by Chris Messner

Created on: August 08, 2011

If you really like baseball, then you could follow it year-round, right? I'm not saying that major leaguers could or should play all year; of course they shouldn't, and you can bet that not only would they not want to, but their union would never allow it. However, when the professional leagues in North America end, there are all kinds of off-season baseball to follow.

You've got the winter leagues in Central and South America, and you've got college baseball, which typically starts in January, and you've got the Arizona Fall League. Arizona has got to be a baseball paradise.

In the late '80s, there was even a brief Senior Professional League in Arizona. The league was a few teams made up of retired major and minor league players, but it just didn't catch on.

Is the major-league season too long? Well, that depends on how much you like baseball, and probably how well your team has done during the year..

Before 1961, each league had 8 teams, and each team played all the other teams in their league 22 times, for a total of 154 games per year. The two teams that finished first in each league, which was known back then as "winning the pennant", would then play each other in the best-of-7 World Series.

In 1961, the American League added the Los Angeles Angels and the "expansion" Washington Senators, with the previous version of the Senators moving to Minneapolis to become the Minnesota Twins. The National League followed suit in 1962 by adding the New York Mets and the Houston Colt 45s.

After that first round of expansion, each team played all the other teams in their league 18 times, which tallies to 162 games per year. Then the two league winners played the World Series.

Both leagues expanded in 1969, with the AL adding the Kansas City Royals (the Athletics moved from KC to Oakland after the 1967 season) and the Seattle Pilots, and the NL adding the Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres. This round of expansion was especially significant, because both leagues split out 6 teams each into an East and West Division, with teams playing others in its division 18 times, and all teams in the other division 12 times. This expansion created the need for a League Championship Series between the division winners in each league, with the LCS winners playing the World Series. The LCS was a best-of-5 series until 1985. Since then, it has been a best-of-7 series.

Further expansion in 1977 and 1993 eventually resulted in the addition of a Central Division in each league, with

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