Getting Started
It took only three years for the upstart American League to be accepted as a challenger to the older National League in the first World Series in 1903. Boston, representing the junior circuit, outlasted the Pittsburgh Pirates, five games to three. But when Boston repeated as league champion in 1904, it found itself cold-shouldered by John McGraw, the combative manager of the National League winners, the New York Giants. McGraw, parting company with his more conciliatory brethren, refused to allow his club to play against what he considered to be an inferior organization.
A year later, McGraw was back in the fold after another successful pennant race. In the only World Series with a shutout in each game, his Giants beat the Philadelphia Athletics, four games to one. The best-of- seven format would remain in effect except for 1919 through 1921, when it reverted to the original five-of-nine.
But the Giants and A's had been rated as well-matched. In 1906, the Chicago Cubs, winners of 116 game, a record never equalled in a 154-game schedule, opposed their crosstown rivals, the White Sox, a team so unimpressive at bat that they were known as the Hitless Wonders. Nevertheless, brilliant pitching carried the underdogs to the first real World Series upset. It was a lesson, often to be repeated, that in a short series of games, a team with a hot hand could take the measure of one seemingly superior.
By 1914, the Athletics had become the "winningest" World Series team with victories in 1910, 1911, and 1913. Few gave a chance to the Boston Braves, who had come from last place in July to take the NL title. But the Braves' momentum propelled them through an astonishing four-game sweep, one still regarded by many as the greatest upset of all time.
A new version of the A's, still managed by owner Connie Mack, had won world championships in 1929 and 1930, the latter in six games over the St. Louis Cardinals, who faced them again in 1931. The A's had won 107 games behind a splendid pitching staff headed by Hall of Famer Lefty Grove and the slugging of Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons. But the Cardinals had the hot hand of young outfielder Pepper Martin, who got 12 hits in the seven games. In a touch of irony, the pitching star was the Cards' 38-year-old Burleigh Grimes, who won two games with the help of a spitball that he used legally under a "grandfather clause" after it was banned in 1920.
The Cardinals won another notable upset in 1942, knocking off the Yankees in five games after the Bronx team had gone undefeated in eight straight World Series going back to 1927.
The Last Half Century
Like the Cubs of 1906, the Cleveland Indians came into the 1954 Series having just estabvlished a new American League record with 111 victories. With two 23-game winners and Hall of Famer Bob Feller, who had won "only" 19 that year, they were odds-on to whip the New York Giants. But a celebrated catch by the great Willie Mays, key pinch hits by the otherwise unheralded Dusty Rhodes, and strong pitching gave the championship to the Giants in four games.
Some consider the Brooklyn Dodgers' first and only world title in 1955 against the Yankees to be an upset because it followed seven defeats, five to the very same Yanks. But this Brooklyn team was the fabled "Boys of Summer" with slugging by Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and Roy Campanella, the incomparable all-around play of Jackie Robinson, and excellent pitching led by Don Newcombe.
A genuine surprise was the 1969 victory of the "Amazing" Mets, perennial NL doormats, against a powerful Baltimore Orioles club which had just begun a three consecutive pennant streak. Again, good pitching and timely hitting prevailed against the short-term silence of characteristically big bats.
So, too, the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers, lightly regarded against an Oakland A's team at the beginning of a three-pennant run, won easily in five games. The well-remembered ninth inning pinch-hit home run by injured outfielder Kirk Gibson, making his only appearance of the Series in the first game, touched off that improbability.
The playoff system instituted in the 1990's, including "wild card" entrants for the first time, created the novel possibility for a team that had not won its league title to become baseball' world champion. The Florida Marlins, first in 1997 against the Indians, and again in 2003 against the Yankees, showed it could be done, and it has quickly become unremarkable.
What surprises await in the future?
Sources:
Baseball-Almanac.com
Baseball-Reference.com
David Hornestay - DavidH began a career as a freelancer after 34 years in government management. Keeping a hand in as a consultant in federal human ...
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