National League West
| League | National League |
|---|---|
| Sport | Major League Baseball |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Teams | |
| No. of teams | 5 |
| Championships | |
| Most recent NL West champion(s) |
Los Angeles Dodgers (15th title) |
| Most NL West titles | Los Angeles Dodgers (15) |
The National League West is one of the three divisions of the National League of Major League Baseball in North America (including Canada). This Division was formed for the 1969 season when the National League expanded to 12 teams by adding the San Diego Padres and the Montreal Expos. For purpose of keeping a regular-season of 162 games, half of the teams were put into the new East Division and half into the new West Division. Within each division, the teams played 18 games each against their five division mates (90 games), and also 12 games against the teams in the opposite division (72 games), totaling 162 games.
Despite the geography, the owners of the Chicago Cubs insisted that this team be placed into the East Division along with the teams in New York City, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. Also, the owners of the St. Louis Cardinals wanted that team to be in the same division with their natural rivals of the Cubs. The league could have insisted on a geographical alignment like the American League did. But the owners were also concerned about what they thought would be a large imbalance in the strength of the divisions. The previous two seasons, the Cardinals, Giants, and Cubs finished 1-2-3 in the National League standings. The owners were concerned about putting those teams in the same division, thereby creating one very strong division (West) and one weak one (East). Given all of this, the owners of the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds consented to being placed into the West Division, even though Atlanta and Cincinnati are both in the Eastern Time Zone. Hence, the West Division had teams spread all the way from the East to the Pacific Coast, and scattered over four time zones. The East Division was spread over the Eastern Time Zone and the Central Time Zone - despite the fact that the National League had six teams in the Eastern Time Zone and six teams spread between the Central Time Zone and the Pacific Time Zone.
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