Every final score posted during the 1872 Major League Baseball season, tabulated by winning-team runs and losing-team runs.
Baseball games end with a final score, like 8–6. The number across the top is how many runs the winning team scored; the number down the side is how many runs the losing team scored. Where a column and row meet, that square shows how many 1872 games ended with that score — click it to see them.
The 1872 season produced 178 games between 11 clubs, running from April 18, 1872 to October 31, 1872. Those games ended in 120 different final scores, 77 of which occurred exactly once all season. The most common result was 4–2, posted 4 times — 2.2% of the season's games. The season also produced five tie games, which sit on the board's diagonal.
Teams combined for 18.26 runs per game in 1872, 8.81 runs above the all-time average of 9.45. That is the 2nd-highest scoring rate among the 30 seasons before 1901. Shutouts accounted for 11 games (6.2% of the total), and 17 of the 173 decided games were settled by a single run (9.8%).
The highest-scoring game of the season came on May 1, 1872, when the Philadelphia Quakers beat the BL1 34–19 — 53 combined runs. The widest margin was 25 runs: the BL1 over the BR2 39–14 on October 5, 1872.
A total of 76 final scores appeared for the first time during 1872: 2–1, 3–2, 4–2, 4–3, 5–1, 5–5, 6–2, 6–6, 7–0, 7–2, 7–7, 8–0, and 64 others. Almost every score was new in these years, because there was so little history for a result to be new against. The board filled itself faster in the 1870s than it could ever be filled again.
This season belongs to the National Association, the first professional league. Its games are included here because Retrosheet covers them, and their very high scores are a large part of why the all-time board looks the way it does.