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Every October, baseball fans turn their attention to the sport’s biggest event. However, the championship we know today wasn’t always part of baseball.
In fact, for much of the sport’s early history, the idea of a single national champion was highly controversial.
Rival leagues, bitter disputes, and a surprising agreement helped establish what would become one of America’s greatest sporting traditions.
Learn more about the origins of baseball’s World Series on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
The origins of the World Series actually can be traced to the earliest days of professional baseball.
The National Association of Professional Baseball Players was founded in 1871. The league transformed baseball from a widely fragmented, disorganized set of amateur leagues into the nation’s first ticket-selling spectator sport.
The league brought together top teams from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago. It was poorly funded and had few ownership requirements, so teams often folded after a bad road trip or a string of bad weather.
Perhaps the league’s biggest challenge was the lack of player contracts; it had no enforcement mechanism, and players could jump from team to team mid-season simply by accepting more money.
Compounding the contractual absurdity was the gambling culture where players bet and fixed games. The gambling epidemic even spilled over to the umpires.
It wasn’t a surprise when the National League formed from the wreckage of the National Association in 1876. William Hulbert, a part owner of the Chicago White Stockings, which later became the Chicago Cubs, founded the league to restore order to the chaos.
The league’s finances were difficult to put it mildly. Of the league’s first 8 teams, five folded within 2 years of formation. The league’s prospects hinged on suppressing rival leagues and controlling player movement. For a quarter century, they did just that. However, that changed in 1901 with the creation of a new professional baseball league: the American League.
The league was formed when Ban Johnson took the fledgling Western League, rebranded it the American League, and challenged the National League by placing teams in the same cities.
Confident in their monopoly, the National League owners dismissed the possibility of any league cutting into their influence.
However, Ban Johnson was no ordinary rival. Building on the brief but successful run of the American Association in the 1890s, Johnson’s league would violate all the norms the National League held as sacred.
Unlike the National League, which strictly forbade Sunday games to keep the good graces of churches and local municipalities, the American League played on Sundays to attract working-class fans, who had only one day off per week.
Not surprisingly, National League stadiums enforced strict alcohol bans to stay in the good graces of local temperance movements, while the American League was happy to oblige working-class fans with beer and whiskey.
Johnson, a former sports writer, also weaponized the media, leaking stories to friendly sports writers about the out-of-touch, arrogant National League while framing the American League as the common man’s league.
Despite alcohol and sunday games, Johnson cultivated a family-friendly image, with clean stadiums, well-groomed fields, and a strict ban on gambling.
Ignoring the National League’s rules, American League owners openly raided National League rosters, offering higher salaries and better benefits. Johnson’s strategies foreshadowed rivalries between other sports leagues, including the NBA vs. ABA and the AFL vs. NFL, all of which I have covered in previous episodes.
The American League’s raid on the National League’s rosters sent payrolls soaring. Johnson enraged the National League’s owners, who had long controlled salaries with a reserve clause that effectively bound a player to a team indefinitely, with little chance to improve their salary.
Dozens of star players switched leagues, most famously Philadelphia Phillies star and future Hall of Famer Napoleon Lajoie, who moved across town to the Athletics in 1901.
The Phillies sued in Pennsylvania state court to block the move, and the court agreed: Lajoie could not play for another Philadelphia team, so the American League transferred his contract to the Cleveland Bronchos.
The brief war took both leagues to the brink of ruin. Recognizing that the status quo was unsustainable, NL President Harry Pulliam and AL President Ban Johnson met in Cincinnati in late 1902 and early 1903 to broker peace.
Pulliam and Johnson ratified the 1903 National Agreement, which established the modern two-league system under the guidance of the newly created National Baseball Commission. It consisted of the presidents of both leagues and a third commissioner selected by mutual agreement.
Under the agreement, the two leagues became partners in a unified major-league system, and they formally placed the National Association under the National Commission to govern and stabilize the minor leagues. Additionally, both leagues consented to honor the exclusive territorial rights of each other’s franchises.
However, they did not formalize a post-season tournament.
In 1903, team owners on both sides lobbied the commission’s leadership for the right to have the top teams in each league meet in a best-of-nine tournament at the end of their seasons.
This end-of-season series was dubbed the World Championship Series, later shortened to the World Series. Many of you listening outside the United States might be wondering why it is called the World Series when only teams in the United States and Canada can play in it.
The World Series is called the World Series because, when the modern championship was established in 1903, the American and National Leagues were considered the world’s two premier professional baseball leagues, and no professional baseball leagues existed outside the United States at the time.
So, the winner of their 1903 championship series could claim to be the world’s best professional baseball team, even though both leagues operated exclusively in the United States. Today, with professional leagues in Japan and South Korea, the title seems a bit dated, but the name has stuck.
At the end of the 1903 season, the Boston Americans, which later became known as the Red Sox, led by pitcher Cy Young, faced the legendary Pittsburgh Pirates led by shortstop Honus Wagner.
Despite an early series lead for the Pirates, Young and fellow Boston pitcher Bill Dinneen pitched an astonishing 66 of the team’s 72 innings, a performance that seems out of place in today’s game of specialists.
