The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB), a professional baseball league operating in the United States and Canada, contested between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winning team, determined through a best-of-seven playoff, is declared the champions of the league (often called "world champions") and awarded the Commissioner's Trophy. It was first played in to determine the championship team of baseball after the American League declared itself the second major-league circuit in the United States to compete with the previously established National League.
Qualification to the World Series is determined through a postseason tournament consisting of six teams per league — three teams who won their respective divisions and three teams who achieved the best win-loss record overall but failed to clinch a division title. The team which have won their league's tournament, or clinched a pennant, qualify for the World Series against the other league's pennant winner.
The series is traditionally played in October, although sometimes the series is played into November due to the expansion of the MLB postseason. Because the series is played in the fall (autumn) season in North America, it is often referred to as the Fall Classic., et al.
Before the AL and NL were split into divisions in 1969, the team with the best regular-season win–loss record in each league won that league's pennant and advanced to the World Series, barring a tie necessitating a pennant playoff. Since the introduction of the Major League Baseball postseason playoff format in 1969, each league has conducted a League Championship Series (ALCS and NLCS) preceding the World Series to determine which of its teams will advance, while those series have been preceded in turn by Division Series (ALDS and NLDS) since 1995, and Wild Card games or series in each league since 2012. Until 2002, home-field advantage in the World Series alternated from year to year between the AL and NL. From 2003 to 2016, home-field advantage was given to the league that won that year's All-Star Game. Starting in 2017, home-field advantage was awarded to the league champion team with the better regular-season win–loss record regardless of that team's seeding in earlier postseason rounds (i.e. a Wild Card team in one league will be given home-field advantage over a division winner in the other league if it had the better record or wins the tie-breaking procedure).
The World Series has been contested 121 times through , with the AL team winning 68 times and the NL team 53. The current World Series champions are the Los Angeles Dodgers of the National League, who defeated the AL's Toronto Blue Jays in seven games.
Precursors to the modern World Series (1857–1902)
The original World Series Before 1882, when the American Association was formed as a second major league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (1871–1875) and then the National League (founded 1876) represented the top level of organized baseball in the United States. All championships were awarded to the team with the best record at the end of the season, without a postseason series being played. From 1884 to 1890, the National League and the American Association faced each other in a series of games at the end of the season to determine an overall champion. These series were disorganized in comparison to the modern World Series, with the terms arranged through negotiation of the owners of the championship teams beforehand. The number of games played ranged from as few as three in (Providence defeated New York three games to zero), to a high of fifteen in (Detroit beat St. Louis ten games to five). Both the and Series ended in ties, each team having won three games with one tie game.
The series was promoted and referred to as "The Championship of the United States", "World's Championship Series", or "World's Series" for short. An urban myth holds the name "World Series" came from a putative sponsorship by the New York World newspaper. The earliest such claim found by Snopes was made in 1991 by Nick Auf der Maur. Ben Zimmer posits confusion with The World Almanac, whose name does reflect being founded by the newspaper.
The 19th-century competitions are not officially recognized as part of World Series history by Major League Baseball, which considers 19th-century baseball to be a prologue to the modern baseball era. As late as approximately 1960, some sources treated the 19th-century series on an equal basis with the 20th-century series.for example, Ernest Lanigan's Baseball Cyclopedia from 1922, and Turkin and Thompson's Encyclopedia of Baseball series throughout the 1950s. After about 1930, however, many authorities date the modern World Series to 1903 and discuss the earlier contests separately.The Sporting News Record Book, which began publishing in the 1930s, listed only the modern Series, but also included regular-season achievements for all the 19th-century leagues. Also, a paperback from 1961 called World Series Encyclopedia, edited by Don Schiffer, mentioned the 1880s and 1890s Series in the introduction but otherwise left them out of the discussion. (For example, the 1929 World Almanac lists "Baseball World's Championships 1884–1928" in a single table,page 776 of the facsimile edition, published by the American Heritage Press and Workman Publishing, 1971, while the 1943 edition lists "Baseball World's Championships 1903–1942".page 677. The World Almanac has also long since modified that list's heading to read simply "World Series Results".)
