The 1903 World Series

Profile manager: John Schalcosky [send private message]

Project Goal

The goal of this project is to compile complete profiles on every Professional Baseball Player that participated in the very first World Series Game in 1903.

Wikipedia Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_World_Series

Right now this project just has one member, me. I am John Schalcosky.

Here are some of the tasks that I think need to be done. I'll be working on them, and could use your help.

• Connecting each profile to the WikiTree World Family Tree
• Connecting the entire list to each other
• Completing full profiles on the Boston participants

Summary of the Series

The 1903 World Series was the FIRST modern World Series to be played in Major League Baseball. It matched the American League champion Boston Americans against the National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates in a best-of-nine series, with Boston prevailing five games to three, winning the last four.

Pittsburgh pitcher Sam Leever injured his shoulder while trap-shooting, so his teammate Deacon Phillippe stepped in to pitch five complete games. Phillippe won three of his games, but it was not enough to overcome Boston's pitchers Bill Dinneen and Cy Young. In Game 1, Phillippe struck out ten Boston batters. The next day, Dinneen bettered that mark, striking out eleven Pittsburgh batters in Game 2.

Honus Wagner, bothered by injuries, batted only 6 for 27 (.222) in the Series and committed six errors. The shortstop was deeply distraught by his performance. The following spring, Wagner (who in 1903 led the league in batting average) refused to send his portrait to a "Hall of Fame" for batting champions. "I was too bum last year", he wrote. "I was a joke in that Boston-Pittsburgh Series. What does it profit a man to hammer along and make a few hits when they are not needed only to fall down when it comes to a pinch? I would be ashamed to have my picture up now."

Due to overflow crowds in #Pittsburgh at the Exposition Park games in Allegheny City, if a batted ball rolled under a rope in the outfield that held spectators back, a "ground-rule triple" would be scored. Seventeen ground-rule triples were hit in the four games played at the stadium.

In the series, Boston came back from a 3 games to 1 deficit, winning the final 4 games to capture the title. Such a large comeback would not happen again until the Pirates came back to defeat the Washington Senators in the 1925 World Series, and has happened only 11 times in baseball history. (The Pirates themselves repeated this feat in 1979 against the Baltimore Orioles.)

Much was made of the influence of Boston's "Royal Rooters", who traveled to Exposition Park and sang their theme song "Tessie" to distract the opposing players (especially Wagner). Boston wound up winning three out of four games in Allegheny City.

Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss added his share of the gate receipts to the players' share, so the losing team's players actually finished with a larger individual share than the winning team's.

List of all Players who participated in the World Series

Will you join me? Please post a comment here on this page, in G2G using the project tag, or send me a private message. Thanks!