by 10.5 games over the Giants, who had started 18-1 but had several key players drafted. The Red Sox won the World Series for the fourth time in the decade, 4 games to 2. (No, this was a not a series played in the now iconic venues of Fenway Park and Wrigley Field: the Chicago games were played at Comiskey Park, presumably because of a greater capacity.)
In 1919 the war was over but the influenza epidemic was raging.
1918 flu pandemic did not spare baseball
But the official reason the season was shortened to 140 games was to “wait for the players to come back from the war”. The White Sox, who had won the 1917 World Series and were considered the unofficial defending champions since the 1918 season was impacted by the draft and the shut-down, won the AL at 88-52, 3 ½ games ahead of the Indians, 7.5 ahead of the Yankees, (who were already good enough to finish 21 games over .500 even though they didn’t have Babe Ruth yet), and 8 games ahead of the Tigers. The reds sailed through the NL at 96-44, 9 games ahead of the Giants and 21 games ahead of anyone else. Why were the White Sox favored in the World Series? Because the AL had won 8 of the previous 9 series in this decade, with the only loss being one of the great upsets of all time, the 1914 Miracle Braves beating Connie Mack’s athletics, (and given what happened in 1919, you have to wonder about that one). The AL was the better league and the Sox were the defacto defending champs. But as we all know, they threw the World Series, (the fact that they had to be bribed to do so shows what contemporary observers thought of the two teams).
In 1972 the first of the modern labor disputes impacted the game as either a player’s strike or an owner’s lock out, (depending on what source you are reading), canceled the first 13 days of the season. teams wound up playing anywhere from 153-156 games. The leagues had split into division in 1969. In the AL an aging Tigers team eeked out the division title by just ½ game over the Red Sox with an 85-70 record when the Athletics cruised to a 93-62 record, 5 ½ better than the White Sox. The NL races were routes: the Pirates won the East by 11 games with a 96-59 record while the reds won the west by 10 ½ at 95-59. If the Reds had an extra win, they and the Pirates would have had the same record and the same margin by which they won the pennant. Both league championship series went 5 games with the A’s and the Reds winning and then A’s won a great 7 game World Series from the Reds, despite not having Reggie Jackson available.
In 1981 came a much more damaging strike, one that took out the middle third of the season. The Milwaukee Brewers won the AL East by a game over the Orioles, 2 each over the Yankees and the Tigers and 2 ½ over the Red Sox at 62-47 with the A’s winning the West by 5 games at 64-45. In the NL the Cardinals won the East with a 59-43 record by 2 games over the Expos and 2 ½ over the Phillies. The best record in baseball, (66-42), belonged to the Cincinnati Reds, in the last year of their “Big Red Machine” era. They beat out the Dodgers by 4 games and the Astros by 6. So it was the brewers vs. the Athletics and the Cardinals vs. the Reds.
Except it wasn’t. For reasons I have never comprehended, the owners decided to treat it as ‘split season’ with the champions of the first half and the champions of the second half in the playoffs. Amazingly that produced 8 different divisional champions. The Yankees, the first half AL East winner, played the brewers, who won the second half. The A’s, who won the AL West in the first half, got beaten out by the Royals in the second half. The Royals had finished 20-30 in the first half and made the playoffs with a losing record, 50-53. The NL was a total disaster because neither team that wound up with the best overall record in their division, the Cardinals and the Reds, who had baseball’s best overall record, won either half. They both had to sit out the playoffs. The Cardinals lost the first half to the Phillies by a game and a half and the second half to the Expos by half a game. The Reds lost the first half to the Dodgers by a half game and the second half to the Astros by a game and half. They both watched the playoffs on TV. I’m not sure what the set up would have been if one the division had the same winner in both halves. I assume they would have gotten a ‘bye’.
The Yankees beat the Brewers in 5 and swept the A’s three straight, (the championship series didn’t become 7 games until 1985). The Dodgers beat the Astros and Expos in five games series and feel behind 0-2 to the Yankees before coming back to win the World Series in four straight.
The owners and players not having learned their lesson from that, there was an even more damaging strike in 1994 that killed the post season and delayed the 1995 season. The owners had just made another, (unwise to my way of thinking) decision to split into six divisions, three in each league with a wild card team and thus an extra round of baseball, which virtually eliminated pennant races and pushed this summer sport’s championship into the cold weather of late October and November.
The 1994 AL playoff teams would have been the Yankees, who were leading the AL East at 70-43 by 6 ½ games over the Orioles, the White Sox, who won the AL Central at 67-46, a game ahead of the Indians and four ahead of the Royals, the Rangers who ‘won’ the AL West with a ridiculous 52-62 record a game ahead of the Athletics, two ahead of the Mariners and 5 ½ ahead of the last place Angels. Ugh and double ugh.
In the NL, it would have been the Expos, with the best record in the game at 74-40, 6 games ahead of the Braves in East, the Reds, at 66-48 just half game up on the Astros and the Dodgers, the only winning team among the four in the West at 58-56, 3 ½ ahead of the Giants and 6 ½ above the Rockies. That Expos team was by far their best chance to win a championship for Montreal, although last year that franchise won one for Washington. This abbreviated season is the only one from 1991-2005 where the Braves didn’t win their division, an indication of how good they are but also of a lack of completion within the small divisions you get when you slice things up too much.
The 1995 season lost its first 18 games to the same strike. The Red Sox win the AL East with a fine 86-58 record, 7 games over the Yankees.. Nobody else in the division had a winning record. But that paled compared to what the Indians did to the AL Central, winning by 30 – yes, 30 – games with an 100-44 record. There was a pretty good race in the West with the mariners pulling it out at 79-66, 1 game over the Rangers and 4 ½ above the Angels.
