The MLB World Series

Often referred to as the “Fall Classic,” the World Series is one of the most popular and historic sporting events in the United States and has been contested annually between the champions of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL) since 1903, with the exceptions of 1904 (not held because the NL winner refused to play the AL winner) and 1994 (canceled because of a players’ strike).

Over the years the drama of the World Series has produced a plethora of unexpected heroes (such as Bill Mazeroski and Joe Carter, who hit Series-winning home runs in 1960 and 1993, respectively), outstanding individual feats (including Willie Mays’s famed over-the-shoulder catch in 1954 and Reggie Jackson’s three home runs in game six of the 1977 Series), and tragic figures (from the Series-throwing “Chicago Black Sox” in 1917 to Bill Buckner and his infamous misplayed ground ball in 1986). While there are, of course, no guarantees that the 2008 iteration of the World Series will contain achievements as noteworthy as the those of past Fall Classics, the eventful 2008 baseball season bodes well for the possibility of an exciting postseason.

The 2008 Major League Baseball season has already seen a large number of historic accomplishments. The Tampa Bay Rays not only finished a season with fewer than 90 losses for the first time in the franchise’s 11 years of existence but also manufactured one of the greatest single-season turnarounds in baseball history by winning 97 games en route to their first AL East title and first postseason berth. On the other side of the country, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim won 100 games for the first time in franchise history, and Francisco Rodriguez, the team’s star relief pitcher, broke baseball’s single-season saves record by successfully closing out 62 games. And in the Midwest, both Chicago-based teams (the Cubs and the White Sox) qualified for the play-offs in the same season for the first time since 1906. The success of the Cubs was one of the most prominent stories of the 2008 season—which marks the 100th anniversary of the Cubs’ last World Series title—as the “Lovable Losers” won 97 games and made the postseason for the second year in a row, earning the team its first back-to-back play-off berths in a century.

The 2008 season featured a number of close play-off races: the Philadelphia Phillies clinched their second consecutive NL East title on the penultimate day of the season; the NL wild card was decided on the last day of the season with a Milwaukee Brewers win and a New York Mets loss (which was particularly heartbreaking for their fans, as it was the second year in a row that the Mets were eliminated from the postseson with a loss at home on the final day of the regular season—the first back-to-back occurrence of this ignoble feat in major league history); and the AL Central was decided by a single-game sudden-death play-off between the White Sox and the Minnesota Twins, which was held two days after the scheduled close of the regular season. Baseball fans can only hope that the excitement of the final weeks of the 2008 season carries over into the postseason (via).