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Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball. More specifically, Major League Baseball refers to the organization that operates North American professional baseball's two major leagues, the National League and the American League, by means of a joint organizational structure which has existed between them since 1903. Major League Baseball teams play a 162 game season. The American League operates under the Designated Hitter Rule, but the National League does not (inter-league, all-star and World Series game rules are determined by the home team's league rules). In 2000, the American and National Leagues were officially disbanded as separate legal entities with all rights and functions consolidated in the commissioner's office. MLB effectively operates as a single league and as such it constitutes one of the major professional sports leagues of North America.

Major League Baseball is controlled by an agreement that has undergone several incarnations since 1876, then called the NL Constitution, with the most recent revisions being made in 2005. Major League Baseball, under the direction of its Commissioner, Bud Selig, hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts. As is the case for most North American sports leagues, the 'closed shop' aspect of MLB effectively prevents the yearly promotion and relegation of teams into and out of the Major League by virtue of their performance.

MLB maintains a unique, controlling relationship over the sport, including most aspects of minor league baseball. This is due in large part to a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League which held that baseball is not interstate commerce and therefore not subject to federal antitrust law despite baseball's own references to itself as an "industry" rather than a "sport." This ruling has been weakened only slightly in subsequent years.[1] [2]

The production/multimedia wing of MLB is New York-based MLB Advanced Media which oversees MLB.com and all 30 of the individual teams' websites. Its charter states that MLB Advanced Media holds editorial independence from the League itself, but it is indeed under the same ownership group and revenue-sharing plan. MLB Productions is a similarly-structured wing of the league, focusing on video and traditional broadcast media.In Major League BaseBaseball payrolls are mostly funded privately, but also are partially funded through taxes by the public.

The Commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, has often floated the idea of international expansion and realignment of the major leagues. At the moment, however, the two major leagues are each split into three divisions and structured as listed in the tables above.

In all, there are 30 teams in the two leagues: 16 in the older National League ("NL") and 14 in the American League ("AL"). The leagues do not have the same number of teams because an odd number of teams would force at least one team to be off every day, or play a team from the opposite league. Each has its teams split into three divisions grouped generally by geography. They are (number of teams in each division in parenthesis): NL East (5), NL Central (6), NL West (5), AL East (5), AL Central (5), and AL West (4).

Each team's regular season consists of 162 games, a duration established in 1961 in the American League and 1962 in the National League. From 1904 into the early 1960s, except for 1919, a 154-game schedule was played in both leagues (7 opponents X 22 games apiece). Expansion from 8 to 10 teams in each league in the early 1960s resulted in a revised schedule of 162 games (9 opponents X 18 games apiece, initially) in their expansion years, for the American League in 1961 and the National League in 1962. Although the schedule remains at 162 games to this day, the layout of games played was changed when Divisional play began in 1969, so that teams played more games against opponents within their own division than against the other divisions or (beginning in 1997) the other league.

View of a night game at Yankee Stadium, between the New York Yankees and the Minnesota Twins.Unplanned shortened seasons were played in 1918 due to the United States entering World War I, and in 1972, 1981, 1994 and 1995 due to player strikes and lockouts. A 140-game schedule (7 X 20) was played in 1919, due to the influenza outbreak, and the schedule before 1904 varied from year to year.

Games are played predominantly against teams within each league through an unbalanced schedule which heavily favors intra-divisional play. In 1997, Major League Baseball introduced interleague play, which was criticized by the sport's purists but has since proven very lucrative to the franchises. [citation needed] The interleague games are confined to the mid-summer months. Typically many intra-division games are scheduled toward the end of the season, anticipating the possibility of close divisional races and heightened fan interest.

Each year in June, Major League Baseball conducts a draft for first-year players who have never signed a Major or Minor League contract. The Major League Baseball Draft is among the least followed of the professional sports drafts in the United States, possibly because other professional sports drafts feature players who will immediately start to play for the team they are drafted by that next year, whereas the MLB has an extensive minor league system to help players mature and hone their skills to be able to compete with those in the major leagues.

For a detailed history of the length of the regular season, see Major League Baseball season.

[edit] Team names and colors In American professional sports (and usually amateur sports as well), a generally standardized and marketing-oriented structure has evolved for the names and colors, and thus the identies of individual clubs. The structure involves three elements: a geographical designator, traditionally the name of the team's city, although in recent decades the team's state or region has sometimes been used; a nickname, usually connected with either a mascot, the team's colors, or a feature unique to the region or to the club; and team colors a carryover from heraldry. This approach contrasts with some non-American sports, such as European soccer, in which team names need not necessarily follow a particular pattern, or Asian professional baseball, which generally follows a "corporate sponsor" name followed by a "nickname". The pattern began with early organized baseball clubs and has been extended from there to almost all U.S. professional clubs.

Originally, gentlemen's athletic clubs were key movers in the development of organized baseball, so early prominent teams were simply named after the clubs that formed them: Athletic Club, Mutual Club, Olympic Club, Forest City Club, Kekionga Club, Atlantic Club, Western Club. By 1871, with the formation of the National Association, clubs no longer just competed with local rivals, but with the best clubs from other cities around the northeast. Thus, geographic designators were sometimes added, establishing the now familiar pattern (only reversed): Athletic of Philadelphia, Mutual of New York, Olympic of Washington, Forest City of Cleveland, Kekionga of Fort Wayne, Atlantic of Brooklyn, Western of Keokuk.