In the NL, the Braves had a waltz of their own in the East, winning by 21 games with a 90-54 record. The Reds won the Central by 9 games over the Astros at 85-59. The Dodgers squeaked out the West at 78-66, a game better than the Rockies and 8 better than the Padres. The Braves had their one championship year of their great stretch, marching over the Rockies 3-1, the Reds 4-0 and even the Indians 4-2.
The NFL had irregular schedules until the mid-30’s. They eventually settled on 11 games. They switched it to 10 in 1943 because the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers decided to field a combined team, reducing the number of teams. The Chicago Bears won their fourth straight western division title with an 8-1-1 record and crushed the Washington Redskins, (who had tied the New York Giants at 6-3-1 in the East and beaten them 28-0 in the playoff), 43-21 to win their third NFL championship in four years. People hardly noticed that the regular season had been slightly abbreviated.
In 1944 The Eagles decided to field their own team but the Steelers hooked up with the Chicago Cardinals to form “Card-Pitt”, otherwise known as the “Carpets” because they got walked all over, going 0-10 and losing by an average of 22 points a game, the greatest average margin of defeat in NFL history. It was again a 10 game season, with the Green Bay Packers (8-2-0) beat the New York Giants (8-1-1) 14-7 for the championship. The Packers had split two title games with the Giants in 1938-39 and won four NFL titles before that so, again, the shortened season seemed unimportant.
1945 was another 10 game season. (Do we really need more than that? At least the math is easy.) The 9-1-0 Cleveland Rams beat the 8-2-0 Redskins 15-14 in the title game when Sammy Baugh’s pass from his own end zone hit the crossbar. The goal posts were on the goal line back then and a pass from the end zone that hit them was a safety. The Redskins had bene a long-time power and the Rams were a coming power so again the shorted season did not seem like an issue. The next year they went back to 11 games, increased that to 12 in 1947, to 14 in 1961 and to 16 in 1978. The AAFC played 14 game seasons from 1946-49 and the AFL did as well from 1960-69.
No season was less than until 1982, when the NFLPA, taking their cue from what baseball did the previous year, held a strike that reduced the NFL regular season to 9 games. The NFL decided, as baseball is this year, to make up for that with an expanded playoff that involved 16 of the league’s 28 teams. The division winners included two 8-1 teams, the Redskins and the Raiders, two 7-2 teams, the Dolphins and the Bengals, a 5-3-1 team, the Packers and a 5-4 team, the Falcons. There would normally have bene two wild card teams and they would have been the 6-3 Cowboys and one of three 6-3 AFC teams: the Jets, the Steelers and the Chargers, (I don’t know how the tie-breakers played out).
In the first round of the playoffs, the Packers, Dolphins, Raiders, Redskins. Cowboys, Jets and Chargers all won. The Vikings took down the Falcons and the Jets eliminated the Bengals in a 44-17 rout. So, depending on those AFC tie breakers, 7 of the 8 teams in the quarterfinals were the teams that would have bene there anyway. The Jets knocked off the Raiders. The redskins beat the Vikings 21-7 to eliminate the one outlier. The Cowboys beat the Packers and the Dolphins beat the Chargers 34-13 to avenge their famous overtime defeated the previous year, (the greatest FB game I have ever seen). In the conference championship games the Dolphins shut out the jets 14-0 with their “Killer Bee” defense while the John Riggins and the Hogs whipped their old rivals, the Cowboys 31-17. The Super Bowl is primarily remembered for one thing:
Like baseball, football did not learn its lesson from that strike, (there’s plenty of money – just figure out how to divvy it up fairly and let’s play ball!). Five years later, (1987) there was a second strike. This time the owners responded by hiring scabs, hoping that the try-outs and the ‘Cinderfella’ nature of the experiment would capture the attention of the public. The ‘replacements’ played in weeks 4 through 6 and their games counted in the standings. Only one week of games was missed entirely, resulting in a 15 game season. The playoffs were conducted as normal, although by now there were four wildcard teams who played on the same weekend in the first round of the playoffs.
The 49ers had the best record at 13-2, one game ahead of the long-suffering Saints, (12-3), in the NFC West. The Bears and Redskins won their divisions at 11-4. The Broncos (10-4-1) and the Browns (10-5) also won their divisions, as did the Colts at 9-6. The Wild Cards were the Saints, the Oilers and Seahawks, (both 9-6) and the playoff team with the worst record, the Vikings at 8-7-1. The Saints fans came out to the Super Dome in force for their first ever playoff game against the mediocre Vikings and had to sit through a soul-crushing 10-44 disaster. The Oiler eliminated the Seahawks only to get crushed by the Broncos, 34-10 the next week. The Browns beat the Colts and the Redskins beat the bears. The big shocker was in San Francisco, where the Vikings bolted to a 20-3 halftime lead on the over-confident Niners and went on to win 36-24, thus having beaten the two ‘giants’ of the NFC West by a combined total of 80-34. The 8-7-1 team suddenly seemed unstoppable. But the redskins stopped them, 21-17 while the Broncos held on to beat the Browns 38-33 on Earnest Byner’s much lamented fumble.
The Broncos got off to a great started in the Super Bowl, taking a 10-0 lead it seemed to be their day. Then came the second quarter: Super Bowl XXII: Redskins vs. Broncos | NFL
Two strikes and two Redskins titles.
