Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in professional baseball in the world. More specifically, Major League Baseball ("MLB") refers to the entity that operates North America's two major leagues, the National League and the American League, by means of a joint organizational structure which has existed between them since 1903. On an organizational level, MLB effectively operates as a single "league", and as such it constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.
Major League Baseball is governed by the Major League Baseball Constitution, an agreement that has undergone several incarnations since 1876 then called the NL Constitution, with the most recent revisions being made in 2005. Major League Baseball, under the direction of its Commissioner, Bud Selig, hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts. As is the case for most North American sports leagues, the 'closed shop' aspect of MLB effectively prevents the yearly promotion and demotion of teams into the Major League by virtue of their performance.
MLB also maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of minor league baseball. This is due in large part to a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League which declared baseball is not considered interstate commerce (and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law), despite baseball's own references to itself as an "industry" rather than a "sport."
The production/multimedia wing of MLB is New York-based MLB Advanced Media, which oversees MLB.com and all 30 of the individual teams' websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the League itself, but it is indeed 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.
Current Major Leagues
The Major League regular season runs from late March or early April to late September or early October. Players and teams prepare for the season in spring training, primarily in Florida and Arizona, during February and March. Three rounds of playoffs follow the regular season, culminating in the World Series in late October or early November.
At the time of writing the Commissioner of Baseball, Bud Selig, has often floated the idea of international expansion and realignment of the major leagues. At the moment, however, the major leagues are each split into three divisions, and structured as listed in the table below.
In all there are 30 teams in the two leagues: 16 in the older National League ("NL") and 14 in the American League ("AL"). Each has its teams split into three divisions grouped generally by geography. They are (number of teams in each division in parenthesis): NL East (5), NL Central (6), NL West (5), AL East (5), AL Central (5) and AL West (4).
Each team's regular season consists of 162 games, a duration established in 1961 in the American League and 1962 in the National League. From 1904 into the early 1960s, except for 1919, a 154-game schedule was played in both leagues (7 opponents X 22 games apiece). Expansion from 8 to 10 teams in each league in the early 1960s resulted in a revised schedule of 162 games (9 opponents X 18 games apiece, initially) in their expansion years, for the American in 1961 and the National in 1962. The number of games per opponent now varies depending on various factors, but the total number of games has been kept at 162.
Unplanned shortened seasons were played in 1918 due to the outbreak of World War I, and in 1972, 1981, 1994 and 1995 due to player strikes and lockouts. A 140 game schedule (7 X 20) was played in 1919, and the schedule before 1904 varied from year to year.
Games are played predominantly against teams within each league through an unbalanced schedule which heavily favors intra-divisional play. In 1997 Major League Baseball introduced interleague play, which was criticized by the sport's purists but has since proven very popular with most fans. The interleague games are confined to the mid-summer months. Typically many intra-division games are scheduled toward the end of the season, anticipating the possibility of close divisional races and heightened fan interest.
Each year in June, Major League Baseball conducts a draft for first year players who have never signed a Major or Minor League contract. The MLB Draft is among the least followed of the professional sports drafts in the United States. |