By 1876, when the National League entered play, baseball clubs were no longer primarily associated with gentlemen's athletic clubs, and most of the original teams were named after the one uniform feature that served to distinguish them on the field - the color of their stockings. Thus: Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings, Hartford Dark Blues, Louisville Grays, St. Louis Brown Stockings. The 1876 New York and Philadelphia clubs still held over the traditional "Mutual" and "Athletic" names, and were usually so referenced in the standings. The plural usage seen sometimes, "Mutuals" or "Athletics", was equivalent to the "Chicagos" or the "Bostons". Modern historians have often retrofitted these names in the modern style, such as "New York Mutuals", which is technically incorrect. "Mutual" was the actual name of the team, and the club had separate "nicknames" that referred to the team colors in a given year, such as "Green Stockings". The Athletics name did persist, however, and the Philadelphia American League team would retain this name even through two relocations.

Throughout this period, club nicknames were ad hoc, bestowed and used at will by sportswriters and fans. Nicknames became associated with particular cities, and fans tended to refer to the local team by this name, even if it was not associated in a corporate fashion with its predecessor. Thus, multiple, unassociated teams used names such as Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, Cincinnati Red Stockings, St. Louis Brown Stockings, Louisville Grays, Baltimore Orioles, Milwaukee Brewers, and the like.

Early in the 20th century, the club nickname began to acquire a more important status, eventually an official status, being designated by the club ownership and ultimately used as part of the club's marketing efforts. Sometimes a club would change its nickname or adopt an official name that superseded one or more unofficial names in the past. An example would be the Boston Braves, who were tagged with various nicknames prior to officially adopting "Braves" as their name and mascot. Sometimes such a name change did not catch on with the press and public, which is why there is no longer a "Philadelphia Blue Jays" nor a "Boston Bees". The original Washington Senators were officially the "Washington Nationals" for many decades, but the alternate nickname "Senators" persisted, "Nationals" faded, and the team finally, officially became the "Senators" in the late 1950s. (With modern marketing strategies, such a fate is less likely to befall the current Washington Nationals.)

In contrast, the Brooklyn Dodgers began by adopting the old "Atlantic" designation, then were dubbed the "Bridegrooms" for a while, then the "Trolley Dodgers", then the "Superbas", then the "Robins" (for their manager, Wilbert Robinson), although the alternate nickname "Dodgers" persisted from the moment the team acquired that tag. The Dodgers did not actually put that name on their uniforms until the 1930s. Sometimes teams have changed their nicknames for marketing or other reasons. For example, the Houston Colt .45s became the Houston Astros (short for originally Astronauts) in 1965.

Team colors are sometimes tied in with a team's name, and occasionally they are changed for marketing reasons. One of the most striking examples of the latter was in 1963, when flamboyant owner Charles O. Finley changed the Kansas City Athletics' uniforms from a traditional white/gray with blue and red trim to bright yellow with green trim, a move that sparked controversy, but also one that fit in with the new medium of color television. Before this, home uniforms in MLB were uniformly white with colored trim, while road uniforms were uniformly gray; afterwards many teams displayed a variety of color schemes, notably the Houston Astros and San Diego Padres.

The Chicago Cubs have periodically worn a bright blue top on the road since 1982, whereas the Chicago White Sox have changed colors many times during that interval, at one or another time wearing navy blue, red, royal blue, and white stockings. In recent years the team has worn black hosiery.

Baseball teams names often bear resemblance or inspired the names of other sports teams, especially football teams. For example: New York Giants (baseball, now the San Francisco Giants) and the New York Giants (football); Chicago Cubs (baseball) and the Chicago Bears (football, supposedly because Bears owner George Halas reasoned football players were larger than baseball players); New York Mets (baseball), New York Jets (formally the New York Titans), and New York Nets (now the New Jersey Nets), Dallas Cowboys (the Dallas Cowboys were originally named the Dallas Rangers but a local minor league baseball took the name before the football club could make it official, so they changed their name to the Cowboys) and Texas Rangers (baseball, formally the Washington Senators); Detroit Tigers (baseball) and Detroit Lions (football); New York Yankees (baseball) and New York Yanks (which became the Dallas Texans which became the Baltimore Colts); the Boston Braves (baseball, now the Atlanta Braves) and the Boston Redskins (now the Washington Redskins); Brooklyn Dodgers (baseball, now Los Angeles Dodgers) and Brooklyn Dodgers (football, now defunct); Houston Astros (baseball) and Houston Rockets (basketball); Baltimore Orioles (baseball) and Baltimore Ravens (football); and Miami Dolphins (football) and Florida Marlins (baseball).

Interestingly, the St. Louis Cardinals (baseball) once played in the same city as the St. Louis Cardinals (football, now the Arizona Cardinals), but the teams were not named for each other. The St. Louis Cardinals baseball club always played in St. Louis and were originally the St. Louis Brown Stockings while the former St. Louis Cardinals football club (now the Arizona Cardinals) are the oldest American football team still in existence, were first known as the Racine Normals, then Racine Cardinals, then the Chicago Cardinals.