The Sports Calendar’s November Pivot

The Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners had histories that were both very different and yet quite the same. The Indians were one of baseball’s oldest franchise. The Mariners, founded in the late 1970s, were a comparative newbie. But when it came to be strangers to October, they had a lot in common. Prior to 1995, […]

The Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds each ran away with their divisions in 1995, and each validated that performance with Division Series triumphs. Their battle in the 1995 National League Championship Series produced a good, exciting games. But that did not translate into a good, exciting series. Atlanta was the team who kept getting the […]

1995 marked a pivot point in baseball’s postseason. It was the first year the Division Series became a permanent feature on the October landscape. While this round had been used in 1981, that was a temporary remedy to deal with the effects of a lengthy midseason strike. It had been scheduled for return in 1994 […]

1995 was the first year the Division Series became a permanent fixture on MLB’s postseason calendar. The format had been used only once before, in the strike-split season of 1981. It was also scheduled to debut as part of baseball’s new playoff structure in 1994 before the players’ strike cancelled the postseason entirely. Thus, the […]