The 1985 MLB season was one of the best we’ve seen in TheSportsNotebook’s historical period of 1976 to the present. Three of major league baseball’s four divisions had races that came down the final week and all three were settled with head-to-head series. We of course keep in mind that pre-1994, that was the era when a division race was winner-take-all with no wild-card cushion.
…this 1985 championship had been secured first with a late season run at the Angels, then three straight must-win games in each postseason series. The Royals haven’t seen October baseball since that epic autumn, but they left plenty of memories along the trail.
This is part of a series of sports history articles aimed at preserving the best moments of the modern sports era, from 1976 to the present. The focus is team sports—college & pro basketball and football, major league baseball and hockey. This article offers a snapshot of 1985 sports, a year highlighted by a college basketball shocker, a fabulous baseball season, and more.
If you go into the northeastern part of Oklahoma, from Tulsa to the Missouri border, you don’t find a lot in terms of major sports. But you have Oklahoma University football and Kansas City is a 270-mile drive from Tulsa. And in 1985 that would have been all you needed as a sports fan to watch a national football champion and a World Series winner. The last part of ’85 in particular was a fine one for people in this neck of the woods, as they watched the Royals come down the stretch and the Sooner Schooner look to add another title to the great tradition that is Oklahoma football history.