A World Championship

A few years after the Civil War ended, the first professional baseball league was created. In 1876, the first group of teams officially became the National League.

In 1901, the American League was created. Other leagues had formed throughout the years, but only these two leagues survived. These are the same two leagues that play today.

For a few years, the National League and the American League never played baseball against each other. But, in 1903, things changed. Baseball officials decided to hold a series of games at the end of that year’s baseball season. They would call the event the World Series.

The best teams from the National League and the American League would play against each other. They would play nine games. The team who won the most games out of nine would win the series. Today, there are only seven games in the World Series.

The first World Series pitted the Boston Pilgrims (later the Red Sox) against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh won the first game; Boston the second.

Pittsburgh won the next two. Just two more wins, and Pittsburgh would be the “world champion.”

Then things changed. Boston won the next four games in a row. On October 13, 1903, the Pilgrims became baseball’s first World Series winner.

There was no World Series in 1904. The New York Giants refused to play the Pilgrims. But after that, the two leagues agreed to hold the World Series every year.

A National Sport

Over the next two decades, people’s interest in baseball soared. The game truly became, as it’s often called, “the national pastime.”

It helped that baseball fans included several presidents. On opening day in 1910, William H. Taft threw the first pitch at a Washington Senators game. Doing so became a presidential tradition.

Woodrow Wilson was the first president to attend a World Series. He watched Boston beat Philadelphia in 1915. Calvin Coolidge went to several World Series games in 1924.