By Woodrow Carroll
The 2020 Major League Baseball (MLB) season started last week, although under reduced circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The MLB season annually plays twice as many games as the typical National Hockey League or National Basketball Association with 162 games. The revised baseball schedule has been scaled back to 60 games. With the ongoing problems of the virus, we hope the present schedule can make it to the finish line.
More than any sport, baseball is statistically- driven. Attendance figures from last weekend’s home openers were off from last year, because no paying fans were allowed to attend games.
Persiflage aside, three games into this season no team had emerged unscathed. All 30 MLB teams’ records were either 2-1 or 1-2. Not since 1954 has at least one team failed to start 3-0, and, there were only 16 teams back then.
The Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, and Chicago White Sox didn’t start with spurts in 1954. Playing a 154-game schedule in 1954, the Indians finished with a record of 111-43 (.721), the Yankees 103-51 (.661), and the Sox 94-60 (.610).
The 94-60 record by the 1954 Sox was the same as the 1959 White Sox team which captured the American League championship by five games over the Indians. The 1954 Sox were 17 games behind the Indians and never in contention for the AL championship. As good as the 1954 Sox were, it didn’t save manager Paul Richards his job.
Richards came to the White Sox in 1951 and started the club on a 17-season winning run. From 1951 through 1967, the Sox finished on the good side of .500 in each season.
White Sox franchise history started in 1901 and it was not until 1951 that the Sox surpassed one Million in attendance. Winning will generate interest and Richards’ 1951 club’s record was 81-73 (.526) after 60-94 (.390) the previous year.
The 1951 Sox attracted 1,328,234 fans to Comiskey Park. Oddly enough the gate in 1951 was the best the franchise did until 1959 when the team drew 1,423,144. The 1951 Sox were better on the road, 49-28, than at home, 45-32.
• In his first six seasons with the White Sox, first baseman Jose Abreu drove in 611 runs, the most for any Sox player in his first six seasons with the Club. Abreu, 33, spent 10 seasons in Cuba before joining the Sox in 2014 and has been a bright light in the Sox struggles in recent seasons.
Abreu drove in the first Sox tally of the season Friday in a 10-5 loss to the Minnesota Twins. The Sox dropped two of three at home.
• With the Canadian government not allowing the Toronto Blue Jays to play home games because of COVID-19 concerns, there will be no operating franchise outside the U.S.. The Montreal Expos, with a 1969 start-up, were the first Canadian franchise. The Blue Jays came on line in 1977.
The Blue Jays will play home games in their AAA minor league park in Buffalo. There will be no minor league games this year. Buffalo is 105 miles by auto to Toronto and 62 miles by plane over the Niagara River. Buffalo is accessible to many MLB clubs.
The biggest concern is how to bring the virus under control. Sadly, answers are in short supply.