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Major League Baseball
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Compared with the present day, games in the early part of the 20th century were lower scoring and pitchers were more successful. The "inside game", whose nature was to "scratch for runs", was played more violently and aggressively than it is today. Ty Cobb said of his era especially, "Baseball is something like a war!" This period, which has since become known as the "dead-ball era", ended in the 1920s with several rule changes that gave advantages to hitters and the rise of the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth, who showed the world what power hitting could produce, altering the nature of the game. Two of the changes introduced were a move to bring the outfield fences closer to the infield in the largest parks, and an introduction of extremely strict rules governing the size, shape and construction of the ball, causing it to travel farther when hit; the aggregate result of these two changes was to enable batters to hit many more home runs.
In 1884, African American Moses Walker (and, briefly, his brother Welday)
had played for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the major league American Association.
An injury ended Walker's major league career, and by the early 1890s, a
"gentlemen's agreement" in the form of the baseball color line effectively
barred African-American players from the majors and their affiliated minor
leagues, resulting in the formation of several Negro Leagues. The first
crack in the agreement occurred in 1946, when Jackie Robinson was signed
by the National League's Brooklyn Dodgers and began playing for their minor
league team in Montreal. Finally, in 1947, the major leagues' color barrier
was broken when Robinson debuted with the Dodgers. Although the transformation
was not instantaneous, baseball has since become fully integrated.
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Major League baseball finally made it to the West Coast of the United States in 1958, when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants relocated to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively. The first American League team on the West Coast was the Los Angeles Angels, who were founded as an expansion team in 1961.
Pitchers dominated the game in the 1960s and early 1970s. In the early 1970s the designated hitter (DH) rule was proposed. The American League adopted this rule in 1973, though pitchers still bat for themselves in the National League to this day. The DH rule now constitutes the primary difference between the two leagues.
Despite the popularity of baseball, and the attendant high salaries relative to those of average Americans, the players have become dissatisfied from time to time, as they believed the owners had too much control and retained an unfair share of the money. Various job actions have occurred throughout the game's history. Players on specific teams occasionally attempted strikes, but usually came back when their jobs were sufficiently threatened. The throwing of the 1919 World Series, the "Black Sox scandal", was in some sense a "strike" or at least a rebellion by the ballplayers against a perceived stingy owner. But the strict rules of baseball contracts tended to keep the players "in line" in general.
This began to change in 1966 when former United Steelworkers chief economist (and assistant to the president) Marvin Miller became the Baseball Players Union executive director. The union became much stronger than it had been previously, especially when the reserve clause was effectively nullified in the mid-1970s. Conflicts between owners and the players' union led to major work stoppages in 1972, 1981, and 1994. The 1994 baseball strike led to the cancellation of the World Series, and was not settled until the spring of 1995. During this period, as well, many of the functions — such as player discipline and umpire supervision — and regulations that had been administered separately by the two major leagues' administrations were united under the rubric of Major League Baseball.
1995 was the year Cal Ripken, Jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive
game, breaking Lou Gehrig's record. The number of home runs increased dramatically
after the strike. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both broke Roger Maris's
long-standing single season home run record in 1998. In 2001, Barry Bonds
established the current record of 73 home runs in a single season. In 2007,
Bonds became MLB's all-time home run leader, surpassing Hank Aaron's total
of 755. Even though all three sluggers (McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds) have
been accused in the steroid-abuse scandal of the mid-2000s, their feats
did do a lot at the time to bolster the game's renewed popularity.