In basketball the progenitors of the NBA were the National Basketball league and the Basketball Association of America, which essentially combined in 1949 to create the National Basketball Association, (the older NBL’s top teams had jumped to the newer BAA because they had the larger arenas in bigger cities). The NBL never played a reduced schedule but the BAA had reduced theirs from 60 games to 48 for the 1947-48 season to reduce travel expenses. The previous year the Washington Capitols had had the best record at 49-11, followed by the Chicago Stags at 39-23, the St. Louis Bombers at 38-23, the Philadelphia Warriors at 35-25 and the New York Knicks at 33-27. The Knicks beat the 30-30 Cleveland Rebels 2-1 in the first round and the Warriors topped the Bombers by the same margin. The Stags knocked off the Capitols in 6 games, (in a curious semi-final battle of the two division champions) while the Warriors beat the Knicks 2-0, (why 2-0? Because they weren’t divisional winners). The Warriors then beat the Stags in 5 games for the title.
The next year, the league was flat as a pancake. The Warriors won the East at 27-21 with the Knicks a game behind at 26-22. The Western Division champion was the Bombers at 29-19, followed by three 28-20 teams, the Baltimore Bullets, the Stags and the Capitols. They were all in last place, tied for second and a game out of first. They didn’t use tiebreakers: The Stags beat the Capitols and then the Bullets beat them in single games. The Bullets then beat the Knicks in a three game series and the Stags did the same to the Celtics. The Bullets then met the Stags again in the semi-finals, (the only teams to play each other twice in the same post-season), and swept two games from them while the Warriors won a seven game series from the Bombers. The well-rested Bullets then won the second BAA title in 6 games over the defending champion Warriors.
Did all these teams have mediocre records because of the short season? Would a dominant team have emerges with a dozen more games? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Everybody in 1948 knew who the best team in basketball was and it wasn’t any of these teams. It was the NBL champion Minneapolis Lakers, with 6-10 George Mikan. They also won the last National professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago, a sort of NCAA tournament for all pro basketball teams, including the (still many) touring teams, beating the New York Rens in the final. Then they jumped to the BAA the next year and won 5 of the next 6 championships there. (Yes, Virginia, George Mikan’s Lakers won 6 championships, not 5. George had also won an NBL title with the Chicago American gears before that.)
The BAA/NBA then went back to a 60 game season for 1948-49, then 68 games in 1949-50 and the NBL melted away. it narrowed slightly to 66 in 1951-52 as some of the weaker teams in the combined league went out of business. It went up to 70 the next year and 72 the year after that. They moved to 75 games for 1959-60, 79 the next year and 80 the year after that. It became 81 games in 1966-67and 82 the next year and has been at that level ever since. The ABA played 84 games during its run.
Not to be left out of the strike parade, the NBA owners locked the players out until February 5th 1999 due to the inability to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement. The league wound up playing a 50 game season. The resulting winning percentages were what you would expect in a normal season. The Spurs and the Jazz were both 37-13, which would translate to 61-21 in an 82 game season. The Blazers were 35-15 (57-25). The Heat, Magic and Pacers were 33-17 (54-28). The Lakers, Rockets and Hawks were 31-19, (51-31). Sixteen teams made the playoffs. The Spurs, Jazz, Blazers, Pacers, Lakers and Hawks all won in the first round with the Heat, Magic and Rockets going down to lesser teams. The quarterfinals featured three 4-0 sweeps, the Pacers over the Sixers, the Knicks knocking off the Hawks and the Spurs sweeping the Lakers away. The Blazers beat the Jazz in 6 games. The Spurs then swept the Blazers while the Knicks beat the Pacers in 6 games. The Spurs then won their first ever NBA title over the Knicks in 5 games. Their post season record was 15 wins and 2 losses. They seemed to deserve it.
There was another lock-out that delayed the start of the 2011-12 season until December 28th, shortening the season to 66 games. The Spurs again tied for the best record, this time with the Bulls at 50-16. (Over 82 games that’s 62-20.) The Oklahoma City Thunder was 47-19 (58-24), the Miami Heat 46-20 (57-25), the Indiana Pacers 42-24 (52-20), the Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies both 41-25 (51-31), the Clippers and the Hawks 40-26 (50-32), the Celtics 39-27 (48-34), the Nuggets 38-28 (47-35), the Magic 37-29 (46-36), the Knicks the Mavericks and the Jazz 36-30 (45-35) , and the Sixers 35-31 (43-39).
The playoffs were normal. Six of the top 8 teams won in the first round, the Lakers losing to the Spurs in a sweep. The Knicks and the Warrior joined the other six in the second round. Both lost, to the Pacers and the Spurs, respectively. The Heat knocked off the Bulls while the Grizzlies upset the Thunder. The Spurs swept the Grizzlies in the semi-finals while the Heat, going for their second straight title, beat the Pacers in 7 games and did the same to the Spurs in the finals, which had the right teams and the right winner.
The Stanley Cup started as an East vs. West Canadian event to determine that nation’s best amateur hockey team. Professional teams became eligible in 1906. In 1915 the two leading professional leagues, the National Hockey Association in the east and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the west, decided the Cup should be given to the winner of a series between their champions. It became the championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 after the PCHA went under. There was no Stanley Cup in 1919 due to the flu epidemic.
The NHL played 44 games until 1931-32 when they upped that to 48 games. That became 50 in 1942-43, 60 in 1946-47, 70 in 1949-50, 74 with the expansion in 1867-68, 76 the next year, 78 in 1970-71, 80 in 1974-75, 84 for two years, 1992-94. Then the labor dispute bug hit, resulting in a lock-out that didn’t end until January 11, 1995.
