When Will the 2020 MLB Season Begin? (Poll)

[DrungoHazewood]

On 4/5/2020 at 12:44 PM, tntoriole said:

Hard to know, but this could very well be the only baseball season ever cancelled since the founding of the MLB structure in 1903...I hope not....no matter how short....

This would be the only MLB season ever cancelled since the start of professional sports leagues. In the 1800s sometimes teams now classified as major league gave up and quit at some point in the season.  For who knows what reason the powers-that-be keep pretending that the 1884 UA St. Paul team was major league even though they quit after eight games in a league that had one halfway decent team.

And there were minor leagues that closed up shop part way through the year in the 20th century.  I'm pretty sure there were indy leagues in the 1990s or even early 2000s that failed in mid-season.

There had to have been minor leagues that didn't play because of WWII.  And there were almost certainly minor leagues in the 1950s that went bankrupt just as the season was about to start.  In 1948 there were 62 professional leagues in the US.  By 1958 that was down to 27.

[DrungoHazewood]

I don't know why this never occurred to me before now, but the experience with the minors in the late 40s and early 50s might be a lesson that helps inform us about the plans to contract some teams in the minors.  As I mentioned in the previous post, in a 10-year period we went from 62 professional leagues to 27.  Literally ~7000 minor league playing jobs and something like 300 managerial jobs, and some larger number of coaching jobs disappeared.  Not to mention the beer vendors and ticket takers and the like. 

The Illinos-Indiana-Iowa (Three-I) League had been in business since 1901, closed up shop after 1961.  Places like Davenport and Terra Haute had teams for generations.  The Evangeline League in Louisiana was similar.  Several leagues out in West Texas and New Mexico.  They all disappeared.  Joe Bauman hit 72 homers in a season for Roswell in the Longhorn League in '54.  By '56 there was no Longhorn League.  Most of these places lost their team, and never got one back. 

[UpstateNYfan]

On 4/5/2020 at 7:53 PM, accinfo said:

You know I don't think that idea is that horrible.  It would be easier to gear up pitchers to a 5 inning game.  Sure this season and everything involved will be an outlier forever. There is nothing that can be done now to change that.  

Couldn't you make it at least as many innings as a Little League game?? Two times through the line up. You'd also have to be creative on extra innings as has been discussed here a few times.