Goldman: The 1916 World Series, a buoy in the sea of death
From SABR member Steven Goldman at The Hardball Times on October 25, 2018:
If you had had a daughter in 1916, she might have been born to become a widow or an orphan. If you had a son, he too might have been born to be an orphan, or to be murdered overseas. A few lucky devils probably got to be both. Some of that fate was knowable in 1916, some of it was not; much of it was contingent on events then playing out. All baseball is played on the edge of a volcano. In some years, the volcano is more active than others and people in the moment can, at least to some extent, see the eruption coming.
This week, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox are playing a rematch of their only previous World Series meeting, in 1916, if a series that shares none of the participants, neither of the ballparks, and only one of the locations of the original can be said to be a rematch. It’s certainly not a sequel for which anyone was clamoring: The 1916 World Series was so memorable that books claiming to be complete histories of the Fall Classic whistle right past it.
Read the full article here: https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/the-1916-world-series-and-baseball-a-buoy-in-the-sea-of-death/
- Related link: 1916 Red Sox claim championship on adopted turf (SABR Games Project)
Originally published: October 26, 2018. Last Updated: October 26, 2018.