O, What A Season!

Jaybird

x

Ignored

says:

I looked at this and found myself wondering “what in the heck happened in 1916 for the pennant? This cartoon offers zero hints.”

So I googled and 1916 was apparently nutso enough to deserve a book:
The Major League Pennant Races of 1916: “The Most Maddening Baseball Melee in History”

Baseball at its best is a combination of chess match and gladiatorial combat, waged over a long season but turning on split-second decisions and physical instincts. The 1916 season demonstrated the drama that made the sport the national pastime: tight pennant races, multiple contenders, record-breaking performances, and controversy, both on and off the field. Ten of the 16 teams battled for first place, four pitchers started and won both games of a doubleheader, Babe Ruth pitched on Opening Day, and players from the Federal League became the sport’s first free agents. The book features full rosters, player biographies, statistics, photographs and an appendix of the sportswriters who chronicled the season.

The World Series was between the Boston Red Sox and the Brooklyn Robins (you may know them by their nickname: The Dodgers). So this is a cartoon about the 1916 Red Sox Pennant. Checking the 1916 stats for the American League, it looks like it was a real nail-biter between the Red Sox, the White Sox, and the Tigers (Cobb was, apparently, the #1 hitter that year).

So what was it like to live through it in person?

Well: This cartoon.Report