They played just 48 games that year. The NHL uses a point system: 1 for a tie, 2 for a win. The top point totals that year that year belonged to The Detroit Red Wings: 70, which translated to 122.5 over 84 games, the Quebec Nordiques, 65 (114), The Pittsburgh Penquins and St. Louis Blues 61 (107), Philadelphia Flyers 60 (105), the Boston Bruins (57 (100), the Calgary Flames 55 (96), Chicago Black Hawks 53 (93), The Washington Capitals and New Jersey Devils 52 (91), the Buffalo Sabres 51 (89)and the Toronto Maple Leafs 50 (87.5).
The playoffs, as usual involved 16 of the 26 teams in the league. The Nordiques, the Blues, the Bruins, the Flames, the Capitals, the Sabres and the Maple Leafs all came crashing down in the first round. Order was partially restored in the quarterfinals as the Red Wings, Flyers and the Black Hawks all won but the Devils knocked off the Penquins. The devils then beat the Flyers in the semis and were heavy underdogs to the Red Wings in the finals. Then came the big shocker, a 4-0 New Jersey sweep to take the cup. Their actual won-lost record that year was 22-18-8 compared to the Red Wings’ sterling 33-11-4. But since the playoff format was the normal one, you can hardly blame the shorter regular season for what happened. And it was the first of three Stanley Cups the Devils would win over an 8 year period from 1995-2002.
The league cut the regular season back to 82 games after that and that’s what it is now. There was another lock-out that cost the entire 2004-05 season, (proving that even the 4th most successful major league can skip a year and still survive). A third lock-out delayed the 2012-13 seasons, which was also reduced to 48 games. The outstanding point totals belonged to the Blackhawks: 77 (132 over 82 games), the Penquins 72 (123), the Anaheim Ducks 66 (113), the Canadiens 63 (108), the Bruins 62 (106), the Blues 60 (102), the Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks 59 (101), the Maple Leafs, the Capitals and the San Jose Sharks 57 (97), the Rangers, the Red Wings and the Senators, 56 (96), the Islanders, the Columbus Blue Jackets and, the Minnesota Wild, 55 (94) and the Winnipeg Jets and Phoenix Coyotes 51 ((87).
The Ducks, the Canadiens, the Blues, the Canucks, the Maple Leafs, the Islanders, the Wild, The Blue Jackets, the Jets and the Coyotes didn’t make the playoffs, which held at 16 teams out of what was now 30. The Blackhawks, the Penquins, the Bruins and the Kings won the quarterfinals. The Blackhawks beat the Kings in 5 games while the Bruins swept the Penquins in the semis. The Blackhawks beat the Bruins in 6 games for the Cup. The best team won and they didn’t do it because the regular season was only 48 games.
Here’s a summary of the ‘short’ seasons:
1918 MLB normal: 154 games actual: 123-131 (80-85%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Boston Red Sox
1919 MLB normal: 154 actual: 140 (91%) Playoffs: normal but fixed Champion: Cincinnati Reds
1943 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Chicago Bears
1944 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Green Bay Packers
1945 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Cleveland Rams
1947-48 BAA normal: 60 actual: 48 (80%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Baltimore Bullets
1972 MLB normal: 162 actual: 153-156 (94-96%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Oakland Athletics
1981 MLB normal: 162 actual: 103-111 (64-69%) Playoffs: doubled Champion: Los Angeles Dodgers
1982 NFL normal:16 actual: 9 ((56%) Playoffs: doubled Champion: Washington Redskins
1987 NFL normal:16 actual:15 but only 13 with regular players (94%, 815 with regulars) Playoffs: normal Champion: Washington Redskins
1994-95 NHL normal: 84 actual: 48 (57%) Playoffs: normal Champion: New Jersey Devils
1995 MLB normal: 162 actual: 143-145 (88-90%) Playoffs: first year of wild card Champion: Atlanta Braves
1998-99 NBA normal: 82 actual: 50 (61%) Playoffs: normal Champion: San Antonio Spurs
2011-12 NBA normal:82 actual: 66 (80%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Miami Heat
2012-13 NHL normal: 82 actual: 48 ((59%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Chicago Blackhawks
The big question is: how valid will a championship won after a 60 game baseball regular season be considered to be? The big problem is that that’s only 37% of a full season, a much smaller percentage than any of the above seasons. That’s new territory.
I think there are two other factors to consider. I think that it’s a mistake to expand the playoffs. That puts more teams in the post season that wouldn’t normally be there. And baseball is a sport that never uses the term ‘upset’. The gap between the best and the worst teams is the smallest of any of these sports. These playoffs are going to be full of short series that could go either way.
Which leads to the other factor: it helps if the eventual winner is a team that wins was considered one of the league elite teams. If the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Astros or the Dodgers win, it will be just looked at as another one of their championships. If the Blue Jays or the Rangers or the Phillies or the reds win it, then people will question whether the short season was a big reason why they won.
The closest comparison is the 1982 NFL season, when they played only 59% of the regular season games and expanded the playoffs. The Redskins, a team that hadn’t won the championship in 40 years won. But they’d gone 8-1 in that season, tied for the best record in the league, dominated the Super Bowl, (after a shaky start) and won two more Super Bowls in the next decade. I don’t think anybody remembers them as an undeserving champion. If we can have a champion like that, then winning is all that will matter as the years go by.
Baseball has had 5 shortened seasons before (since the season was standardized at 154 games in 1904 and then expanded to 162 games in 1961-62):
In 1918 the season was abruptly ended on September 2nd due to the war at the request of the White House, who agreed to allow the World Series to be played immediately afterwards between the two teams atop the standings at that time. Under public pressure, the government had a “work or fight” order for every able-bodied male to help the war effort form that point on and baseball didn’t count.
