Every final score posted during the 1881 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 1881 games ended with that score — click it to see them.
The 1881 season produced 336 games between 8 clubs, running from April 30, 1881 to September 30, 1881. Those games ended in 84 different final scores, 24 of which occurred exactly once all season. The most common result was 3–2, posted 17 times — 5.1% of the season's games. The season also produced two tie games, which sit on the board's diagonal.
Teams combined for 10.20 runs per game in 1881, 0.75 runs above the all-time average of 9.45. That is the 5th-lowest scoring rate among the 30 seasons before 1901. Shutouts accounted for 52 games (15.5% of the total), and 76 of the 334 decided games were settled by a single run (22.8%).
The highest-scoring game of the season came on June 27, 1881, when the Chicago Cubs beat the Providence Grays 19–12 — 31 combined runs. The widest margin was 17 runs: the Chicago Cubs over the Detroit Wolverines 17–0 on August 11, 1881.
No final score appeared for the first time in major league history during 1881. Every score posted this season had already happened at least once in an earlier year.
This season sits in the early National League era, before the pitching distance was moved back to its modern 60 feet 6 inches. Scoring ran far higher than it would after 1900.