World Series

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World Series

Throughout much of the twentieth century, the annual World Series baseball championship has consistently set standards for well-staged national sporting scenarios, earning its reputation as the "Fall Classic." There have been heroes, villains, fools, and unknowns who have stolen the spotlight from "superstars."

The term "World Series" was first coined for a nine-game series between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates, an informal outgrowth of a 1903 "peace treaty" signed between the two competing "major" baseball leagues, the 27-year-old National League (N.L.) and the upstart 2-year-old American League (A.L.). The A.L. champion Pilgrims (later called the Red Sox) won, five games to three, to surprisingly good crowds and gate receipts. Yet the following year, manager John McGraw and owner John Brush of the runaway National League champion New York Giants refused to face the repeating Boston club, stating publicly that such a meeting was beneath the quality of their team, which showcased future Hall of Fame pitcher, Christy Mathewson. A less publicized reason, however, was that they had objected to the growing popularity of the new A.L. franchise in New York City, the Highlanders (soon to be known as the Yankees).

Public and press outcry was so great against the Giants that Brush relented in 1905 and proposed a seven-game World Series as a mandatory annual event. The Giants won easily that year (with Mathewson pitching the first three of his still-standing record four Series shutouts), but would not prove to be as transcendent as Brush and McGraw believed, for they failed to win another Series until 1921. A worse fate awaited the Chicago Cubs, another early dominating N.L. team. After winning Series in 1907 and 1908, they never won again, and never even reached another Series after 1945. Starting in 1910, A.L. teams won eight out of the next ten Series, establishing an edge over the N.L. that they have yet to relinquish.

The World Series soon gained formal acceptance, with President Woodrow Wilson attending the second game of the 1915 Boston Red Sox-Philadelphia Phillies Series. The year 1915 also marked the Series debut of Boston pitcher George Herman "Babe" Ruth. Ruth set a Series record of 29 2/3 scoreless innings pitched, spanning Red Sox Series Championships in 1916 and 1918. The next year, after converting Ruth into an outfielder and watching him shatter all previous home run (and league attendance) records, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold the Babe to the New York Yankees for $100,000 and a $350,000 loan to cover one of his Broadway shows. For Boston fans, thus was cast the "Curse of the Bambino"—after winning four Series in the decade, the Red Sox, like the Cubs, never won a Series again. The Yankees would be another story.

In 1919, the World Series endured its worst scandal. Many players had long felt the owners were denying them their fair share of club profits, and in no more obvious instance than in the World Series, where the triumphant owners were taking in record receipts and were rumored to have sold tickets to scalpers to make even more. The owners countered with rumors of their own, to the effect that players were being bribed to throw games by professional gamblers. Tensions had even precipitated a brief player's strike before the fifth game of the Red Sox-Cubs Series in 1918, but the worst was yet to come. Questionable betting patterns on the 1919 Series, in which the Cincinnati Reds upset the Chicago White Sox, prompted a grand jury investigation. In 1920 eight White Sox players were indicted for taking bribes. Among them was "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, the star who was confronted on the courtroom steps by a young fan with the soon-to-be-famous line, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" The eight players were ultimately acquitted in court, but as a result of what was now known as the "Black Sox" scandal, were subsequently banned from baseball for life in 1921. The rather draconian measure was enacted by the Baseball Commissioner, a post newly created by the owners in order to quickly restore baseball's image as well as maintain their own authority over the players.

The World Series not only bounced back in the 1920s, but came to form the centerpiece of a new era of popularity and stability for baseball. Key factors were the rise of the New York Yankees and the coinciding development of radio as a mass medium. John McGraw's Giants had returned to the World Series in 1921 to find they were in the first of 13 "Subway Series," facing their co-tenants at the Polo Grounds, the Yankees, who now had the biggest star in sports, Babe Ruth. In the first of their 29 Series appearances over the next 44 years, the Yankees bowed to McGraw's veteran club. McGraw's pitchers kept throwing low curve balls to Ruth in 1922 as well, allowing the Giants to sweep the first World Series to be broadcast by radio (the announcer was Grantland Rice) and the last Series triumph for their manager.