Baseball History in 1918: All Work or Fight and No Play
Baseball scratches and claws to stay intact as World War I reaches its brutal apex, with the Boston Red Sox winning their last world title for 86 years.
www.thisgreatgame.com
The Red Sox won the AL title with a 75-51 record while the Cubs won the NL at 84-45. The Indians were 2 ½ games behind the Red Sox and the Senators were 5 ½. The Cubs ran away with the NL race, winning by 10.5 games over the Giants, who had started 18-1 but had several key players drafted. The Red Sox won the World Series for the fourth time in the decade, 4 games to 2. (No, this was a not a series played in the now iconic venues of Fenway Park and Wrigley Field: the Chicago games were played at Comiskey Park, presumably because of a greater capacity.)
In 1919 the war was over but the influenza epidemic was raging.
1918 flu pandemic did not spare baseball
But the official reason the season was shortened to 140 games was to “wait for the players to come back from the war”. The White Sox, who had won the 1917 World Series and were considered the unofficial defending champions since the 1918 season was impacted by the draft and the shut-down, won the AL at 88-52, 3 ½ games ahead of the Indians, 7.5 ahead of the Yankees, (who were already good enough to finish 21 games over .500 even though they didn’t have Babe Ruth yet), and 8 games ahead of the Tigers. The reds sailed through the NL at 96-44, 9 games ahead of the Giants and 21 games ahead of anyone else. Why were the White Sox favored in the World Series? Because the AL had won 8 of the previous 9 series in this decade, with the only loss being one of the great upsets of all time, the 1914 Miracle Braves beating Connie Mack’s athletics, (and given what happened in 1919, you have to wonder about that one). The AL was the better league and the Sox were the defacto defending champs. But as we all know, they threw the World Series, (the fact that they had to be bribed to do so shows what contemporary observers thought of the two teams).
In 1972 the first of the modern labor disputes impacted the game as either a player’s strike or an owner’s lock out, (depending on what source you are reading), canceled the first 13 days of the season. teams wound up playing anywhere from 153-156 games. The leagues had split into division in 1969. In the AL an aging Tigers team eeked out the division title by just ½ game over the Red Sox with an 85-70 record when the Athletics cruised to a 93-62 record, 5 ½ better than the White Sox. The NL races were routes: the Pirates won the East by 11 games with a 96-59 record while the reds won the west by 10 ½ at 95-59. If the Reds had an extra win, they and the Pirates would have had the same record and the same margin by which they won the pennant. Both league championship series went 5 games with the A’s and the Reds winning and then A’s won a great 7 game World Series from the Reds, despite not having Reggie Jackson available.
In 1981 came a much more damaging strike, one that took out the middle third of the season. The Milwaukee Brewers won the AL East by a game over the Orioles, 2 each over the Yankees and the Tigers and 2 ½ over the Red Sox at 62-47 with the A’s winning the West by 5 games at 64-45. In the NL the Cardinals won the East with a 59-43 record by 2 games over the Expos and 2 ½ over the Phillies. The best record in baseball, (66-42), belonged to the Cincinnati Reds, in the last year of their “Big Red Machine” era. They beat out the Dodgers by 4 games and the Astros by 6. So it was the brewers vs. the Athletics and the Cardinals vs. the Reds.
Except it wasn’t. For reasons I have never comprehended, the owners decided to treat it as ‘split season’ with the champions of the first half and the champions of the second half in the playoffs. Amazingly that produced 8 different divisional champions. The Yankees, the first half AL East winner, played the brewers, who won the second half. The A’s, who won the AL West in the first half, got beaten out by the Royals in the second half. The Royals had finished 20-30 in the first half and made the playoffs with a losing record, 50-53. The NL was a total disaster because neither team that wound up with the best overall record in their division, the Cardinals and the Reds, who had baseball’s best overall record, won either half. They both had to sit out the playoffs. The Cardinals lost the first half to the Phillies by a game and a half and the second half to the Expos by half a game. The Reds lost the first half to the Dodgers by a half game and the second half to the Astros by a game and half. They both watched the playoffs on TV. I’m not sure what the set up would have been if one the division had the same winner in both halves. I assume they would have gotten a ‘bye’.
The Yankees beat the Brewers in 5 and swept the A’s three straight, (the championship series didn’t become 7 games until 1985). The Dodgers beat the Astros and Expos in five games series and feel behind 0-2 to the Yankees before coming back to win the World Series in four straight.
The owners and players not having learned their lesson from that, there was an even more damaging strike in 1994 that killed the post season and delayed the 1995 season. The owners had just made another, (unwise to my way of thinking) decision to split into six divisions, three in each league with a wild card team and thus an extra round of baseball, which virtually eliminated pennant races and pushed this summer sport’s championship into the cold weather of late October and November.
The 1994 AL playoff teams would have been the Yankees, who were leading the AL East at 70-43 by 6 ½ games over the Orioles, the White Sox, who won the AL Central at 67-46, a game ahead of the Indians and four ahead of the Royals, the Rangers who ‘won’ the AL West with a ridiculous 52-62 record a game ahead of the Athletics, two ahead of the Mariners and 5 ½ ahead of the last place Angels. Ugh and double ugh.
In the NL, it would have been the Expos, with the best record in the game at 74-40, 6 games ahead of the Braves in East, the Reds, at 66-48 just half game up on the Astros and the Dodgers, the only winning team among the four in the West at 58-56, 3 ½ ahead of the Giants and 6 ½ above the Rockies. That Expos team was by far their best chance to win a championship for Montreal, although last year that franchise won one for Washington. This abbreviated season is the only one from 1991-2005 where the Braves didn’t win their division, an indication of how good they are but also of a lack of completion within the small divisions you get when you slice things up too much.
