Since being dubbed the American national pastime, baseball has captivated American and international audiences for over a century. Americans have played baseball in one form or another since the early 19th century, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.
Everybody who is a baseball fan believes that Abner Doubleday invented the sport in the small New York community of Cooperstown, New York, in the 1830s. In 1875 the National League for Professional Baseball Clubs, which now would be consider just the NL was created. Since the 1960s, baseball has expanded its scope internationally, establishing teams in Canada, and drawing great players from all over the Caribbean and Latin America, and more recently, Japan and South Korea.
With the addition of teams first in 1961-62 and then 1969, baseball expanded its post season to add a round of league playoffs. After rounds of expansion in 1977 and 1993, baseball’s post season added another level of games in 1994 (although not played until 1995), when the leagues were restructured into three divisions each...