The 1904 World Series was never played because the National League champion New York Giants refused to face the American League champion and defending World Series Champion, the Boston Americans.
Giants manager John McGraw long resented the American League, which he considered inferior to the more established National League. Giants owner John T. Brush supported the refusal, arguing that the National League champion should not have to compete against a team from a rival league.
Although the series had been played the year before, no binding agreement required the two leagues’ champions to meet.
Another factor was the possibility that the Giants would have to play their crosstown rivals, the New York Highlanders, who had moved from Baltimore and broke their monopoly on New York City. Brush and McGraw particularly disliked the prospect of giving their rivals an opportunity to claim the championship.
The Giants’ refusal drew considerable criticism from fans and newspapers, especially after the 1903 World Series.
Responding to the backlash, Brush helped establish formal rules in early 1905 that made participation mandatory for both league champions. The World Series resumed that October, with the Giants defeating the Philadelphia Athletics, and became a permanent annual event.
The 1905 series established the best-of-seven format it still uses today.
For 94 years, the only time teams from the American and National leagues ever played each other was in the World Series. The World Series was the only opportunity many great players had to face each other if they spent their entire careers in one league.
The way home-field advantage is determined has changed over time. Until 1909, the National Baseball Commission decided which team hosted the opening games.
From 1910 to 1924, it was decided with a coin flip. From 1925–2002, home-field advantage alternated between the American and National Leagues, regardless of their teams’ records.
From 2003–2016, the league that won the annual All-Star Game received home-field advantage in the World Series; since 2017, the team with the better regular-season winning percentage has received it.
From 1903 to 1969, the teams that competed in the World Series were simply the teams with the best record in each league, with an occasional single-game playoff in the event of a tie.
In 1946, 1951, 1959, and 1962, a one-game tiebreaker decided the National League champion, and the same happened in 1948 in the American League.
A team that won either league is said to have won the pennant. A pennant winner is not necessarily a World Series champion.
By 1969, baseball had expanded from eight teams in each league to twelve. Baseball introduced two divisions to each league and established a league championship series in which the winners of each division would play each other.
From 1969 to 1984, the League Championship Series was best of five, and since 1985 it has been best of seven.
Baseball kept expanding. In 1995, each league had three divisions, so all three division winners and a fourth wild-card team qualified for the playoffs. This also required another round of playoffs, the Division Series, which is best of five.
In 2012, a second wild-card team was added from each league, which played a single-elimination game, and in 2022, a third wild-card team was added from each league. The two bottom wild-card teams play a one-game playoff, then the remaining two teams play a three-game series to determine who advances to the Division Series.
In 1968, the last season before playoff series, teams had a 10% chance of making the postseason. Today, 40% of teams make the postseason.
1994 was the only season, other than 1904, when the World Series was not played. It was canceled because of the Major League Baseball players’ strike, which began on August 12.
Because the World Series ends the season and crowns a champion, something that might otherwise just make the evening’s sports highlights could become legendary.
In the 1956 World Series, the Yankees’ Don Larsen threw a perfect game in Game 5 against the Dodgers. It was the first and only perfect game ever thrown in postseason history.
In Game 7 of the 1960 World Series, Bill Mazeroski of the Pirates hit a dramatic walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth to end the game, clinch the series, and earn a place in baseball immortality. Mazeroski remains the only player to ever hit a walk-off home run in a Game 7 of the World Series.
One of the most iconic moments in World Series history occurred in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds. With the Reds up three games to two, the score was tied 6-6 in the bottom of the 12th inning at Fenway Park.
Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk stepped to the plate and hit a towering fly ball down the left-field line toward the Green Monster. As the ball sailed through the air, Fisk famously waved his arms toward fair territory, seemingly willing the ball to stay fair. The ball struck the foul pole above the wall, giving Boston a dramatic 7-6 victory and forcing a seventh game.
No discussion of World Series mythology is complete without mentioning Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit, walk-off home run that ended Game 1 of the 1988 fall classic.
Forced to sit on the bench with a sprained right knee and a torn left hamstring, Gibson could barely walk. Yet, he pinch-hit against hall of Fame relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley of the Oakland A’s.
Footage of Gibson limping around the bases, fist in the air, is one of the more iconic scenes in baseball history.
Joe Carter and Kirby Puckett also hit dramatic home runs that led to championships.
However, legendary moments aren’t always home runs. No one in Boston can forget Bill Buckner letting the ball go through his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. That error cost the Red Sox the game and, eventually, the series.
I’m sure many of you will share more World Series memories with me in the comments or online.
What began as a championship between two rival baseball leagues has grown into one of the oldest and most recognizable annual sporting events.
Over more than a century, the World Series has survived labor disputes, world wars, economic depressions, and enormous changes to the game itself. Its format has evolved, franchises have moved, and generations of players have come and gone.
Yet the World Series’s fundamental appeal has remained remarkably consistent. Every autumn, two teams compete for a championship that connects the modern game to its earliest professional roots.