Moment #93: The Doubleheader Falls out of Fashion | MLB's ALL-TIME MOMENTS

This MLB offseason, we are starting a countdown of the 100 greatest moments in baseball history. These moments helped make the game what it is today. They all had an impact in the short or long term and endure to this day in the hearts and minds of baseball fans everywhere. We start with #93: the slow, painful death of a feature that was once a staple of baseball, the doubleheader.

Doubleheaders used to be a feature central to the sport as about one-third of games in the National League were a result of doubleheaders in 1956, while 26.5% of AL games were a result of doubleheaders that same year. Chris Jaffe of theHardball Timesdid a deep dive into the history of doubleheaders and realized this marked the beginning of the decline of baseball double dips. Chicago Cubs legend Ernie Banks, famous for saying, "Let's Play Two", referring to doubleheaders, would be disappointed.

As people began spending more money on entertainment in the 1970s, the need for scheduled doubleheaders was very low. If a team could sell tickets without any gimmicks normally included in a doubleheader, such as Disco Demolition Night mentioned earlier in this book, there was no reason for them to not sell as many individual-game tickets as they could. As a result, by 1973, neither league saw doubleheaders account for more than 16% of their games, marking a trend that nearly cut the number of such games in half in a 17-year span.

As Jaffe also points out, the Dodgers led the crusade against the doubleheader. They rarely scheduled them and they rarely had to make home games up, since the chance of a rainout in Los Angeles is very low. So, they predictably barely ever played in doubleheaders. Teams like the Mariners, who played in a dome stadium at that time, followed suit, and practically any team that could avoid scheduling doubleheaders did.

Perhaps a minor detail helping lead to this decline was also the Dodgers and Giants' move out West in 1958, which created far fewer rainouts. In New York, weather could often be unpredictable, leading to several rainouts a season. In California, each team can go full seasons without seeing a home game get rained out.

Teams popping up in San Diego, Oakland, and Anaheim in that time has also likely helped contribute to the death of the doubleheader. April is the only time of the baseball season where showers are reasonably possible in those areas of the country, so if they get through the season's first month without a rainout, they're unlikely to have a home one all year.

Of course, rainouts only accounted for a small percentage of doubleheaders, with most being scheduled on Sundays. Now, however, most doubleheaders are only played as a result of a rainout. Unless it's absolutely necessary, teams don't have doubleheaders anymore. They certainly don't schedule them like they used to. Aside from the Rays who scheduled a few doubleheaders in 2017 as a single-admission promotion to sell seats, MLB didn't schedule a doubleheader between 2012 and 2017. The Rays are always near the bottom of the league in terms of attendance, so it's no wonder they would try to provide more value to a prospective fan. If you can get into two games for the price of one, you're more likely to go.

That brings us to a more important question: is the baseball doubleheader truly dead or just currently in hibernation? While teams certainly won't schedule doubleheaders to make money anymore, the league could have another motivation behind scheduling more doubleheaders: shortening the season.

Routinely, the World Series works its way into early November now when it could reasonably snow in many major baseball cities. If MLB wanted to chop a couple of weeks off its regular season and truly start the playoffs at the outset of October, they could schedule more doubleheaders.

By scheduling more doubleheaders during the season, the league could both start the playoffs a week earlier and get players a few more off days over the course of the year. If every team had 10 scheduled doubleheaders on their schedule, that would account for 20 games, about 12% of teams' games. Theoretically, this could allow for 3-5 more off days during the year and Wild Card games could be played in late September, with League Divisional Series' being started right at the beginning of October.

A move like this could potentially hurt owners' bottom lines, so that's a reason to doubt something like this will ever happen. However, if 2020's expanded playoffs are a sign of things to come, that could help change their tune.

While 2020's strange 7-inning doubleheaders may help resurrect interest a bit, it looks like the doubleheader is dying, but it's still not yet on its last breath.