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Historical Background
On October 1, 1903, the Boston Americans of the American League and the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League took the field for the first of the modern World Series Games. This series set the framework for the Fall Classic and featured legends of Baseball including Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Fred Clarke and more. Boston won the series 5 games to 3 and the World Series took a major step in becoming the culmination of the season.
However, just one year after a successful inaugural Series, John T. Brush, the manager of the New York Giants refused to recognize the relatively new American League, claiming that his Giants were the true Champions as they had the best record in the "only real major league." Following this boycott, the Series returned in 1905 and despite World Wars I and II, the Great Depression and other events that could have derailed the Series, was played uninterrupted until the MLB Strike of 1994. Once the strike was settled in 1995, the Series reclaimed its place as the cap to the baseball season and this year will be the 114th edition of the Fall Classic.
Over 114 installments, the World Series has been punctuated with unique story lines, including:
- The Black Sox Scandal of 1919 where players on the Chicago White Sox (allegedly including "Shoeless" Joe Jackson) threw the series for financial gain;
- The dominant Yankees;
- Various curses, whether they be caused by trading players (Babe Ruth or Rocky Colavito), a goat being ejected from a game, or other events;
- The Loma Prieta Earthquake;
- Cross town series - White Sox v Cubs, Yankees v (New York) Giants, Yankees v (Brooklyn) Dodgers, Athletics v (San Francisco) Giants, and the Streetcar Series featuring the Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns;
- The I-70 Series between in state rivals the Cardinals and Royals;
- A 108 year World Series Championship drought and more.
We'd love to see what you can do with this week's dataset, create your viz and post your work to Tableau Public and Twitter with the hashtag #ThrowbackDataThursday, tagging @TThrowbackThurs. We'd really love to see what you can come up with!
Data Source
This week's dataset comes from Wikipedia. Please be sure to cite the source on your viz.