105-101

The concept of the World Series in baseball is pretty simple: the last two teams standing after a regular season and postseason gauntlet square off to determine the overall champion of the highest levels of the sport in the world.

Since 1969, playoff qualifiers have had to navigate through postseason preliminary rounds before squaring off in the World Series. When the leagues broke into divisions, it necessitated a league championship showdown before the World Series. Wild Card teams were added in in 1994 and the structure of those rounds and the playoffs continues to change with time.

Prior to 1969, things were simple. The winner of the National League and American League regular seasons got a ticket to the World Series. It was easy and clean, for the most part.

The first World Series in its modern iteration is considered to have happened in 1903. The brief history of it is that the upstart American League and the pre-existing National League had been at war with each other since the AL was founded by Ban Johnson in 1901. As part of a cease fire, teams from the two leagues agreed to play against each other at the conclusion of their regular seasons. In 1901, the Boston Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates were running away with their respective league regular season titles and put an agreement in place to square off against each other to determine the superior champion of the two biggest leagues in the country. Things grew from there and, in concept, the current World Series isn’t much different than it the one played over 120 years ago.

The 1903 series wasn’t the first Major League Baseball championship, though.

In 1882, the American Association was formed as a second Major League to compete with the National League. From 1884-1890, the champions from the AA and NL faced off against each other in the postseason. It was actually done through agreement and negotiations between the owners of the two teams. Over the course of this format, owners agreed to series that had as many as 15 games and as few as three. Two seven-game series (1885 and 1890) ended in ties as the teams split the first six games and tied in Game 7.

From 1892-1900, after the collapse of the American Association but before the establishment of the American League, they tried a split-season format with the two champions playing each other and another format where the first-place team would play the second place team in a series called the Temple Cup.

The series had different names back then too. At different times it was called “The Championship of the United States,” “World’s Championship Series” and “World’s Series.”

The pre-1900 championship series, whatever you want to call them, are not recognized by Major League Baseball as being official. Even though the American League formed in 1901, contention between the two leagues prevented any championship series from happening until the 1903 agreement.

All of that leads up to this week’s installment of The Stud 400 when that first World Series was played and won by Major League Baseball’s very first World Series champion, the Boston Americans.

Before we move on to this week’s edition of The Stud 400, here’s a look at the last five entries as we count down the 400 greatest moments in Major League Baseball history:

110: First MLB All-Star Game (1934)

109: Murderer’s Row Yankees win World Series (1927)

108: Joe Sewell strikes out (1925)

107: Mickey Mantle’s Triple Crown (1956)

106: MTy Cobb’s 3,000^th hit (1921)

And now, here’s Episode LXVII of The Stud 400.

105. Phil Niekro’s 300^th win (1985)

A total of 24 pitchers in Major League history have won 300 games and each one of them was a monumental achievement to be sure.

Phil Niekro was the 18^th pitcher to do so and he might have the craziest story about his game among them. Niekro was 46 years old in 1985, which is old even in knuckleballer years. He needed 16 wins coming into the season to reach 300 and that’s a pretty big ask of someone that age. Niekro was 10-8 through July which put him right on pace to gain the necessary six more wins to reach the milestone. He won five out of six starts in one stretch leaving him just one win away with five starts to go in the season. It was a bad time for a slump to hit. Niekro lost three straight and then had a no decision in his penultimate start of the season leaving him one final shot at 300 on the final day of the season. The Yankees were set to take on the American League East Champion Blue Jays with Niekro facing off against John Cerutti in Toronto. Surely Niekro would be filing those nails and ready to have that knuckleball fluttering on that Sunday, right? Nope.

