Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

See Also

See Also in This Set

Baseball

Baseball strike of 1994

Sports

The 1990s in America

Baseball realignment

by William H. Hoffman

The Event Major League Baseball’s reorganization of leagues and expansion of the playoff system

Date 1994

In undergoing realignment, Major League Baseball broke with tradition and laid the groundwork for future expansion and interleague play.

By realigning the American League (AL) and National League (NL), baseball officials ended the two-division arrangement that had existed since 1969. Under the new plan, each league divided its fourteen teams into three divisions: Western, Eastern, and the newly created Central Division. The three division champions and the team with the next best record (the wild-card team) advanced to a best-of-five playoff series. The respective winners from each league continued on to the AL and NL League Championship Series, with the winners moving on to the World Series. The plan also opened the door for regular season interleague games, as officials sought to exploit geographic rivalries (such as Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox). In addition, the plan corrected some long-standing geographical oddities by moving Atlanta from the Western Division to the Eastern and St. Louis and the Chicago Cubs from the Eastern to the Central Division.

The old alignment was as follows: AL Western—California, Chicago White Sox, Kansas City, Minnesota, Oakland, Seattle, Texas; AL Eastern—Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York Yankees, Toronto; NL Western—Atlanta, Cincinnati, Colorado, Houston, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego, San Francisco; NL Eastern—Chicago Cubs, Florida, Montreal, New York Mets, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis.

The new alignment became the following: AL West—California, Oakland, Seattle, Texas; AL Central—Chicago White Sox, Cleveland, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minnesota; AL East—Baltimore, Boston, Detroit, New York Yankees, Toronto; NL West—Colorado, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco; NL Central—Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati, Houston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis; NL East—Atlanta, Florida, Montreal, New York Mets, Philadelphia.

In giving the game a facelift, baseball officials hoped to counter the growing competition from other major sports leagues, particularly professional football and basketball. They also looked to avoid the prospect of declining network television revenues, which threatened to exacerbate the sport’s serious financial problems. In doing so, officials shunned the arguments of baseball traditionalists who claimed that the owners were diminishing the importance of the regular season in favor of more playoffs simply for the purpose of creating additional sources of revenue. As it turned out, the plan was not fully implemented in the 1994 season, since the players’ strike on August 12 led to the cancellation of the remainder of the season, including the entire postseason.

Impact

Major League Baseball’s decision to realign leagues underscored the game’s growing dependency on television broadcast revenues. The plan followed in the footsteps of other major professional sports to restructure leagues and expand playoff systems to meet the expense of burgeoning payrolls.

Further Reading

1 

Chass, Murray. “Our Irrational Pastime: Division Setup Still Not Set Up.” The New York Times, January 11, 1994, p. B10.

2 

Costas, Bob. Fair Ball: A Fan’s Case for Baseball. New York: Broadway Books. 2000.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Hoffman, William H. "Baseball Realignment." The 1990s in America, edited by Milton Berman, Salem Press, 2009. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=1990_1051.
APA 7th
Hoffman, W. H. (2009). Baseball realignment. In M. Berman (Ed.), The 1990s in America. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Hoffman, William H. "Baseball Realignment." Edited by Milton Berman. The 1990s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2009. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.