Baseball
- For a Venezuelans baseball player's strike the Caribbean World Series of this year is cancelled.
- January 15 - In his first year of eligibility, former Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson is the only player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Gibson won 20 games five times, struck out 3,117 batters, and captured the Cy Young Award and MVP in 1968 with a 1.12 ERA. Players falling short of the 301 votes needed for election include Don Drysdale (243), Gil Hodges (241), Harmon Killebrew (239), Hoyt Wilhelm (238), and Juan Marichal (233). All except Hodges would subsequently gain election.
- April 18 - An International League game between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the visiting Rochester Red Wings set the record for the most innings ever played in a single professional baseball game, at 33 innings (24 extra innings). The game was suspended after 32 innings on the morning of April 19, and was concluded on June 23 with a 3-2 Pawtucket victory.
- June 12 - Major League Baseball players begin a 49 day strike over the issue of free-agent compensation.
- World Series – Los Angeles Dodgers win 4 games to 2 over the New York Yankees. The Series MVP is a tie between Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager, Los Angeles
Read more about this topic: 1981 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)