The 1995 season lost its first 18 games to the same strike. The Red Sox win the AL East with a fine 86-58 record, 7 games over the Yankees.. Nobody else in the division had a winning record. But that paled compared to what the Indians did to the AL Central, winning by 30 – yes, 30 – games with an 100-44 record. There was a pretty good race in the West with the mariners pulling it out at 79-66, 1 game over the Rangers and 4 ½ above the Angels.
In the NL, the Braves had a waltz of their own in the East, winning by 21 games with a 90-54 record. The Reds won the Central by 9 games over the Astros at 85-59. The Dodgers squeaked out the West at 78-66, a game better than the Rockies and 8 better than the Padres. The Braves had their one championship year of their great stretch, marching over the Rockies 3-1, the Reds 4-0 and even the Indians 4-2.
The NFL had irregular schedules until the mid-30’s. They eventually settled on 11 games. They switched it to 10 in 1943 because the Philadelphia Eagles and Pittsburgh Steelers decided to field a combined team, reducing the number of teams. The Chicago Bears won their fourth straight western division title with an 8-1-1 record and crushed the Washington Redskins, (who had tied the New York Giants at 6-3-1 in the East and beaten them 28-0 in the playoff), 43-21 to win their third NFL championship in four years. People hardly noticed that the regular season had been slightly abbreviated.
In 1944 The Eagles decided to field their own team but the Steelers hooked up with the Chicago Cardinals to form “Card-Pitt”, otherwise known as the “Carpets” because they got walked all over, going 0-10 and losing by an average of 22 points a game, the greatest average margin of defeat in NFL history. It was again a 10 game season, with the Green Bay Packers (8-2-0) beat the New York Giants (8-1-1) 14-7 for the championship. The Packers had split two title games with the Giants in 1938-39 and won four NFL titles before that so, again, the shortened season seemed unimportant.
1945 was another 10 game season. (Do we really need more than that? At least the math is easy.) The 9-1-0 Cleveland Rams beat the 8-2-0 Redskins 15-14 in the title game when Sammy Baugh’s pass from his own end zone hit the crossbar. The goal posts were on the goal line back then and a pass from the end zone that hit them was a safety. The Redskins had bene a long-time power and the Rams were a coming power so again the shorted season did not seem like an issue. The next year they went back to 11 games, increased that to 12 in 1947, to 14 in 1961 and to 16 in 1978. The AAFC played 14 game seasons from 1946-49 and the AFL did as well from 1960-69.
No season was less than until 1982, when the NFLPA, taking their cue from what baseball did the previous year, held a strike that reduced the NFL regular season to 9 games. The NFL decided, as baseball is this year, to make up for that with an expanded playoff that involved 16 of the league’s 28 teams. The division winners included two 8-1 teams, the Redskins and the Raiders, two 7-2 teams, the Dolphins and the Bengals, a 5-3-1 team, the Packers and a 5-4 team, the Falcons. There would normally have bene two wild card teams and they would have been the 6-3 Cowboys and one of three 6-3 AFC teams: the Jets, the Steelers and the Chargers, (I don’t know how the tie-breakers played out).
In the first round of the playoffs, the Packers, Dolphins, Raiders, Redskins. Cowboys, Jets and Chargers all won. The Vikings took down the Falcons and the Jets eliminated the Bengals in a 44-17 rout. So, depending on those AFC tie breakers, 7 of the 8 teams in the quarterfinals were the teams that would have bene there anyway. The Jets knocked off the Raiders. The redskins beat the Vikings 21-7 to eliminate the one outlier. The Cowboys beat the Packers and the Dolphins beat the Chargers 34-13 to avenge their famous overtime defeated the previous year, (the greatest FB game I have ever seen). In the conference championship games the Dolphins shut out the jets 14-0 with their “Killer Bee” defense while the John Riggins and the Hogs whipped their old rivals, the Cowboys 31-17. The Super Bowl is primarily remembered for one thing:
Like baseball, football did not learn its lesson from that strike, (there’s plenty of money – just figure out how to divvy it up fairly and let’s play ball!). Five years later, (1987) there was a second strike. This time the owners responded by hiring scabs, hoping that the try-outs and the ‘Cinderfella’ nature of the experiment would capture the attention of the public. The ‘replacements’ played in weeks 4 through 6 and their games counted in the standings. Only one week of games was missed entirely, resulting in a 15 game season. The playoffs were conducted as normal, although by now there were four wildcard teams who played on the same weekend in the first round of the playoffs.
The 49ers had the best record at 13-2, one game ahead of the long-suffering Saints, (12-3), in the NFC West. The Bears and Redskins won their divisions at 11-4. The Broncos (10-4-1) and the Browns (10-5) also won their divisions, as did the Colts at 9-6. The Wild Cards were the Saints, the Oilers and Seahawks, (both 9-6) and the playoff team with the worst record, the Vikings at 8-7-1. The Saints fans came out to the Super Dome in force for their first ever playoff game against the mediocre Vikings and had to sit through a soul-crushing 10-44 disaster. The Oiler eliminated the Seahawks only to get crushed by the Broncos, 34-10 the next week. The Browns beat the Colts and the Redskins beat the bears. The big shocker was in San Francisco, where the Vikings bolted to a 20-3 halftime lead on the over-confident Niners and went on to win 36-24, thus having beaten the two ‘giants’ of the NFC West by a combined total of 80-34. The 8-7-1 team suddenly seemed unstoppable. But the redskins stopped them, 21-17 while the Broncos held on to beat the Browns 38-33 on Earnest Byner’s much lamented fumble.
