The 1998 Major League Baseball season ended with the New York Yankees defeating the San Diego Padres in Game 4 of the World Series.
The 1998 season was also marked by an expansion to 30 teams (16 in the NL, 14 in the AL), with two new teams–the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in the American League–added to the MLB. To keep the leagues with even numbers of teams[1] while allowing both leagues to have a new team, the Milwaukee Brewers were moved from the American League Central Division to the National League Central Division. The Detroit Tigers
were shifted from the American League East to the American League
Central, while the Devil Rays were added to the American League East.
The Diamondbacks were added to the National League West, making the NL
have more teams than the AL for the first time .
The biggest story of the season was the historic chase of the single-season home run record held at the time by Roger Maris. Initially, the St. Louis Cardinals' Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey, Jr. of the Seattle Mariners started the season on a pace to both break Maris' record. In June, the chase was joined by the Chicago Cubs' Sammy Sosa, who broke the decades-old record of Rudy York
for most home runs in a calendar month with 20 that month. Eventually,
Griffey fell off the record pace, but still ended with 56 homers. Both
McGwire and Sosa broke the record in September, with McGwire ultimately
finishing with 70 homers to Sosa's 66. McGwire's record would last only
three years, with Barry Bonds hitting 73 in 2001. The 1998 season was also the first in MLB history with four players hitting 50 or more homers, with Greg Vaughn of the San Diego Padres hitting 50. In a postscript to the record chase, both McGwire and Sosa have since been widely accused of having used performance-enhancing drugs during that period, and McGwire would admit in 2010 that he had used steroids during the record-setting season.[2]
The defending World Series champions Florida Marlins finished last in
the NL East Division at 54-108, making it the first, and only, time
that a team went from winning the World Series one year to finishing
with 100 or more losses and last in their division the following year. Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Major_League_Baseball_season.
Final Stats:
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