The baseball World Series starts today. For the purists, these are the best two competitors that could play against each other.
On the one side, we have the mighty New York Yankees. This is the historic team that represents World Series baseball. The World Series started in 1903 which means this is the 120th year of play. There was a player's strike in 1994 and that is the only year the Series was not played.
In 1960 I was 12 years old and the Yankees were in the Series against the Pittsburg Pirates. For some reason, I had adopted the Pirates as my team. One day we sat in gym class in front of a tiny television at Game seven of the Series. It appeared as if the Yankees would beat my team. But then it was the bottom of the ninth; Bill Mazeroski hit a home run and I was hooked on baseball history.
The Yankees have been to the World Series 41 times or 33% of the time. From 1949 to 1953 they won five years in a row. The next nearest team is the St. Louis Cardinals who were in 19 of the Series. This is 14% of the time. The Yankees seem to belong in the post-season games.
There is a wealth of World Series history and records held by Yankee players. They hold nineteen records including at bats, walks, doubles, hits, home runs, plate appearances, runs batted in, runs scored, slugging average, and strikeouts for hitters. This is followed up by pitcher's records including walks issued, games started, innings pitched, losses, strikeouts, and wins. All of this was topped by Don Larson pitching a perfect game in the 1950's.
Now add in the Los Angeles Dodgers. They started as the Brooklyn Dodgers and they had an intense rivalry with the Yankees. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles the rivalry continued. This is going to be fun and historical, The teams are well matched.
The Series will start in Los Angeles and is a best of seven game series. First team to win four games wins the Series. The Series will start in Los Angeles then go back to New York and then finish in Los Angeles.
Each team have a player with over 50 home runs and each of the players may end up as Most Valuable Player in their respective league.
So the two teams are as evenly matched as they can be. Thus the wins and losses will be determined by little things in each game. Either way we will be watching the drama of history. What fun!
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