Decoration Day Doubleheaders Become a Baseball Tradition

By May 30, 1903, Decoration Day doubleheaders had become one of baseball's most reliable annual events. Every major league team played two games on the holiday, and attendance figures dwarfed ordinary regular-season crowds. The tradition had been building since the 1880s, but the early 1900s were when it became fixed in the calendar, as essential to the day as parades and cemetery visits.

Decoration Day, later renamed Memorial Day, fell on May 30 every year until Congress moved it to the last Monday in May in 1971. The fixed date gave teams a guaranteed midweek crowd of the size they normally saw only on weekends. Factories and offices closed. Families came to the ballpark in groups. Morning-afternoon doubleheaders meant two games for one admission, and the economics worked for everyone.

The 1903 doubleheaders drew some of the largest regular-season crowds in the young history of the American League. In Boston, the Americans (soon to be the Red Sox) played two against Philadelphia. In New York, the Highlanders (soon to be the Yankees) hosted Washington. Every park in both leagues was full or close to it.

Decoration Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day formed the triple crown of baseball holidays. Each featured a doubleheader. Each drew the season's best attendance. Teams scheduled around these dates the way retailers schedule around Christmas.

The tradition lasted decades. As late as the 1960s, holiday doubleheaders were a standard feature of the schedule. Television revenue and the desire to sell separate admissions eventually killed them. The last regularly scheduled Decoration Day doubleheader faded out in the 1970s, replaced by single games and prime-time broadcasts.

Modern baseball has no equivalent. The holiday doubleheader was a product of a time when the sport organized itself around the rhythms of a working public, not around a television grid.