JUPITER, Fla. _ The delay of the 2020 baseball season and all the other professional and major college sports shutting down is unique. But it will not be the first time the baseball season will have started late.
Most recently, the 1995 season didn't start until April 25. Originally, the season had been scheduled to begin some three weeks ahead of that with teams using replacement players who had gone through an entire spring training masquerading as big leaguers. The major leaguers had been locked out of camp after having gone on strike on Aug. 11 of the previous season.
After watching the replacement players go through an entire spring, it was tempting to say there didn't seem to be much difference between them and the major leaguers, although the tip-off should have been that nobody hit any home runs in the Grapefruit League games.
Hall of Famer Bob Gibson, in camp as an instructor, was pleased "because these guys will actually listen to me." But third-base coach Gaylen Pitts cautioned a reporter not to go overboard on the offensive replacement players.
"You wait until the regular players come back," he said. "Just close your eyes and listen to the sound the ball makes coming off the bat."
Pitts, of course, was correct, which one could tell when a second spring training began in St. Petersburg, Fla., during searing 90-plus temperatures in early to mid-April. That season consisted of 144 games, not all of which were managed by future Hall of Famer Joe Torre, a longtime voice in the players' association who was appalled the day August Busch III and other Anheuser-Busch executives showed up at the Cardinals' training facility and handed $20,000 checks to the replacement players for their efforts.
The Cardinals, for whom Mike Jorgensen finished the season as manager, wound up at 62-81 with one rainout that wasn't made up.
