World Series Hits 100 Nine years before the Ludington Mariners Class D minor league team took the field for the first time, major league baseball was celebrating an end to the two-year war between the American and National leagues, staging in 1903 the first-ever postseason championship series between the regular-season winners from each league—the first modern World Series.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of baseball’s premier event, begun as a challenge initiated by the owner of the National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates to the Boston Pilgrims, titlists of the American League, for the “championship of the United States.”
Playing a best-of-nine series, Pittsburgh took three of the first four games behind the outstanding pitching of Deacon Phillippe, who won all three games, sometimes pitching on just a day’s rest. Game 1 featured the first-ever World Series home run, walloped by the Pirates’ Jimmy Sebring, as Pittsburgh dominated future Hall of Fame hurler Cy Young, 7–3.
The tide began to turn in Boston’s favor in Game 5, as the Pilgrims, forerunners of today’s Red Sox, logged five ground-rule triples from balls that traveled into the overflow crowds at the extremities of the outfield in an 11–2 victory. The Pilgrims then ran out the string, taking the next three games in a row to claim the first modern World Series crown.
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