Filming each entire season within a three-week period during the month of February would become the standard production practice throughout the five season run of the series. Erik Lee ("Rick", seasons 1–4) recalled, "Each 30-minute episode took basically a day, so we would start early in the morning and just go all day. [...] We would film for a couple weeks at a time and (while filming) we would get out of school for a couple weeks at a time. It was glorious." While the Tucson location was selected specifically to accommodate the Major League players just prior to spring training, segments featuring Lasorda ("The Dugout Wizard") were filmed without him. Linda Coslett ("Kate", season 1) recalled, "We would pretend. We would look at this chalk-board that was blank, and then they would go back to Los Angeles and film it separately with Tommy and then plug him into the show. So Tommy Lasorda was never on the set.", with Erik Lee adding, "We never met (Lasorda), unfortunately." Departing from the traditional fall-through-spring television season, the first official season of "The Baseball Bunch" debuted in broadcast syndication on Saturday May 2, 1981, with new episodes airing throughout the summer months on Saturday mornings and/or early afternoons, usually either right before or right after the networks' line-ups of Saturday morning cartoons. Although airing in reruns year-round, the format of debuting each new season in the spring (April or May) and airing new episodes throughout the "summer vacation" season was used for all five seasons of the show's original run.