The 1984 Baseball Season: The Playoff Teams & October Battles

Tiger excellence and Cubbie heartbreak. In a nutshell, that’s the story of the 1984 baseball season. But the buildup to both had so much more. In TheSportsNotebook.com’s series of articles you’ll read about the following…

*Detroit blazed out of the gate at a history-making pace and ran off with the tough AL East. Revisit the most important players and those times in the early summer months when it still looked like the race might tighten.

*The Cubs used a flurry of trades, including a big one in June that decisively changed the course of the season. They had to fight off a determined New York Mets team that was on the rise, to win the NL East.

*San Diego was quietly improving under manager Dick Williams and a great young outfielder in Tony Gwynn. Read how the Padres pulled away to take the NL West.

*While these three teams were MLB’s best—the Tigers in a class by themselves, with the Cubs/Padres on the next tier, the most exciting race in the regular season was the pursuit of the AL West title. Read how the Kansas City Royals survived a fight with the Twins and Angels to prevail. It was a race based on shared mediocrity, but it was a race nonetheless.

*Then it’s time to go game-by-game into all three postseason series, which all served to validate the conclusions of the regular season. Detroit solidified their excellence. Chicago and San Diego played an NLCS that had a dramatic finish over an unforgettable Saturday night and Sunday afternoon in SoCal.

The seven articles below serve to tell the story of the 1984 baseball season through the eyes of its best teams.

READ ABOUT THE 1984 DETROIT TIGERS
READ ABOUT THE 1984 KANSAS CITY ROYALS
READ ABOUT THE 1984 CHICAGO CUBS
READ ABOUT THE 1984 SAN DIEGO PADRES

READ ABOUT THE 1984 ALCS
READ ABOUT THE 1984 NLCS
READ ABOUT THE 1984 WORLD SERIES