The Broncos got off to a great started in the Super Bowl, taking a 10-0 lead it seemed to be their day. Then came the second quarter: Super Bowl XXII: Redskins vs. Broncos | NFL
Two strikes and two Redskins titles.
In basketball the progenitors of the NBA were the National Basketball league and the Basketball Association of America, which essentially combined in 1949 to create the National Basketball Association, (the older NBL’s top teams had jumped to the newer BAA because they had the larger arenas in bigger cities). The NBL never played a reduced schedule but the BAA had reduced theirs from 60 games to 48 for the 1947-48 season to reduce travel expenses. The previous year the Washington Capitols had had the best record at 49-11, followed by the Chicago Stags at 39-23, the St. Louis Bombers at 38-23, the Philadelphia Warriors at 35-25 and the New York Knicks at 33-27. The Knicks beat the 30-30 Cleveland Rebels 2-1 in the first round and the Warriors topped the Bombers by the same margin. The Stags knocked off the Capitols in 6 games, (in a curious semi-final battle of the two division champions) while the Warriors beat the Knicks 2-0, (why 2-0? Because they weren’t divisional winners). The Warriors then beat the Stags in 5 games for the title.
The next year, the league was flat as a pancake. The Warriors won the East at 27-21 with the Knicks a game behind at 26-22. The Western Division champion was the Bombers at 29-19, followed by three 28-20 teams, the Baltimore Bullets, the Stags and the Capitols. They were all in last place, tied for second and a game out of first. They didn’t use tiebreakers: The Stags beat the Capitols and then the Bullets beat them in single games. The Bullets then beat the Knicks in a three game series and the Stags did the same to the Celtics. The Bullets then met the Stags again in the semi-finals, (the only teams to play each other twice in the same post-season), and swept two games from them while the Warriors won a seven game series from the Bombers. The well-rested Bullets then won the second BAA title in 6 games over the defending champion Warriors.
Did all these teams have mediocre records because of the short season? Would a dominant team have emerges with a dozen more games? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Everybody in 1948 knew who the best team in basketball was and it wasn’t any of these teams. It was the NBL champion Minneapolis Lakers, with 6-10 George Mikan. They also won the last National professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago, a sort of NCAA tournament for all pro basketball teams, including the (still many) touring teams, beating the New York Rens in the final. Then they jumped to the BAA the next year and won 5 of the next 6 championships there. (Yes, Virginia, George Mikan’s Lakers won 6 championships, not 5. George had also won an NBL title with the Chicago American gears before that.)
The BAA/NBA then went back to a 60 game season for 1948-49, then 68 games in 1949-50 and the NBL melted away. it narrowed slightly to 66 in 1951-52 as some of the weaker teams in the combined league went out of business. It went up to 70 the next year and 72 the year after that. They moved to 75 games for 1959-60, 79 the next year and 80 the year after that. It became 81 games in 1966-67and 82 the next year and has been at that level ever since. The ABA played 84 games during its run.
Not to be left out of the strike parade, the NBA owners locked the players out until February 5th 1999 due to the inability to agree on a new collective bargaining agreement. The league wound up playing a 50 game season. The resulting winning percentages were what you would expect in a normal season. The Spurs and the Jazz were both 37-13, which would translate to 61-21 in an 82 game season. The Blazers were 35-15 (57-25). The Heat, Magic and Pacers were 33-17 (54-28). The Lakers, Rockets and Hawks were 31-19, (51-31). Sixteen teams made the playoffs. The Spurs, Jazz, Blazers, Pacers, Lakers and Hawks all won in the first round with the Heat, Magic and Rockets going down to lesser teams. The quarterfinals featured three 4-0 sweeps, the Pacers over the Sixers, the Knicks knocking off the Hawks and the Spurs sweeping the Lakers away. The Blazers beat the Jazz in 6 games. The Spurs then swept the Blazers while the Knicks beat the Pacers in 6 games. The Spurs then won their first ever NBA title over the Knicks in 5 games. Their post season record was 15 wins and 2 losses. They seemed to deserve it.
There was another lock-out that delayed the start of the 2011-12 season until December 28th, shortening the season to 66 games. The Spurs again tied for the best record, this time with the Bulls at 50-16. (Over 82 games that’s 62-20.) The Oklahoma City Thunder was 47-19 (58-24), the Miami Heat 46-20 (57-25), the Indiana Pacers 42-24 (52-20), the Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies both 41-25 (51-31), the Clippers and the Hawks 40-26 (50-32), the Celtics 39-27 (48-34), the Nuggets 38-28 (47-35), the Magic 37-29 (46-36), the Knicks the Mavericks and the Jazz 36-30 (45-35) , and the Sixers 35-31 (43-39).
The playoffs were normal. Six of the top 8 teams won in the first round, the Lakers losing to the Spurs in a sweep. The Knicks and the Warrior joined the other six in the second round. Both lost, to the Pacers and the Spurs, respectively. The Heat knocked off the Bulls while the Grizzlies upset the Thunder. The Spurs swept the Grizzlies in the semi-finals while the Heat, going for their second straight title, beat the Pacers in 7 games and did the same to the Spurs in the finals, which had the right teams and the right winner.
The Stanley Cup started as an East vs. West Canadian event to determine that nation’s best amateur hockey team. Professional teams became eligible in 1906. In 1915 the two leading professional leagues, the National Hockey Association in the east and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association in the west, decided the Cup should be given to the winner of a series between their champions. It became the championship trophy of the NHL in 1926 after the PCHA went under. There was no Stanley Cup in 1919 due to the flu epidemic.
