Timeline
Era Overviews
Follow how baseball changed from one generation to the next.
Origins Era
1791 · 1899
Before modern leagues and the World Series, baseball emerged from local bat-and-ball traditions into a national organized game.
The Dead-Ball Era
1900 · 1919
Before Babe Ruth changed everything, baseball was a game of strategy, speed, and pitching dominance. The Dead-Ball Era produced some of the sport's most fascinating characters and its most enduring controversies.
The Live-Ball Era
1920 · 1941
Babe Ruth turned baseball into a power game, attendance exploded, and the sport survived the Great Depression by becoming louder, faster, and harder to ignore.
The Integration Era
1942 · 1960
Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line in 1947, the sport's greatest stars overlapped in New York, and the game's geography shifted west for the first time.
The Expansion Era
1961 · 1976
Baseball spread to new cities, survived a pitching crisis, saw its home run record broken twice, and lost the reserve clause that had bound players to teams for nearly a century.
The Free Agency Era
1977 · 1993
Players won the right to sell their services, salaries exploded, owners colluded to hold them down, and the game survived labor wars that tested fan loyalty to its limits.
The Modern Era
1994 · 2025
A strike cancelled the World Series, a home run chase brought fans back, steroids nearly broke the sport's credibility, and analytics remade how teams build rosters and play the game.