SYDNEY, Jan 31 AAP – Melbourne and Sydney will rekindle an old rivalry this week, with the Aces and Blue Sox doing battle in the Australian Baseball League post-season for a chance to reach the championship series.

General Information

Baseball, widely known as America’s pastime, is well-established in several other countries as well. The history of baseball in Canada has remained closely linked with that of the sport in the United States. The first formal baseball league outside of the United States and Canada was founded in 1878 in Cuba. The Dominican Republic held its first island wide championship tournament in 1912. Professional baseball tournaments and leagues began to form in other countries between the world wars, including the Netherlands, Australia, Japan, Mexico , and Puerto Rico. The Japanese major leagues—the Central League and Pacific League—have long been considered the highest quality professional circuits outside of the United States. Japan has a professional minor league system as well, though it is much smaller than the American version—each team has only one farm club in contrast to MLB teams’ four or five.

Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball & the most recognised & highly regarded competition in the world. It is currently composed of 30 teams—29 in the United States and 1 in Canada (the Toronto Blue Jays). Major League Baseball is divided into two leagues, the American League, with fourteen teams, and the National League, with sixteen teams. Each league is further subdivided into three divisions, labeled East, Central, and West. The unequal balance of teams, into even-sized leagues, prevents the need for interleague games (which two odd-sized fifteen-team leagues would have) to fill schedules.

Each season consists of 162 games (with an additional game, or games, in case of a tie breaker needed to determine postseason participation), which generally begins on the first Sunday in April and ends on the first Sunday in October, with the postseason played in October and sometimes into early November.

When the regular season ends after the first Sunday in October (or the last Sunday in September), eight teams enter the post-season playoffs. Six teams are division champions; the remaining two “wild-card” spots are filled by the team in each league that has the best record but is not a division champion (best second-place team). Three rounds of series of games are played to determine the champion:

American League Division Series and National League Division Series, each a best-of-five game series; American League Championship Series and National League Championship Series, each a best-of-seven game series played between the surviving teams from the ALDS and NLDS; and World Series, a best-of-seven game series played between the champions of each league. Current Major League Baseball Franchises are:

American League

East – Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays

Central – Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Twins

West – Los Angeles Angels, Oakland Athletics, Seattle Mariners, Texas Rangers

National League

East – Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, New York Mets, Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Nationals

Central – Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Pittsburgh Pirates, St Louis Cardinals

West – Arizona Diamondbacks, Colorado Rockies, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants