Tigers won 154 game pennant in 1935 by two but Tigers played 151, Yanks 149.

80 years ago the teams simply stopped playing the regular season and all but the pennant winners went home.

In 1935 the Detroit Tigers "won" the American League (AL) pennant and went on to defeat the Chicago Cubs in the World Series.

However, neither the Tigers nor the second place Yankees had played all their games.  There were enough unplayed games for the teams to have switched positions at the top of the AL.  Each AL team was scheduled to play 22 games against each of the other 7 AL teams.  22*7=154.  11 home, 11 road against each team.  77 home, 77 road.

Rk	Tm	W	L	W-L%	GB	GBsum	R	RA	Rdiff	SOS	SRS	pythWL	Luck	Home	Road	1Run	vRHP	vLHP	≥.500	<.500
1	DET	93	58	.616	---		6.0	4.4	1.7	-0.2	1.5	97-54	-4	53-25	40-33	19-27	69-41	24-17	39-27	54-31
2	NYY	89	60	.597	3.0	3.0	5.5	4.2	1.2	-0.1	1.1	92-57	-3	41-33	48-27	15-29	62-50	27-10	37-28	52-32
3	CLE	82	71	.536	12.0	21.0	5.0	4.7	0.2	0.0	0.2	80-73	2	48-29	34-42	22-16	54-57	28-14	28-38	54-33
4	BOS	78	75	.510	16.0	33.0	4.7	4.8	-0.1	0.0	-0.1	75-78	3	41-37	37-38	28-17	66-65	12-10	27-38	51-37
5	CHW	74	78	.487	19.5	47.0	4.8	4.9	-0.1	0.0	-0.1	75-77	-1	42-34	32-44	24-19	61-69	13-9	39-47	35-31
6	WSH	67	86	.438	27.0	84.5	5.3	5.9	-0.5	0.1	-0.5	70-83	-3	37-39	30-47	20-28	39-62	28-24	34-54	33-32
7	SLB	65	87	.428	28.5	93.5	4.6	6.0	-1.4	0.2	-1.2	58-94	7	31-44	34-43	21-16	47-68	18-19	33-54	32-33
8	PHA	58	91	.389	34.0	132.0	4.8	5.8	-1.1	0.1	-1.0	61-88	-3	30-42	28-49	19-16	49-78	9-13	27-56	31-35
	Avg	75	75	.500			5.1	5.1				76-75		40-35	35-40	21-21	55-61	19-14	33-42	42-33

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/16/2015.

Detroit was missing three against Philadelphia in Philadelphia.

Split	W	L	RS	RA	WP
BOS	13	9	104	83	.591
CHW	11	11	107	101	.500
CLE	15	7	133	109	.682
NYY	11	11	105	85	.500
PHA	14	5	140	83	.737
SLB	17	5	182	78	.773
WSH	12	10	148	126	.545

Another odd thing about Detroit: home record: 53-25, which is 78 games, one more than a team would have scheduled.
_____________________________

Yanks missing:
Boston 1 in New York
Chicago 2 in New York
Philadelphia 2 in Philadelphia

Split	W	L	RS	RA	WP
BOS	12	9	107	65	.571
CHW	11	9	109	82	.550
CLE	14	8	108	75	.636
DET	11	11	85	105	.500
PHA	14	6	124	88	.700
SLB	12	10	123	107	.545
WSH	15	7	162	110	.682

___________________________

The Tigers finished the regular season with two doubleheaders in Chicago: Saturday Sept. 28 (split) and Sunday Sept. 29 (lost both; game two 6 innings, 14-2).  The Tigers had lost the three previous games.  The next game the Tigers played was Wednesday Oct. 2, 1935 against the Chicago Cubs in game one of the World Series that Detroit would win 4 games to 2.

But the Tigers were short three games against the Athletics in Philadelphia.

The Yankees finished the regular season with no games Friday and Saturday and a doubleheader Sunday against Boston at Yankee Stadium: loss, win (game two 5 innings).  Prior to that the Yankees had won 7 consecutive.

As far as making up the games in the final days of the regular season: none of these teams played on Friday; don't know why.  Neither Boston nor the Yankees played Saturday and they played that doubleheader Sunday; maybe it rained Saturday in New York.  Philadelphia played at home against Washington: doubleheader Saturday, single game Sunday.

Maybe the outcome had been a forgone conclusion.  Maybe they didn't pay that much attention.  Maybe they thought that Detroit would win at least two games against last place Philadelphia (58-91=149 games) and it wasn't worth the cost of the trip.  This was, after all, in the middle of the Great Depression.  Here are the AL attendance figures for 1935:

Tm	Attendance	Attend/G	BatAge	PAge	BPF	PPF	#HOF	#A-S	#a-tA-S	Est. Payroll	Managers
BOS	558,568	7,070	28.6	29.3	106	106	3	3	5	$157,200	Cronin
CHW	470,281	6,108	30.3	29.5	102	103	4	1	10	$143,050	Dykes
CLE	397,615	5,164	26.4	27.9	102	101	1	3	6	$101,350	Johnson and O'Neill
DET	1,034,929	13,100	28.9	28.4	96	93	4	4	9	$109,900	Cochrane
NYY	657,508	8,885	28.4	27.0	95	91	6	3	13	$303,800	McCarthy
PHA	233,173	3,239	27.1	25.7	99	102	1	3	7	$95,850	Mack
SLB	80,922	1,065	28.1	28.2	103	107	1	2	5	$108,600	Hornsby
WSH	255,011	3,312	28.5	29.0	97	97	1	2	7	$101,600	Harris

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 6/16/2015.

Maybe if the missing games had been between the top two teams, they would have been played.  Maybe.  Maybe the system lacked integrity.

Would the Philadelphia Athletics have objected to playing five more games at home against the Tigers and Yankees with those teams fighting for the pennant?  Scheduling could have been the Yankees play Boston and Chicago at home while the Tigers play their three in Philadelphia.  Then if the Yankees were still alive, they travel to Philadelphia for two more games.  Sounds a bit like the current double wild card tournament format with a tie thrown in.

So what the heck?  The Yankees would have played three more home games and made some money.  Only Detroit would have nothing to gain.

And the Yanks would have been assured at least those first two World Series home games if they won the pennant.  Wouldn't the Yankees have wanted that?  And the extra money from the AL for finishing first.

I'm guessing it was understood that this just wasn't an option.  The World Series was played with no travel days. This reduced the number of days in hotels and kept costs down.

All this is not to mention that if the Yankees had any brains instead of waiting to get him in 1936 they would have paid off the San Francisco Seals and acquired Joe DiMaggio by mid May 1935 once he had demonstrated that he was healthy and the Yanks could have won the 1935 pennant outright.  There will be a major post on this very soon:

1935 second place Yanks outspent first place Tigers maybe 2 to 1. Thursday, June 18, 2015