Baseball by Decade

Reading the decade cards

Each card covers ten seasons and gives three counts: players who batted in the decade, team-seasons played, and World Series championships. The busiest decade by players is the 2010s, with 3566. The 1940s show the most championships, 17. Some cards count more than ten championships because Negro Leagues title teams are counted alongside World Series winners, as in the 1940s and 1920s.

A card that shows no championships covers a decade with no World Series winner recorded in the data. A decade page ranks the players who played the most games in those ten years, then shows who hit the most home runs and posted the best average among them, alongside the championship teams and links to every season. Totals on a decade page count only games inside the decade, so a long career is split across the decades it touched. The earliest card, the 1870s, has the fewest players, 450. The 2020s card is still filling in, since it includes the current season. Team-season counts peak in the 1920s, at 308. Cards run from the most recent decade down to the 1870s, and each opens a page of that decade's leaders and champions. Player counts include everyone with a batting line in the decade, so pitchers and short stints are part of the total.