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All Your Questions About the World Series Answered 

October 25, 2024

By Brian Boone

Uncle John is a huge baseball fan, despite growing up a fan of the ever lowly Seattle Mariners. That’s probably why he pored over and absorbed everything about baseball he could find, making him the ideal source to answer your big and burning queries about baseball’s biggest time, the World Series.

Why is it called the “World Series,” anyway? 

Calling the baseball championship the “World Series” is perceived as an overly patriotic, self-aggrandizing misnomer — only Major League Baseball teams compete, and all of them except two were from the U.S. (Canada’s Toronto Blue Jays and the defunct Montreal Expos). This led to a myth that it the first high-stakes showdown between the winners of the National League and American League in 1903 and sponsored by the New York World newspaper. Actually, the title was derived as a media-savvy attention-getter, as well as a nostalgic throwback. In 1883, the title holders from the new major leagues at that time, the National League and the American Association, met in The Championship of the United States, also marketed as the World’s Championship Series, or World’s Series. 

Has the World Series ever been cancelled?

Called off completely? Yes. Significantly delayed? Also yes. In 1904, what would have been the second ever World Series would have been contested between the National League’s New York Giants and the American League’s Boston Americans. The inter-league title series was still a work in progress, and there wasn’t a concrete contract in place yet that made the games mandatory, giving Giants owner John T. Brush the right of refusal — he thought the newer American League was a shoddy minor league whose champion wasn’t worthy of playing his squad. Ninety years later, the 1994 World Series was a casualty of a players’ strike. Games stopped in August, the season never resumed, and so the championship didn’t happen.

As for delays, Game 3 of the 1989 World Series was put off for five days after an earthquake hit the Bay Area moments before the start of Game 2 involving the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics. The events of 9/11 in 2001 delayed the World Series, too, so much so that the championship round was played in November for the first time.

How often have bitter rivals played each other in the World Series?

It would depend on how you define “bitter rivals,” so let’s start geographically. Until the 1960s, when most teams were based in just a handful of big, eastern cities, crosstown teams played each other fairly regularly. New York’s Giants and Yankees played each other (in 1921, ’22, ’23, ’36, ’37, and ’51); the Yankees faced the Brooklyn Dodgers (in 1941, ’47, ’49, ’52, ’52, ’55, and ’56); Chicago’s White Sox and Cubs played the 1906 series, and 1944 saw the St. Louis Browns play the St. Louis Cardinals. The most recent Series like this: the 2000 “Subway Series” between the Yankees and New York Mets. The overall most frequently occurring World Series matchup: Yankees vs. Dodgers. The former has won eight times; the now L.A.-based Dodgers have won thrice. 

Who has never won a World Series?

Of the 30 current teams, only the Seattle Mariners have never played for a World Series title. Four other squads have made it that far but couldn’t secure the trophy: the San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays, Milwaukee Brewers, and Colorado Rockies. In 35 years of existence, the Montreal Expos never made it to the World Series, although they had the best record in baseball when the ill-fated 1994 season ended in a strike. The Expos did sort of win a World Series, though — the team moved in 2005, became the Washington Nationals, and won it all in 2019.

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