The NHL played 44 games until 1931-32 when they upped that to 48 games. That became 50 in 1942-43, 60 in 1946-47, 70 in 1949-50, 74 with the expansion in 1867-68, 76 the next year, 78 in 1970-71, 80 in 1974-75, 84 for two years, 1992-94. Then the labor dispute bug hit, resulting in a lock-out that didn’t end until January 11, 1995.
They played just 48 games that year. The NHL uses a point system: 1 for a tie, 2 for a win. The top point totals that year that year belonged to The Detroit Red Wings: 70, which translated to 122.5 over 84 games, the Quebec Nordiques, 65 (114), The Pittsburgh Penquins and St. Louis Blues 61 (107), Philadelphia Flyers 60 (105), the Boston Bruins (57 (100), the Calgary Flames 55 (96), Chicago Black Hawks 53 (93), The Washington Capitals and New Jersey Devils 52 (91), the Buffalo Sabres 51 (89)and the Toronto Maple Leafs 50 (87.5).
The playoffs, as usual involved 16 of the 26 teams in the league. The Nordiques, the Blues, the Bruins, the Flames, the Capitals, the Sabres and the Maple Leafs all came crashing down in the first round. Order was partially restored in the quarterfinals as the Red Wings, Flyers and the Black Hawks all won but the Devils knocked off the Penquins. The devils then beat the Flyers in the semis and were heavy underdogs to the Red Wings in the finals. Then came the big shocker, a 4-0 New Jersey sweep to take the cup. Their actual won-lost record that year was 22-18-8 compared to the Red Wings’ sterling 33-11-4. But since the playoff format was the normal one, you can hardly blame the shorter regular season for what happened. And it was the first of three Stanley Cups the Devils would win over an 8 year period from 1995-2002.
The league cut the regular season back to 82 games after that and that’s what it is now. There was another lock-out that cost the entire 2004-05 season, (proving that even the 4th most successful major league can skip a year and still survive). A third lock-out delayed the 2012-13 seasons, which was also reduced to 48 games. The outstanding point totals belonged to the Blackhawks: 77 (132 over 82 games), the Penquins 72 (123), the Anaheim Ducks 66 (113), the Canadiens 63 (108), the Bruins 62 (106), the Blues 60 (102), the Los Angeles Kings and Vancouver Canucks 59 (101), the Maple Leafs, the Capitals and the San Jose Sharks 57 (97), the Rangers, the Red Wings and the Senators, 56 (96), the Islanders, the Columbus Blue Jackets and, the Minnesota Wild, 55 (94) and the Winnipeg Jets and Phoenix Coyotes 51 ((87).
The Ducks, the Canadiens, the Blues, the Canucks, the Maple Leafs, the Islanders, the Wild, The Blue Jackets, the Jets and the Coyotes didn’t make the playoffs, which held at 16 teams out of what was now 30. The Blackhawks, the Penquins, the Bruins and the Kings won the quarterfinals. The Blackhawks beat the Kings in 5 games while the Bruins swept the Penquins in the semis. The Blackhawks beat the Bruins in 6 games for the Cup. The best team won and they didn’t do it because the regular season was only 48 games.
Here’s a summary of the ‘short’ seasons:
1918 MLB normal: 154 games actual: 123-131 (80-85%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Boston Red Sox
1919 MLB normal: 154 actual: 140 (91%) Playoffs: normal but fixed Champion: Cincinnati Reds
1943 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Chicago Bears
1944 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Green Bay Packers
1945 NFL normal: 11 actual: 10 (91%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Cleveland Rams
1947-48 BAA normal: 60 actual: 48 (80%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Baltimore Bullets
1972 MLB normal: 162 actual: 153-156 (94-96%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Oakland Athletics
1981 MLB normal: 162 actual: 103-111 (64-69%) Playoffs: doubled Champion: Los Angeles Dodgers
1982 NFL normal:16 actual: 9 ((56%) Playoffs: doubled Champion: Washington Redskins
1987 NFL normal:16 actual:15 but only 13 with regular players (94%, 815 with regulars) Playoffs: normal Champion: Washington Redskins
1994-95 NHL normal: 84 actual: 48 (57%) Playoffs: normal Champion: New Jersey Devils
1995 MLB normal: 162 actual: 143-145 (88-90%) Playoffs: first year of wild card Champion: Atlanta Braves
1998-99 NBA normal: 82 actual: 50 (61%) Playoffs: normal Champion: San Antonio Spurs
2011-12 NBA normal:82 actual: 66 (80%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Miami Heat
2012-13 NHL normal: 82 actual: 48 ((59%) Playoffs: normal Champion: Chicago Blackhawks
The big question is: how valid will a championship won after a 60 game baseball regular season be considered to be? The big problem is that that’s only 37% of a full season, a much smaller percentage than any of the above seasons. That’s new territory.
I think there are two other factors to consider. I think that it’s a mistake to expand the playoffs. That puts more teams in the post season that wouldn’t normally be there. And baseball is a sport that never uses the term ‘upset’. The gap between the best and the worst teams is the smallest of any of these sports. These playoffs are going to be full of short series that could go either way.
Which leads to the other factor: it helps if the eventual winner is a team that wins was considered one of the league elite teams. If the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Astros or the Dodgers win, it will be just looked at as another one of their championships. If the Blue Jays or the Rangers or the Phillies or the reds win it, then people will question whether the short season was a big reason why they won.
The closest comparison is the 1982 NFL season, when they played only 59% of the regular season games and expanded the playoffs. The Redskins, a team that hadn’t won the championship in 40 years won. But they’d gone 8-1 in that season, tied for the best record in the league, dominated the Super Bowl, (after a shaky start) and won two more Super Bowls in the next decade. I don’t think anybody remembers them as an undeserving champion. If we can have a champion like that, then winning is all that will matter as the years go by.
