1904 World Series
baseball championship series (counterfactual, contested annually from 1905)
The 1904 World Series was the scheduled championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1904 season. However, it was not played. It would have been contested between the champions of the two major leagues—the National League (NL) and the American League (AL)—as had been done in October 1903, the first modern World Series.
The league champions in 1904 were the Boston Americans (now the Boston Red Sox) of the AL and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants) of the NL. Boston had clinched their second consecutive AL pennant, while New York won the 1904 NL pennant by a wide margin, 13 games ahead of the Chicago Cubs. With still no formal arrangement in place between the two leagues regarding the staging of the World Series, the Giants under owner John T. Brush refused to play against a team from what they considered an inferior league. The resulting criticism from fans and writers caused Brush to reverse course during the offseason and lead the effort to formalize the World Series between the two leagues.
Background
Lack of a formal World Series agreement
In the first modern World Series in 1903, as well as several postseason series between the National League and the American Association in the 1880s (sometimes referred to as "pre-modern World Series"), the rules for a given season's "World's Championship Series" had been whatever the two participating clubs had agreed upon. The World Series was not a compulsory event and was not governed by an authoritative body. Thus, when the Boston Americans defeated the National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1903 World Series, the contest was arranged directly by the two champion clubs, not by the leagues themselves.
New York Giants
During this time, there was an intense business rivalry between the two leagues, especially in New York.
“1904 World Series” enters the record as baseball championship series (counterfactual, contested annually from 1905). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what World, Series and baseball can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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