Niekro had been struggling a little with his control in September, so in what could be the signature game of his Hall of Fame career, Niekro decided to do something he hadn’t done in any of his previous 803 career games: abandon the knuckleball. Adding even more drama to the day, Niekro’s father had been in ill health and was in the ICU at a West Virginia hospital. It was Niekro’s father who taught him the knuckleball and Niekro himself said after the win that his father was “as much a part of these 300 wins as I was.” So, Niekro went to the mound with the Blue Jays fully expecting and prepared to take their best hacks at the butterflies coming up to the plate. Instead, Niekro gave them a steady diet of curve balls and change ups with a screwball or two mixed in. The Yankees scored three runs in the first and from there, Niekro worked his magic. The baffled Blue Jays didn’t get a hit until rookie Cecil Fielder singled in the fourth and they didn’t add their second hit until the seventh. By then, the Yankees had built a 5-0 lead which they would extend to 7-0 on a Henry Cotto homer. Niekro was well on his way to his 300^th win when he took the mound in search of not only a historic win, but a record-breaking shutout. If he was to complete the inning unscathed, Niekro would become the oldest pitcher to throw a Major League shutout. And he still hadn’t thrown a single knuckleball!

Niekro got two quick outs, but Tony Fernandez hit a pinch double to bring up Niekro’s former teammate Jeff Burroughs with the shutout on the line. Niekro pumped in a first-pitch “fastball” for strike one. Then catcher Butch Wynegar started towards the mound. Billy Martin sent Phil’s brother Joe, also a Yankee at the time, to the mound for a chat. After he returned to the bench, Niekro got back to work and reunited with his old friend, the knuckler. Niekro threw his first three knuckleballs of the game, the first two were taken and Burroughs swung through the third for strike three. Niekro may have navigated the game without his trademark pitch, but when he needed it to nail down a place in history, it was only appropriate he did it with the pitch that got him there. And as for the person who taught him the pitch, after the game was over, Joe was able to tell Phil that his father watched the game and was out of the ICU and recovering at home.

What an awesome story and historic moment for one of the game’s beloved pitchers.

104. Roy Campanella paralyzed (1958)

Segregation robbed Roy Campanella of a full Major League Baseball career, but when he did get to the bigs, boy did he make it count.

Campanella didn’t make his debut until he was 26 years old in 1948 and even though he only played ten seasons in Brooklyn, he’s firmly in the conversation as the best all-around catcher of all-time. Campanella is certainly known for his class, leadership and incredible baseball talent, but you can’t mention his name without bringing up the tragic car accident that paralyzed Campy for the rest of his life. On September 29, 1957, Campanella wasn’t in the Dodgers starting lineup, but he came on to pinch hit for Roger Craig and flew out in the eighth inning. It was the Dodgers final game in Brooklyn and, although we didn’t know it at the time, it was the last at bat of Campy’s career.

Campanella lived on Long Island in New York and operated a liquor store in Harlem as his off-field job. After closing for the night on January 28, 1958, Campanella was making his commute home when his 1957 Chevy hit some ice on Dosoris Lane in Glen Cove, NY. His car flipped and Campanella broke his fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae while also damaging his spine. Campanella was paralyzed from the shoulders down. Eventually, he regained use of his arms and was able to do minor things like feed himself and shake hands, but that was about it. The tragedy hit the Dodgers universe and entire baseball world hard as Campy was a well-liked person and teammate on top of being an incredible player. In fact, he was so beloved that when the Dodgers held Roy Campanella Night with an exhibition against the Yankees at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, they set a record at the time by drawing 93,103 players to the game. Campanella remained with the Dodgers in a number of roles and passed away at the age of 71 in 1993.

103. Eddie Gaedel pinch hits (1951)

We love Bill Veeck at BallNine. From Disco Demolition Night to Grandstand Managers Night, we are always here to celebrate Veeck’s antics.

We even had his son Mike Veeck as a guest on Spitballin’. Veeck the elder has had multiple entries and mentions on The Stud 400 and today we run into him one final time and he’s bringing his little friend with him. Eddie Gaedel had been a child actor and model and Veeck connected with him through a booking agency for a bright idea he was concocting. Veeck owned the St. Louis Browns and they were set to play a doubleheader against the Tigers on August 19, 1951. Veeck had planned a “celebration” of the American League’s 50^th anniversary for the doubleheader sponsored by Falstaff Brewery. Falstaff and the fans had been promised a day of surprises and in between the games of the doubleheader, they got their first surprise. A papier-mâché cake was rolled out in between games and the 3’7” Gaedel popped out of the cake to some cheers and laughter…then nothing else.

