The World Series by Stephanie Peters

Introduction:
The Road to the First World Series
    Ask baseball fans when their favorite sport was born, and you're likely to get several different answers.
    “Alexander J. Cartwright wrote down the first official rules for baseball in 1845,” one may say, “and on June 19, 1846, his
     team, the New York Knickerbockers, played a game by those rules. Since we still follow most of those rules today, that was
     the first real baseball game.”
    “But in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, Abner Doubleday drew a huge diamond in the dirt and put a base down in each corner,”
     another might counter. “That's why it's called
baseball
and why the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown.”
    “The word
baseball
was used long before 1839,” a third might object. “A document written in 1791warns people not to play baseball within 80 yards of the new Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Meeting House. The town was afraid
     someone would hit a ball through the house's windows!”
    “But the game itself was around even earlier than that,” a fourth will add. “When George Washington was at Valley Forge during
     the Revolutionary War, he played an English version of baseball called rounders.”
    The truth is that modern baseball has no single birthday. It evolved from similar games that used bats and balls and involved
     running, pitching, throwing, and catching.
    What is known, however, is when and how
professional
baseball began. The first baseball team made up entirely of paid athletes, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed in 1869.
     That team won 56 straight games before being defeated by the amateur Brooklyn Athletics on June 14, 1870.
    The Red Stockings' amazing success convinced others to create teams of paid players. On March 17, 1871, nine of these teams
     were organized into the National Association of Professional Baseball Players (NA). This league lasted only four years beforegambling, scandal, and infighting caused it to fold. But on February 2, 1876, a new professional association, the National
     League (NL), was created.
    The NL was a much stronger organization than the NA had been — so strong, in fact, that in 1882, owners of teams that were
not
in the league decided to form a rival , organization, the American Association (AA).
    The competition between the two leagues was instantaneous and fierce, and at the end of the 1882 season, it came to a head.
     That September, the NL's number-one squad, the Chicago White Stockings, agreed to play a series of exhibition games against
     the AA's top team, the Cincinnati Reds. Considered by many to be the first true World Series, the event ended in a tie at
     one game apiece.
    Although there was no rematch in 1883, the two leagues met again in 1884 and continued to meet in the postseason until the
     AA shuttered its doors at the end of the 1891 season due to financial difficulties.
    The NL was not going to be without a rival for long, however. In 1892, sportswriter Byron Bancroft “Ban” Johnson and Reds
     manager Charlie Comiskey set out to turn a minor baseball organization, theWestern League, into a major-league powerhouse. It took ten years, but by early December 1902, the new organization, the American
     League, had grown just as strong and as popular as the National League. NL team owners had no choice but to recognize the
     AL as a major league.
    The AL began its first official season in April 1903. By August, one team, the Boston Red Sox (or Pilgrims or Americans, as
     they were sometimes called), had emerged as the league's standout team. Meanwhile the Pittsburgh Pirates of the NL came out
     on top for the third season in a row. That same month the Pirates' owner, Barney Dreyfuss, challenged owner Henry Killilea
     and his Boston squad to a best-of-nine series to determine which team was stronger.
    And with that challenge, the World Series was born.

CHAPTER ONE
EARLY 1900s
1903-1912: The First World Series, Missed Catches, and an Amazing Finish
    The 1903 World Series