One regular season of Major League Baseball consists of 162 games, by far the highest number of contests among all professional sports in the United States.

Quick history lesson: It has been this way since 1961 when the league expanded to include 10 teams in both the American and National Leagues.

Since this initial expansion, 10 additional teams have been added to MLB, but there are still 162 games in a season.

It would make sense for MLB to add more games to the ledger to account for these additional teams, but the schedule is stuck on 162 games due mostly to tradition. 162 is synonymous with baseball and MLB has no desire to expand the schedule.

Playing a lot of games is simply a part of baseball, and this is also true for NCAA college baseball schedules.

The Saint Louis University baseball team has the highest number of contests out of all other sports at SLU at 56.

All of these games are played between Feb. 20 and May 16. That means that the team has only 78 days to play 56 games.

At no point during the season (except in case of a rainout) will the Billikens go more than two days without playing a game. This rigorous schedule takes its toll on the body. According to starting pitcher Scott Turmail, the few days that the baseball team gets to rest are especially important, considering how scarce they are.

“Your body definitely fatigues throughout the season. Most weeks, basically you’re playing five games during seven days. I know it’s a little different for me as a pitcher, but you still just have to go about to make sure you are getting your workouts in and getting plenty of rest,” Turmail said.

There is also additional pressure on the baseball players to communicate with their professors because of all the class time their schedule forces them to miss.

“You just have to make sure to communicate with your teachers. You have to tell them in advance and most of them work with it pretty well. [The team] just had a meeting the other day about talking to our teachers about finals even though its four weeks away,” Turmail said.

The players also have to dedicate a significant amount of time on the road to doing homework.

Freshman Jerry Mancuso said he might miss up to four classes in a week that requires travel.

“The biggest challenge is definitely staying on task. We miss out on a lot of classes, so you have to have a balance between school and baseball a lot,” Mancuso said.

This characteristic of balance between school and athletics is a requisite for any student athlete at school, but especially for the baseball players because of how often they have to play.

“Playing every day definitely beats having to stay in the classroom everyday, though,” Mancuso said.

Another effect of the baseball team’s busy schedule is significantly fewer opportunities to practice.

“In baseball, practice and games kind of go hand in hand, more or less. There is definitely a difference between the two, because in a game you’re competing. But sometimes, if you get into a funk, you can’t work on it because you’re on the road playing baseball,” Mancuso said.

So players have to make adjustments during games, whereas in most sports, these adjustments are made during practice.

“You’re playing every day so you don’t need a lot of practices necessarily,” Mancuso said.

For as many challenges as the schedule poses, however, most of the players agree that it works out for the best.

“I love it, personally. I love playing as much as we can play. It’s kind of a tradition that we play so many games-it goes from little league all the way of to the major leagues. It at least gives everyone a chance to get hot during the season,” Turmail said.

The large number of games also means, unfortunately, that there will be inevitable periods where the team struggles.

They are more vulnerable to injuries and must make game-time adjustments every day.

“Sometimes it’s hard to withstand having to play all of these games, but everybody on the team knows that they have a scholarship to play here. It’s almost like we have a chip on a shoulder. If you come to play college baseball, that’s what you have to expect,” Mancuso said.