2003 Major League Baseball

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The 2003 Major League Baseball season was the fourth season in which the two major leagues, the National League and the American League, were consolidated into a single entity under the authority of the Commissioner, Bud Selig.

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Events[edit]

In 2003, Major League Baseball, which owned the Montreal Expos forced them to play a number of games away from home, in Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In spite of that marked disadvantage, the Expos were in the thick of the wild card race until mid-September, until a last series of "home games" in Puerto Rico and the refusal by MLB to allow them to call up extra players in September proved too much to overcome. The Florida Marlins ended up winning the wild card spot, and took that all the way to an unlikely World Series title over the New York Yankees.

The Bereavement list was created before the season, allowing teams the opportunity to grant a player a short leave and replacing him on the active roster in case of an unfortunate event affecting close family members. That year, MLB also introduced QuesTec, an automated system to judge balls and strikes; this was done as a means to rate umpires consistency in this domain against an objective standard.

Umpires[edit]

See also[edit]

Further Reading[edit]

  • Will Leitch: "From Boone's heroics to Bartman: 2003 was wild: The baseball world has changed dramatically since that year", mlb.com, March 30, 2020.