| Baseball History |
National League of Baseball Clubs!
The term National League generally refers to the organization
more properly referred to as the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs,
the older (founded on February 2, 1876) of the two leagues constituting Major
League Baseball in the United States and Canada. (The other major league is the
American League.) Beginning with the 1903 season, the regular season champions
of the two leagues have met annually in the World Series, with the exception of
1904 and 1994.
After the absorption of the American Association by the League in 1892, the
temporarily-redubbed "National League and American Association" was the only
Major League until the American League rose to Major League status in 1901.
The National League in 1876 consisted of eight teams, six of which were
previously members of the defunct National Association. The teams were: the
Chicago White Stockings, the St. Louis Brown Stockings, the Hartford Dark Blues,
the Boston Red Caps, the Louisville Grays, the New York Mutuals, the
Philadelphia Athletics, and the Cincinnati Reds (not the same as the modern
Reds, who began play in 1882 as the Red Stockings and joined the National League
in 1890). Of these teams, only the White Stockings (now the Chicago Cubs) and
the Red Caps (now the Atlanta Braves) have survived to the present day.
The National League, which for the first 93 years of its existence competed
equally in a single grouping, re-organized into two divisions of 6 teams (East
and West) in 1969, with the division champions meeting in the National League
Championship Series (an additional round of postseason competition) for the
right to advance to the World Series. Beginning with the 1994 season, the league
has been divided into three divisions (East, West, and Central), with the
addition of a Wild Card team (the team with the best record among those
finishing in second place) to enable four teams to advance to the preliminary
Division Series.
The National League is also known as the Senior Circuit, due to the fact that it
has existed 25 years longer than the American League. Often characterized as
being a more "traditional" or "pure" league, the National League (as of 2005 at
least) has never adopted the designated hitter rule as did the AL during the
1970s. In theory, this means the role of the NL manager is somewhat expanded in
comparison to the AL, because the manager must take offense into account when
making pitching substitutions and vice versa. There are perceived to be fewer
home runs and big offensive plays due to the presence of the pitcher in the
batting order, although this is not always the case.
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