Now that September has arrived, I want to note that the July and August schedule for blog topics will continue through the remainder of 2025.
Progressives Chat, by the end of June 2025, published 640 topics since it launched September 25, 2017. September 1, 2025 makes it 645. For a nice rounded number, I am going to end the year with 650.
Above is the schedule for the rest of 2025.
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September 1, 1971 was a day in Major League Baseball which since has not been repeated.
In 1971, Pittsburgh Pirates won the fourth of their five World Series championships. But, before that occurred, and while the regular season was still in progress, manager Danny Murtagh (1917–1976) assigned that day’s fielding positions to a group of players who stood out.
The above video tells the story.
Fall Classic Possibility
September is the final full month of this current 2025 Major League Baseball season.
I am certainly pulling for my home team, Detroit Tigers.
I applaud Milwaukee Brewers, which took over in July with the best record not only in their division (National League Central), but also in their league and all of MLB. (I had written this, in June 2025, of the American League Central Detroit Tigers.)
I have their logos above for at least two good reasons:
• With the games concluding Sunday, August 31, 2025, Detroit’s record—the best in the AL—is 80–58 (.580) and Milwaukee’s record is 85–53 (616).
• They would make a nice 2025 World Series match.
Detroit Tigers has four World Series titles won in 1935, 1945, 1968, and 1984. Their fourth was a wire-to-wire season, managed by George “Sparky” Anderson (1934–2010), the first in such role to win World Series in both leagues. (He previously won with the 1975 and 1976 NL Cincinnati “Big Red Machine” Reds.) Players included Alan Trammell and Lou Whittaker—the duo fielded shortstop and second base from 1978–1996—and Kirk Gibson as well as pitching ace Jack Morris and AL MVP and AL Cy Young reliever Willie Hernandez (who saved 31 games and blew just one).
Milwaukee Brewers has been to the World Series just once. This was back in 1982. At that point, Milwaukee Brewers were still in the AL. They lost to St. Louis Cardinals. The team was managed by Harvey Kuenn (1930–1988). He won the 1953 AL Rookie of the Year and the 1959 AL batting title with Detroit Tigers. Milwaukee’s roster included star players Cecil Cooper, Paul Molitor, and AL MVP Robin Yount as well as 1981 and 1982 AL Cy Young winners Rollie Fingers (also MVP) and Pete Vuckovich.
Realignment with Expansion
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, who is in his position until at least 2029, revealed on the August 17, 2025 ESPN Sunday Night Baseball that the 30 MLB teams will expand to 32.
The cities much-discussed are, in the more east half of the U.S., Nashville, Tennessee and Charlotte or Raleigh, North Carolina; in the more west half of the U.S., Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon. (Also mentioned: Orlando, Florida as well as Austin and San Antonio, Texas. Also suggested but outside the U.S.: Montreal and Mexico.)
The current structure of 30 teams have 15 in the National League (NL) and 15 in the American League (AL) with both leagues’s three divisions—East, Central, and West—each consisting of 5 teams.
Manfred offered that he would realign the divisions to reset the balances with the same number of teams but with a more concentrated focus on geography (and rivalries). Why? To cut down on the stress of teams’s travel schedules and to yield more control over difficult television schedules which have team matchups which involve very different geographic areas. (For example: A game with a road team from the east vs. a home team from the west would not usually start until around 10:00 p.m. ET. This is not convenient for any person who must be in bed to wake up early the next day.)
The change would consist of four divisions each with eight teams…or eight divisions each with four teams.
I think the latter will occur.
I also think, although it may be early, the expansion teams will be Nashville and Salt Lake City.
Some people want realignment to take geography so seriously as to mix NL and AL teams. An example is to have one division mixing the AL New York Yankees and the NL New Mets and the AL Boston Red Sox and the NL Philadelphia Phillies.
I do not think this would be wise. I am very certain…what those big-money NL and AL teams want is to not be mixed together regularly in one division. MLB is very capitalist. They don’t want more competition. They want less competition.
There is more to consider.
Baseball, in the U.S., is traditional. Making a dramatic change—like instituting the Designated Hitter in the NL in 2022 (after the AL did so in 1973)—is usually done when there is no point fighting against such move. But to mix a good number of league switches, especially involving any teams 100 or more years in age, bastardizes histories of those teams.
Some people also think it would be wise to drop National League (NL) and American League (AL) altogether. I strongly disagree. This would be an insult to many which have pride in their storied histories and how identity is a part of their history. In the NL, you have teams like Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, and St. Louis Cardinals. In the AL, you have teams like Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and New York Yankees. Want to try to take away a part of their identify?
I think what will actually happen would follow some of the model of National Football League. There would be eight divisions each with four teams. NL and AL remain intact. (You don’t have to pronounce their league names. You can speak their letters.) Nearly every current NL and AL team remain as such. Due to geographic reasons, and their histories suggests a league swap may actually advantage them, and that they are both less than 50 years in age (each was established in the 1990s), a switch would be wise two teams: Colorado Rockies (NL to AL) and Tampa Bay Rays (AL to NL).
I would change the division names, in each league, to East, North, South, and West. That is listing them in time zone order, from Eastern Time to Pacific Time, in case that seemed weird. This would also be borrowing, to some extent, from NFL. I put together a list, presented in above chart, which just-so-happens to be exactly the same proposed, on the below maps, by The Athletic’s Stephen J. Nesbitt.
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