When Was The First World Series?

Richard Hershberger

Richard Hershberger is a paralegal working in Maryland. When he isn't doing whatever it is that paralegals do, or taking his daughters to Girl Scouts, he is dedicated to the collection and analysis of useless and unremunerative information.

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11 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    Manager Mutrie will yet be challenging the “Man in the Moon” for a series of midnight contests.

    I thought faking his death was a remarkable feat; here I learned that Andy Kaufman’s true genius was faking being alive 65 years before he was born.Report

  2. J_A says:

    There still hasn’t been any.

    So far, it’s always been the USA Series (with two Canadian teams), the Caribbean Series, and I’m sure one or more other in Asia.

    But we haven’t yet had any World Series.

    Early times, I guess.Report

  3. The WBC has included teams from every continent but Antarctica. Just not very good teams.Report

    • El Muneco in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      At the first World Cup, Argentina played Uruguay in the final, which is reasonable considering that teams from the host continent always do well, most European teams in mid-Depression didn’t want to take a boat trip across the Atlantic, and England felt the whole thing was beneath them since they were obviously The Best(tm)(*).

      The third-place game was contested by Yugoslavia and … USA.

      Every major sporting event has what TV Tropes calls “Early Installment Weirdness”.

      (*) They probably were. Too bad that by the time they got their collective pacifier taken away, they weren’t anymore. And haven’t been since.Report

      • With baseball, it’s what Richard alluded to: the best players from the whole world play in the US, and their employers don’t want to risk players in whom they have tens of millions invested (in guaranteed salaries) getting hurt in exhibition games.Report

  4. A few idle notes:

    The 1884 series was between two teams without much future. Providence played only one more season and New York three more.

    1886 was between the teams now known as the Cubs and the Cardinals. The Cubs became the only NL team ever to lose a Series to the AA,

    In 1903, the team now called the Red Sox beat the Pirates.

    In 1905, the Giants beat the A’s (then in Philadelphia.)

    Of the eight NL teams that have been around since 1901 , four began as AA teams: Cardinals, Pirates, Reds, and Dodgers. The Cubs and Braves were charter members of the NL in 1876 (and as teams, go back further than that.) The Giants and Phillies date back to 1883, when, because of competition from th AA, the NL got serious about placing teams in the larger cities.Report

    • Richard Hershberger in reply to Mike Schilling says:

      Providence’s lack of a strong future was unsurprising. It was a small market that could barely support a team. Salaries were rising in this period, which pushed Providence from being a marginal market to an untenable one. The value of its players was higher than that of the franchise, so Boston bought them out and kept the pick of the lot.

      The Metropolitans were another matter. Their limited future was not at all obvious. Their problem was that they shared ownership with the NL Giants, who were the favored child. This is itself interesting. Why favor the one over the other? The NL charged 50 cents admission, while the AA only charged 25 cents. It may well be that once New Yorkers showed they were willing to pay the higher admission, the owner made a business decision to encourage this by favoring the club charging more. It could also be that the NL, being the older, more established league, was considered the safer organization to bet on. In any case, the result was that the Mets were moved from the Polo Grounds, which were a nice facility conveniently located, to a new ground further up the island on the East River in an industrial district. This was a disaster. The new location was harder to get to and less desirable once you got there. The Mets ended up being bought out after the 1885 season and moved to Staten Island. This also didn’t work out in the long run, but it is a different, and more complicated story for another day.Report

      • Their problem was that they shared ownership with the NL Giants, who were the favored child.

        Odd that the AA allowed that, since the potential for conflict of interest was obvious.Report

        • Richard Hershberger in reply to Mike Schilling says:

          John Day, the owner, did some slick work to accomplish this. The Mets were an existing club, founded late in the season of 1880. They did very well financially in 1881 as an independent club. (The “independent” part is not strictly true, but clarification would require more text than it is worth: “independent” is close enough.) They participated in the early organization of the AA in the fall of 1881, but then backed out after a meeting with NL president Hulbert. Instead they played as an independent again in 1882. Then during the winter of 1882/83 Day simply joined both leagues. It was not obvious at first that the two efforts were the same organization. By the time this was clear, it was a done deal.

          The AA put up with it for a couple of years, but by 1885 they were holding unofficial meetings with the Mets not invited. The Mets were sold in late 1885 to Erastus Wiman, who moved them to Staten Island.Report

  5. Michael Cain says:

    Nowadays if you know a guy who won an Olympic medal you will talk this up to random acquaintances, even if it was a bronze medal in an obscure sport you would never dream of caring about otherwise.

    Okay. I know three Olympic medalists in fencing. My favorite is the 84-year-old from one of those obscure Eastern European countries who now resides in Lincoln, NE. He coaches epee occasionally from the sidelines — and never misses something that you did wrong.Report