In 1923, Yankee Stadium was completed across the Harlem River in the Bronx, to be christened "the house that Ruth built" as all previous league attendance records were smashed. Ruth hit three homers in that year's rematch with the Giants, bringing the Yankees their first of 20 Series victories. By their 1927 sweep, which was also the first Series broadcast coast-to-coast, they had become America's team, setting a standard of excellence that McGraw and his Giants had never quite achieved, and they maintained a stranglehold on money and talent that most of the teams in the rest of the country could only admire from afar. All knew, however, that a victory over the Yankees in the Series would assure their place in the annals of baseball. Such was the case when grizzled pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander braved the Yankees "Murderer's Row" to preserve a 1926 Series victory for the St. Louis Cardinals, a feat later to be immortalized on film (with Ronald Reagan playing Alexander).

On through the Great Depression and World War II, radio provided the yearly vignettes about players both rough-edged ("Pepper" Martin) and refined (Joe DiMaggio) that would cheer millions of Americans. However, one episode stood out particularly during this period. In the 1932 Cubs-Yankees series, the faltering Babe Ruth, brushing off ancestral slurs from the Cub bench and the hostile crowd at Chicago's Wrigley Field, paused to point to the centerfield bleachers. He soon followed with his 15th and last World Series home run. The Yankees went on to sweep the Series, but the "called shot" is what is still remembered and discussed today.

The climax of World War II brought with it the appearance of television and the breaking of the unofficial color line in baseball with Brooklyn Dodger star Jackie Robinson. The postwar years also marked the period of greatest dominance for the Yankees, who appeared in 15 of 18 Series through 1964, winning 10 (including 5 in a row between 1949 and 1953) mostly with manager Casey Stengel and new stars Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford. The phrase "wait 'til next year" was made famous by Brooklyn fans as their "Bums" lost five Series to the Yankees before winning in 1955, their only Series championship before they relocated with the Giants three years later to California. Also in 1955, the Most Valuable Player Award was initiated, won first by Johnny Podres of the Dodgers. Many call this baseball's and the Series' "golden era." The many highlights from this period include Willie Mays' incredible over-the-shoulder catch in his Giants' sweep of the Cleveland Indians in 1954, Yankee Don Larsen's perfect game over the Dodgers in 1956, and Pittsburgh Pirate Bill Mazeroski's Series-winning home run in 1960.

A revamping of baseball's amateur draft rules, the sharing of network broadcast revenues among all franchises, and internal turmoil eventually restored mortality to the Yankees, and after 1964 they failed to appear in the post-season for 12 years. Apart from the flamboyant, mustachioed "Swinging" Oakland A's of 1972 to 1974, no team would again win more than two Series in a row. The advent of free agency allowed the players to get even (financially) with the owners, and exploding player salaries and bidding wars from the mid 1970s onward added some of the roster unpredictability of the early days to the game. As television ratings came to be regarded as a measure of success, the Series encountered increasingly stiff competition from the National Basketball Association championship, foot-ball's Super Bowl, and even its own playoff system, created in 1969. Yet the Series has persevered, adding more classic moments for each generation: Carleton Fisk waving his homer fair in the sixth game of the 1975 Red Sox-Reds Series; Reggie Jackson hitting three homers on three pitches off three different pitchers in the sixth game of the 1977 Yankees-Dodgers Series, the New York crowd chanting "Reggie!"; The Curse of the Bambino willing New York Met Mookie Wilson's grounder through Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner's legs in 1986; pinch-hitter Kirk Gibson homering off "closer" Dennis Eckersley to win the first game of the 1988 Dodgers-A's Series.

Continuing animosity between the owners and players' union in 1994 caused what even two World Wars could not: the cancellation of the World Series, as the result of a strike. Through the efforts of many, including President Bill Clinton, the two sides declared a truce and the season and Series were resumed in 1995. Well played (and watched) seven-game Series in 1996 and 1997 at least temporarily silenced the doomsayers predicting the coming end of the World Series as a "marquee event." For day-to-day sustained interest, capping a six-month-long season's endeavors, it is still hard to imagine any other event in sports ever surpassing the intensity of World Series competitive drama.

—C. Kenyon Silvey