Category: General Baseball

Origin of the Name “World Series”

Stolen from roadsidephotos.sabr.org by Doug Pappas because his site is apparently defunct:

One baseball myth that just won’t die is that the “World Series” was named for the New York World newspaper, which supposedly sponsored the earliest contests. It didn’t, and it wasn’t.

In fact, the postseason series between the AL and NL champs was originally known as the “Championship of the World” or “World’s Championship Series.” That was shortened through usage to “World’s Series” and finally to “World Series.”

This usage can be traced through the annual baseball guides. Spalding’s Base Ball Guide for 1887 reported the results of the 1886 postseason series between Chicago, champions of the National League, and St. Louis, champions of the American Association, under the heading “The World’s Championship.” As the editor noted, the two leagues “both entitle their championship contests each season as those for the base ball championship of the United States,” so a more grandiose name was required to describe the postseason showdown between the two “champions of the United States.”

But the Spalding Guide — which, after all, was published by one of the world’s largest sporting goods companies, with a vested interest in bringing baseball to other lands — had grander ambitions. By 1890, the Spalding Guide was explaining that “[t]he base ball championship of the United States necessarily includes that of the entire world, though the time will come when Australia will step in as a rival, and after that country will come Great Britain; but all that is for the future.”

This didn’t happen, but the name “World’s Championship Series” stuck. Reporting on the first modern postseason series, the Red Sox-Pirates battle of 1903, the 1904 Reach Guide called it the “World’s Championship Series.” By 1912, Reach’s headline spoke of the “World’s Series,” while editor Francis Richter’s text still referred to the “World’s Championship Series.” The Reach Guide switched from “World’s Series” to “World Series” in 1931, retaining the modern usage through its merger with the Spalding Guide and through its final issue in 1941. The separately-edited Spalding Guide used “World’s Series” through 1916, switching to “World Series” in the 1917 edition.

The Spalding-Reach Guide was replaced as Major League Baseball’s semi-official annual by the Sporting News Guide, first published in 1942. The Sporting News Guide used “World’s Series” from 1942 through 1963, changing to “World Series” in the 1964 edition.

Moreover, the New York World never claimed any connection with postseason baseball. The World was a tabloid much given to flamboyant self-promotion. If it had been involved in any way with sponsoring a championship series, the fact would have been emblazoned across its sports pages for months. I reviewed every issue of the World for the months leading up to the 1903 and 1905 World’s Championship Series — there’s not a word suggesting any link between the paper and the series.

Howdy. I’m Kopper, and I’m a baseball fan.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I plan on making this thing my St. Louis-centric baseball blog. I’ll post here whenever I feel like sharing something that’s on my mind that happens to relate in some way to baseball and related bat-and-ball games in the St. Louis area. Cool? Cool.

Now, a little bit about me. I’m 46 and live on the south side of St. Louis (Tower Grove South, to be exact). I’ve been a Cardinals fan since I was old enough to walk, most likely (although I really don’t remember when I first started taking notice). My dad was a long-time Cards fan and all us kids (six in all) were raised that way, too. I was the last of the bunch, arriving a whole dozen years after my next closes sibling. Growing up a Cards fan in the ’70s wasn’t particularly easy, but I did my best. We went to a few games a year, usually one of the giveaway days so I’d come home with a ball, a bat, a pennant, or a plastic souvenir helmet. I collected baseball cards like most other kids my age into baseball in the ’70s, and played little league, albeit not very well. I got better after finding a few neighborhood kids to play ball with in our own version of sandlot ball, which we played day-in and day-out  in a thin narrow strip of common ground area between our subdivision and a wooded area with a creek (this was out in St. Peters). I wish I had a dime for every ball we lost in those woods along the creek. We also played corkball and bottle caps when I was a kid. This was mostly at family reunions when my older relatives would get together. I recall my dad (who had played quite a bit of American Legion ball in Manchester after WWII with Hank Arft who was drafted by the Browns) being particularly good at hitting the ball—any type of ball—a really long way, even well into his 50s.

Some of my favorite players growing up were Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Bob Forsch, Al Hrabosky, Garry Templeton, Bake McBride, Reggie Smith, Keith Hernandez and Ted Simmons. Then later, in the ’80s the team hired Whitey Herzog and things got quite a bit more interesting. Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, Tommy Herr, and Silent George Hendrick were all favorites. I was 17 years old and a junior in high school at Parkway West when the Cards won their first World Series title since ’67. At the time, I never thought I’d see the day!

So, now here I am, some 30 years later, deciding to take a stab at actually BLOGGING about my love of the game of baseball. I’ve never been much of a blogger, so I’m not sure how well this will work out, but we’ll see, I guess. I’m at least willing to give it my best shot.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!