The 1981 Major League Baseball season began with Fernandomania and ended with a classic World Series matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees — Mike Schmidt slugged his way to a second consecutive Most Valuable Player award and Nolan Ryan pitched another no-hitter.
However, perhaps the best way to describe baseball in 1981 is by recounting Pete Rose’s pursuit of the National League’s (NL) career hits record. He tied the record in June, but then had to wait until August to break it — because a strike shut down the sport for about two months.
All Rose could do was make regular visits to the batting cage while he waited.
“I went there every freaking day,” Rose said.
If baseball is able to come back at all this year, fans should be prepared for a significantly shortened season, and that 1981 campaign might be the most relevant comparison available.
The 1981 season was split in two by a labor dispute, but when the sport finally returned, its stars still had an abbreviated chance to shine.
“The chaos, the change, the uniqueness, the intensity — all of those elements absolutely factor into how memorable that entire time is,” said Steve Rogers, the right-hander whose Montreal Expos made their first post-season appearance in 1981.
The early days of the 1981 season were dominated by Fernando Valenzuela. The Mexican rookie took Los Angeles by storm, winning his first eight starts for the Dodgers and throwing shutouts in five of them.
By the time that the strike began, Rose was in the spotlight. He was with defending champions the Philadelphia Phillies and on June 10, he entered their last game before the strike needing one hit to tie Stan Musial’s NL record of 3,630.
Ryan was on the mound against the Phillies and Rose tied the record with a first-inning single off him, but then Rose struck out in his next three chances against the Houston right-hander.
Rose finally broke the record on Aug. 10 against the St Louis Cardinals, in his team’s first game back.
Baseball’s first big event after the stoppage was the All-Star Game in Cleveland on Aug. 9. Schmidt homered in the eighth inning to give the NL a 5-4 win.
“That would have been my overall best year had we played a full season,” Schmidt said in an e-mail. “I was in the midst of my prime, especially following 1980. It really had nothing to do with a unique thing I did during the strike, actually I worked for CBS as a sports anchor. I did some working out with [Phillies reliever] Tug McGraw.”
Schmidt hit .316, with 31 home runs in 102 games.
Baseball-Reference.com credits him with 7.7 wins above replacement (WAR) that year. Last year — with a full season — only two NL players reached that WAR total.
If baseball’s start is delayed well into the summer, the season could be so short that the results seem tarnished.
“Is it really going to be a true champion?” Rose said. “The commissioner — boy, he’s got his work cut out for him.”
The format of baseball’s return might be of secondary concern. If the sport can be played safely, that would be a victory in itself.
“How would you contact trace if a player got the virus and was in a clubhouse?” Schmidt said. “If you need a number, and there was no problem playing the games, you probably could crown a world champion following a 60-game regular season — and a shortened post-season. It’s all about money and what everyone is willing to gamble to stop losing it.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier