World Series Champions

A lot of people love to root for the underdog. But in the 2008 World Series, who is the underdog? One team, the Philadelphia Phillies, has won exactly one World Series in its 125-year history. That happened in 1980. The other team, the Tampa Bay Rays, is not finishing in last or next-to-last place in their division for only the first time in their 10-year history. The Phillies have lost more games than any other sports franchise. The Rays have gone from worst to first. Which team is the more unlikely candidate for a World Series championship? It’s hard to tell.

There’s another way to look at it. The teams that have long records of World Series appearances are already on vacation. They’ll be back to spring training in a couple of months. But for now, those guys will be doing what we’ll be doing. Watching the Series on TV.

Here’s a little bit about the history of the World Series.

The World Series is a seven-game series between the National League champion and the American League champion in Major League Baseball. It is the terminal championship series of the system of post-season playoffs. The winner is considered, by most accounts anyway, to be the best MLB team of that year.

Although professional baseball teams were first organized in the National League and the American Association during the 1880’s, the “World Series” as we now conceive of it has only existed since 1903. For one thing, the American Association dissolved in 1891. The current American League was established in 1901. And a play-off between the American League champions and the National League champions was scheduled only in 1903. It was rather casually organized between the owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans (now the Boston Red Sox). The Boston Americans won the first World Series.

The Americans won the American League championship again in 1904, but the National League champions, the New York Giants (since moved to California to become the San Francisco Giants) refused to play them. Giants owner John T. Brush didn’t consider the American League to be of the same caliber as the National League, and there were no standards or objective expectations for the Series. One of his objections was that there was no prior agreement for the split of the gate proceeds from the Series. He was also concerned that the Series was organized by the owners of the individual teams, not by an independent third-party commission. Before the 1905 season, Brush proposed rules to address his concerns and the World Series became an annual event thereafter.

In 1919, players on the Chicago White Sox conspired to lose the Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Money was more important to them than the credential of being World Series champions. Besides, the White Sox had won in 1917. Although the White Sox players were acquitted of criminal charges, the first commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, whose office was created as a result of the scandal, banned the players from the game for life. But most painfully for Chicagoans, the scandal caused a curse to be upon the White Sox which prevented the team from winning a World Series until 2005.

In 1989, the San Francisco Giants played the Oakland Athletics in the first Bay Area Series. Game 3 was to begin at Candlestick Park in San Francisco when, less than 30 minutes before the first pitch was due to be thrown, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurred. Sixty-two people lost their lives in that earthquake. Candlestick Park lost power, the team and fans were evacuated and the game was postponed. Oakland won that series in four games.

Once the 1904 boycott of the World Series was over, the World Series had been played every year since 1905. Until 1994, when a players’ strike suspended the season in August. The players and the owners could not agree on a contract, largely because the owners insisted on a salary cap, which the players would not agree to. The season and post-season were cancelled and no World Series was played. Players remained on strike until after spring training had begun in 1995 and a federal court ruled that the owners had engaged in unfair labor practices.

On September 11, 2001, four regularly-scheduled commercial jets were highjacked by terrorists. Planes hit each of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. A third plane hit the Pentagon and a fourth was forced down in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania by the passengers on the plane. A total of 2,974 people were killed in those attacks. Air traffic was suspended into, out of and within the United States for days. Stock markets were closed and reopened the following week to tremendous losses. People all over the country lined up to give blood, hoping to be able to assist survivors of the attacks. Hate crimes occurred against people who were or who were thought to be of Middle Eastern descent. An untold number of businesses failed, or encountered huge economic difficulties, on account of the attacks.

Major League Baseball postponed all games for about a week. But we played the World Series that year.

The perennial American League champions, the New York Yankees, played the National League expansion team Arizona Diamondbacks. Because of the postponement of games, the Series didn’t start until October 27. The seventh game was played on November 4. As the Diamondbacks had the home-field advantage, three of the games were played at Yankee Stadium, a subway ride away from Ground Zero, the site of the demolished World Trade Center. President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch of the first game played at Yankee Stadium and the crowd chanted “USA” throughout the game. The Yankees won all of the games played in New York, giving a much-needed boost to a demoralized city. But the Diamondbacks won all of the games on their own home turf, and therefore won the Series four games to three.

Will the Tampa Bay Rays defeat the team who were the last of the original sixteen MLB teams to win a World Series? Or will the team in the Phillies jersey beat the guys who went from worst to first?

The Phillies won Game 1 by a score of 3-2.

Stay tuned.