Baseball
In Major League Baseball, there are three divisions in each league. The leader in each division automatically makes the playoffs, regardless of record. As of 2012, two additional teams, known as the wild cards, play one game to determine who will face the division winner with the best record. From 1995 to 2011, a single wild card team reached the playoffs; before 1969 one team from each league reached the World Series, and from 1969 to 1993 each league had two divisions, whose leaders played a series to determine the league champion and entrant in the World Series. The 1994 season was played using a three-division, one-wild-card setup, but a labor dispute ended the season before these honors could be earned by any team (the first time in 99 years America would be without a World Series).
In the Division Series, the team with the best record of the three plays the wild card survivor, and the other two teams play each other in a best-of-five playoff. Beginning with the 2012 postseason, the team with the best record plays the wild-card survivor, regardless of divisional alignment. Previously, teams from the same division were not allowed to meet in the Division Series. The winners of each series play each other in a League Championship Series in a best-of-seven playoff to determine the pennant winner. The two pennant winners then play a best-of-seven series known as the World Series to determine the champion.
Read more about this topic: Sports League Ranking, By Sport
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)