The Strike
Baseball was marred this summer by a two month player's strike starting at 12:30 a.m. on June 12 finally resuming play on August 10. In total seven hundred and six games were scrapped, about 38% of the schedule. A makeshift playoffs were agreed upon by the owners pitting the first and second half winners leaving the team with the best overall record, the Cincinnati Reds (66–42), out of the postseason.
The series is sometimes called "The World Series that Never Was." This refers to the fact that the team with the best overall record (as previously mentioned), the Cincinnati Reds did not make the playoffs due to a modified playoff schedule established by the Commissioner Bowie Kuhn due to a midseason strike. In the NL East, the St. Louis Cardinals had the best overall record, but failed to make the playoffs after finishing second in each half.
Read more about this topic: 1981 World Series, Background
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“An angry fist will not strike a smiling face.”
—Chinese proverb.
“It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth 150 years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to listen, for now he is doubting our whole system of evidence.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)