Professional Baseball · Est. 1903 · New York, NY · 30 Teams
Major League Baseball
Season Calendar
The MLB season is the longest in American professional sports, stretching from late March through early November. Each of the thirty teams plays 162 games across roughly 183 days — a schedule so punishing that it functions as its own kind of truth serum, exposing pretenders by June and revealing contenders through the dog days of August. Spring Training begins in mid-February across the Cactus League in Arizona and the Grapefruit League in Florida, serving as both preparation and pilgrimage.
The All-Star break in mid-July provides a brief intermission, capped by the Home Run Derby and the Midsummer Classic itself. The trade deadline in late July reshapes rosters for the October push, and the regular season concludes on the final Sunday of September before the postseason begins.
Team Format
Each team carries a 26-man active roster during the regular season, expanding to 28 in September for the stretch run. The 40-man roster encompasses players on the major-league squad and those protected from the Rule 5 Draft on minor-league assignments. Unlike most American leagues, MLB operates without a salary cap — instead, a luxury tax penalizes teams whose payrolls exceed a collectively bargained threshold, creating a soft spending ceiling that the wealthiest franchises routinely surpass.
The MLB Draft, held each July, selects amateur players from high schools, colleges, and junior colleges across twenty rounds. Thirty franchises are divided between the American League and National League, each containing three five-team divisions: East, Central, and West.
Game Format
Baseball is played between two teams of nine players on a diamond-shaped field with bases set ninety feet apart. The offensive team sends batters to home plate to face the pitcher, who throws from a raised mound sixty feet and six inches away. Batters attempt to hit the ball into fair territory and advance around four bases to score runs. Three outs retire a side, and nine innings constitute a regulation game, with extra innings played until a winner emerges.
The designated hitter rule, now universal across both leagues since 2022, allows a tenth player to bat in place of the pitcher. The pitch clock, introduced in 2023, gives pitchers fifteen seconds to deliver with empty bases and twenty seconds with runners on, dramatically improving the pace of play. Shift restrictions require two infielders on each side of second base, restoring the traditional geometry of the diamond.
Key Rules
The strike zone — the area over home plate between the batter’s knees and the midpoint of the torso — is the fulcrum on which every at-bat turns. A count of four balls awards the batter first base; three strikes retire him, with foul balls counting as strikes only through the second. The infield fly rule prevents fielders from deliberately dropping pop-ups to turn easy double plays, while the balk rule constrains a pitcher’s motion to prevent deceptive pickoff attempts.
Instant replay review allows managers to challenge most on-field calls, with a replay operations center in New York adjudicating disputes. Interference, obstruction, and neighborhood play rules govern the contact between runners and fielders on the basepaths. The check-swing appeal — where a half-swing is judged by the first- or third-base umpire — remains one of the most subjective and hotly debated calls in the sport.
Playoff Format
Twelve teams qualify for the MLB postseason: the three division winners and three Wild Card teams from each league. The Wild Card round is a best-of-three series hosted entirely by the higher seed, followed by the Division Series (best-of-five), the League Championship Series (best-of-seven), and the World Series (best-of-seven).
The expanded twelve-team bracket, introduced in 2022, has injected late-season urgency into cities that once surrendered hope by the All-Star break. The World Series, baseball’s Fall Classic, remains one of the most storied events in sports — a best-of-seven test of pitching depth, managerial nerve, and the kind of moment-to-moment tension that only a sport with no clock can produce. The Commissioner’s Trophy is awarded to the victors on the field, typically in late October or early November.