JUPITER, Fla. _ The delay of the 2020 baseball season and all the other professional and major college sports shutting down is unique. But it will not be the first time the baseball season will have started late.
Most recently, the 1995 season didn't start until April 25. Originally, the season had been scheduled to begin some three weeks ahead of that with teams using replacement players who had gone through an entire spring training masquerading as big leaguers. The major leaguers had been locked out of camp after having gone on strike on Aug. 11 of the previous season.
After watching the replacement players go through an entire spring, it was tempting to say there didn't seem to be much difference between them and the major leaguers, although the tip-off should have been that nobody hit any home runs in the Grapefruit League games.
