[Alberta's Child]

A while back I read a fascinating article about the history of doubleheaders in baseball. Apparently they didn't exist in the very early days of organized baseball in the 1800s, but started to appear in the 1880s and 1890s. It was simply the baseball equivalent of the "2-for-1 special" in retail trade. Smart team executives scheduled doubleheaders as a way to attract fans to games involving terrible teams. They figured they'd get more fans to a doubleheader between the Yankees and a perennial basement-dweller than they would get for two separate games.

Later, they became almost a necessity for a 154-game schedule because teams traveled by between cities and needed a lot of off-days in their schedule to get to places like Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis. That all changed with air travel, even with teams spread all over the country.

[jjotto]

Today, a lot of things like the designated hitter and doubleheaders are governed by the Major League Players Association agreements. Players need to hear about it if things are to change back.