1919 Major League Baseball season

The 1919 Major League Baseball season, is best remembered for the Black Sox Scandal, in which the Chicago White Sox threw (purposely lost) the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, 5–3, in order to illegally gain money from gambling. This scandal resulted in the dissolution of the National Baseball Commission and the creation of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball. The new commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, banned eight players from baseball for life.[1] The season began on April 19, 1919, when the Brooklyn Robins defeated the Boston Braves 5–2 at Braves Field in the first game of a doubleheader.[2] The regular season ended on September 29 with the New York Yankees defeating the Philadelphia Athletics 4–2 at Shibe Park,[3] with the infamous 1919 World Series opening two days later in Cincinnati.

Each team played a 140-game schedule, facing the seven other teams in the same league 20 times apiece. A 140-game schedule had last been used in 1903; the 154-game schedule was re-instituted in 1920.