Another great article, Paul. I'd read about this World's Championship before, but learning that Tessie was a parakeet.....that alone made the time spent reading it worthwhile. A parakeet!
One interesting tidbit for me is that the coverage of this Series was often placed in the context of other interleague exhibition games that were then an ongoing feature of early October. The 1904 Reach guide had a long and detailed writeup of each game of the World's Championship Series, but before it got around to that, it devoted three pages to all of the other "inter-league" series, such as those in St. Louis, Chicago, and Philadelphia. At the end of that article it added a composite "standings" that listed the number of victories by each team, divided by league. The final count was American League 35, National League 27.
Clark Griffith's New York Americans challenged McGraw's Giants to a series, but in a harbinger of things to come a year later, McGraw turned him down, and instead the Giants played a series of exhibition games against the likes of the Trenton YMCA. In fact on at least one occasion the NY Times duly reported on these other exhibition games while not even mentioning the Boston-Pittsburg series!
This is a great tidbit to include, Andy. I had it on my list as well but it didn't make the final cut. I was very surprised to learn that many other series were going on during the first World Series, as you lay out. What seems to be different here is the teams/leagues agreeing that this inter-league series would be meaningful in that the team that won could claim a victory--recognized by both leagues--that superseded winning a pennant. Otherwise, it's just another exhibition series when these were quite common at the end of the year.
I wonder if the ban on other games during the Series started when the leagues got more involved in the planning process after the year-without-a-series in 1904. This certainly is a book-length subject.
We think of the past as such a prim and proper place, but in many ways we are much more mannered than when people regularly threw bottles at poor performing infielders and stormed the field like they owned it.
Another quote from Tommy Leach that speaks to your comment:
"The fans were part of the game in those days. They’d pour right out onto the field and argue with the players and the umpires. Was sort of hard to keep the game going sometimes, to say the least."
The Dropkick Murphy’s version of “Tessie” is kind of a banger. With or without the inserted radio call of Joe Castiglione calling the final out of the 2004 World Series. As a Yankee fan, I rather prefer it without.
Agree. It was a killer track leading up to that Series. Since then it's been overexposed, but when it came out it was such a cool mash-up of old and new made by fans who knew their Boston sports.
Another great article, Paul. I'd read about this World's Championship before, but learning that Tessie was a parakeet.....that alone made the time spent reading it worthwhile. A parakeet!
One interesting tidbit for me is that the coverage of this Series was often placed in the context of other interleague exhibition games that were then an ongoing feature of early October. The 1904 Reach guide had a long and detailed writeup of each game of the World's Championship Series, but before it got around to that, it devoted three pages to all of the other "inter-league" series, such as those in St. Louis, Chicago, and Philadelphia. At the end of that article it added a composite "standings" that listed the number of victories by each team, divided by league. The final count was American League 35, National League 27.
Clark Griffith's New York Americans challenged McGraw's Giants to a series, but in a harbinger of things to come a year later, McGraw turned him down, and instead the Giants played a series of exhibition games against the likes of the Trenton YMCA. In fact on at least one occasion the NY Times duly reported on these other exhibition games while not even mentioning the Boston-Pittsburg series!
This is a great tidbit to include, Andy. I had it on my list as well but it didn't make the final cut. I was very surprised to learn that many other series were going on during the first World Series, as you lay out. What seems to be different here is the teams/leagues agreeing that this inter-league series would be meaningful in that the team that won could claim a victory--recognized by both leagues--that superseded winning a pennant. Otherwise, it's just another exhibition series when these were quite common at the end of the year.
I wonder if the ban on other games during the Series started when the leagues got more involved in the planning process after the year-without-a-series in 1904. This certainly is a book-length subject.
We think of the past as such a prim and proper place, but in many ways we are much more mannered than when people regularly threw bottles at poor performing infielders and stormed the field like they owned it.
Another quote from Tommy Leach that speaks to your comment:
"The fans were part of the game in those days. They’d pour right out onto the field and argue with the players and the umpires. Was sort of hard to keep the game going sometimes, to say the least."
The Dropkick Murphy’s version of “Tessie” is kind of a banger. With or without the inserted radio call of Joe Castiglione calling the final out of the 2004 World Series. As a Yankee fan, I rather prefer it without.
Agree. It was a killer track leading up to that Series. Since then it's been overexposed, but when it came out it was such a cool mash-up of old and new made by fans who knew their Boston sports.