Reporters and the folks at Falstaff Brewery were expecting much more, but for the moment it looked like all they got was a little man popping out of a false cake in a hokey ceremony. Veeck offered a flimsy apology and began to prepare for Game 2, knowing he had more in store. After the Tigers went down in the top of the first, right fielder Frank Saucier, making just his second big league start, was told he wouldn’t be taking his turn to lead off the bottom of the inning because he was being pinch hit for by a new player the Browns signed two days earlier, Eddie Gaedel. The tiny Gaedel hopped out of the Browns dugout wearing a batboy uniform with the number 1/8 on the back. Home plate umpire Ed Hurley immediately questioned the move, but Browns manager Zack Taylor produced a copy of Gaedel’s contract approved by the American League and an active roster with Gaedel listed on it. Taylor ordered Gaedel to take his at bat. Allegedly, Veeck told Gaedel that he had taken out a million dollar life insurance policy on him and he’d be standing on the roof with a rifle ready to use if he swung the bat. Sporting a strike zone that was estimated to be about an inch and a half, Gaedel took four straight balls and ambled on down to first base, bowing to the crowd along the way.

Tigers pitcher Bob Cain took it all in stride, laughing the whole time. His first two pitches were attempts at strikes while the two subsequent pitches were just lobs up to the plate. Gaedel was lifted for a pinch runner and the Browns ultimately fell to the Tigers in the game, 6-2. American League President Will Harridge voided Gaedel’s contract once he learned about the stunt. Veeck issued the classic statement in response, questioning whether Yankees shortstop, the 5’6” Phil Rizzuto, was really just a tall dwarf and should have his contract voided too. Gaedel remains one of just five players to walk in their only career plate appearance while never playing the field. Tragically, Gaedel was killed after an altercation in 1961. Saucier, the man Gaedel pinch hit for 73 years ago, passed away just this week at 98 years old.

102. Boston Americans win first World Series (1903)

As you may have read in the intro, there were different iterations of the World Series going back as far as 1884.

However, Major League Baseball recognizes the eight-game series played between the Boston Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates to be the first World Series proper. Cy Young went 28-9 with a 2.08 ERA to lead the Americans to the upstart American League title while Honus Wagner’s Pirates took the Senior Circuit crown. The teams agreed to an eight-game series to be played in full and at the start, the more established Pirates looked like they were a class above. They beat Young in Game 1 and won three of the first four games in the series. Boston turned things around in Game 5 behind a bounce back effort from Young and ended up winning games six and seven as well. With the Americans up 4-3 in the series, the best the Pirates could hope for was a win in Game 8 and a tied series. However, Bill Dineen, also a 20-game winner that year, hurled a shutout for the Americans to clinch the series 5-3.

101. Connie Mack retires (1950)

In 1886, Cornelius McGillicuddy had a fine debut as a professional ballplayer.

At age 23, he broke in with the Washington Nationals and hit .361 in a brief 10 game stint with the National League ball club. Although he stuck around for 11 seasons, his playing career was nondescript. However, that didn’t stop him from staying in the game a staggering 64 years. The final three seasons of his playing career, he served as player-manager for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which eventually led to the role in which he’d become more famous. It was in 1901 when McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, became the manager of the Philadelphia A’s.

Mack stayed in that role for 50 seasons, finally calling it quits at the age of 87 in 1950. Mack holds many records that will not be broken. His 3,731 wins are 847 more than Tony LaRussa, who is in second place and his career losses are 3,948, which is more 1,449 more than LaRussa. Want to put things into even more perspective? Mack managed Bones Ely, who was born in 1863 during the Civil War and also managed Bobby Shantz, who is still alive today. Mack was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937 and went on to manage another 23 more seasons after that. Mack threw out the first pitch at the 1950 All-Star Game and finished out the season largely with Jimmy Dykes and Mickey Cochrane in control of the A’s. The Tall Tactician finally called it a career at the close of the season. Mack conceded, “I’m not quitting because I’m getting old, I’m quitting because I think the people want me to.”

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of The Stud 400 when we finally crack the top 100 and do so in a unanimous way. We’re celebrating one of the most impactful debuts of the past 50 years and the post-trade retirement of one of the absolute icons of not just baseball, but American history. Next week is the perfect time to visit BallNine for an installment of The Stud 400 that will literally have you shaking in your shoes.