1892–1900: "The Monopoly Years" Following the collapse of the American Association after the 1891 season, the National League was again the only major league. The league championship was awarded in 1892 by a playoff between split season champions. This scheme was abandoned after one season.Abrams, pages 50 and 51 Beginning in 1893—and continuing until divisional play was introduced in 1969—the pennant was awarded to the first-place club in the standings at the end of the season. For four seasons, 1894–1897, the league champions played the runners-up in the postseason championship series called the Temple Cup.Temple Cup - Baseball Biography A second attempt at this format was the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup series, which was played only once, in 1900.Abrams, pages 51
In 1901, the American League was formed as a second major league. No championship series were played in 1901 or 1902 as the National and American Leagues fought each other for business supremacy (in 1902, the top teams instead opted to compete in a football championship).
Modern World Series (1903–present)
First attempt
After two years of bitter competition and player raiding, the National and American Leagues made peace and, as part of the accord, several pairs of teams squared off for interleague exhibition games following the 1903 season. These series were arranged by the participating clubs, as the 1880s World's Series matches had been. One of them, a best-of-nine affair matching that year's pennant winners – the Pittsburgh Pirates of the NL and Boston Americans (later known as the Red Sox) of the AL – has come to be regarded as the 1903 World Series. It had been arranged well in advance by the two club owners, as both teams were league leaders by large margins.Abrams, pages 52–54
Boston upset Pittsburgh by five games to three, winning with pitching depth behind Cy Young and Bill Dinneen and with the support of the band of Royal Rooters.
Boycott of 1904
The 1904 Series, if it had been held, would have been between the AL's Boston Americans (Boston Red Sox) and the NL's New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants). At that point there was no governing body for the World Series nor any requirement that a Series be played. Thus the Giants' owner John T. Brush refused to allow his team to participate in such an event, citing the "inferiority" of the upstart American League. John McGraw, the Giants' manager, even went so far as to say that his Giants were already "world champions" since they were the champions of the "only real major league".
At the time of the announcement, their new cross-town rivals, the New York Highlanders (now the New York Yankees), were leading the AL, and the prospect of facing the Highlanders did not please Giants management. Boston won on the last day of the season, and the leagues had previously agreed to hold a World's Championship Series in 1904, but it was not binding, and Brush stuck to his original decision. In addition to political reasons, Brush also cited a number of legitimate grievances, including the lack of rules under which revenue would be split, where games would be played, and how they would be operated and staffed.
Emergence of formal Series rules
During the winter of 1904–1905, however, feeling the sting of press criticism, Brush had a change of heart and proposed what came to be known as the "Brush Rules", under which the series were played subsequently. One rule was that player shares would come from a portion of the gate receipts for the first four games only. This was to discourage teams from fixing early games in order to prolong the series and make more money. Receipts for later games was split among the two clubs and the National Baseball Commission, then the governing body for the sport, which was able to cover much of its annual operating expense from World Series revenue. Most importantly, the now-official and compulsory World Series matches were operated strictly by the National Commission itself, not by the participating clubs.
With the new rules in place and the National Commission in control, McGraw's Giants made it to the 1905 Series and beat the Philadelphia Athletics four games to one. Since then the Series has been held every year except 1994, when it was canceled by a players' strike. The name of the event, initially known as the World's Championship Series, was gradually shortened in common usage to "World's Series" and, by the 1930s, to "World Series".
The list of postseason rules evolved over time. From 1919 to 1921, the best-of-nine format first used in 1903 was employed. In 1925, Brooklyn owner Charles Ebbets persuaded others to adopt as a permanent rule the 2–3–2 home game pattern first used in 1924. Previously, the pattern had been to alternate by game or to make another arrangement convenient to both clubs. The 2–3–2 pattern has been used ever since except for the 1943 and 1945 World Series, which used a 3–4 pattern to comply with World War II travel restrictions; in 1944, the normal pattern was followed because both teams were based in the same home ballpark.
1919 Black Sox Scandal
Gambling and game-fixing had been a problem in professional baseball from the beginning; star pitcher Jim Devlin was banned for life in 1877 when the National League was just two years old. Baseball's gambling problems came to a head in 1919, when eight players of the Chicago White Sox were alleged to have been bribed to lose the 1919 World Series.
The White Sox had won the World Series in 1917 and were favourites to beat the Cincinnati Reds in 1919. It was alleged the White Sox players were promised $100,000 if they ensured they lost the best-of-nine series in eight games.
The eight players indicted for allegedly accepting bribes were Eddie Cicotte, Oscar "Happy" Felsch, Arnold "Chick" Gandil, "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, Fred McMullin, Charles "Swede" Risberg, George "Buck" Weaver, and Claude "Lefty" Williams. The men believed to be behind the betting scandal were Abe Attell, Bill Burns, Arnold Rothstein, Billy Maharg, and Joseph "Sport" Sullivan.