On October 13, 1903, in chilly Pittsburgh, baseball player Bill Dinneen of the Boston Americans struck out the great Honus Wagner to end the eighth game of the very first World Series. Boston won the game 3 to 0, and the series five games to three. Fans poured onto the field. The Americans had beaten the Pittsburgh Pirates to become the first official champions of all of Major League Baseball.
The series had started ten days earlier on October 1. Two leagues, the older National League and the upstart American League, had been bitter rivals for years, even stealing each other's players. Finally, the owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans agreed to settle things on the field with a best-of-nine showdown. Pittsburgh jumped ahead three games to one. Then Boston, led by pitcher Cy Young - the man the best-pitcher award is named after today - roared back to win four straight. Tickets cost 50 cents to a dollar, and fans nicknamed the loud Boston rooters the 'Royal Rooters.'
The World Series has been played almost every year since, missing only 1904 (the Giants refused to play) and 1994 (a player strike). Boston's Americans later changed their name to something a little more familiar: the Red Sox. The cup-shaped Commissioner's Trophy that today's winners hoist above their heads is a great-great-grandchild of that ten-day baseball brawl in 1903, when two leagues stopped fighting and started a tradition that's now older than airplanes, radios, and television.
