1945, the Cubs vs the Tigers. Games 1,2, and 3 were in Chicago. 4-7 were in Detroit. Were all series games set up as sets of 3 and 4 games? Who got the first three games? I imagine that since all travel was by train, there were exigencies that do not exist today. But how did that schedule work? Was it best record as the first home team? Were there other options available? What’s the story on how the thing was set up? Inquiring minds want to know.
The 1943 and 1945 Series were anomalies, due to travel restrictions from World War II. Prior to that, the (best of seven) Series had been a 2-3-2 format. In fact, in 1944, when the Series didn’t require travel, the “home” teams were still set in the 2-3-2 pattern.
And before Bud Selig’s dumbass move in 2003, the 4 game/3-game host role had automatically rotated between the two leagues each year – AL champion one year, NL champion the next.
There was enough difficulty setting it up in the first place. John McGraw and the New York Giants boycotted the second one in 1904 claiming the American League was too inferior to bother playing (he and AL President Ban Johnson had a feud since McGraw used to manage in the AL and the two had different ideas as to how rough the game should be). Also the Giants owner John Brush had concerns as to the number of games, who staffed it, dividing money, etc. But once he saw popular reaction to the cancelled 1904 series, he got behind organizing it.
The 2-3-2 dates from 1925 at the suggestion of Dodgers owner Charley Ebbetts. Since he died that year I imagine it was adopted to honor him. Before then you had a number of arrangements in scheduling games. In 1911-1913 they were changing cities every day (New York to a Philadelphia or a Boston) with no days off. They must have been living on the train for that week.
From 1919 to 1921 they tried playing best of nine instead of best of seven. From what I’ve read this was decided in the middle of September 1919, pushed by the Cincinnati Reds owner whose team was leading the league. Partly because owners were surprised after World War I ended that attendance would be good (they had shortened the season thinking people wouldn’t want sports being in morning over the War). Also the Reds had an advantage with more starting pitching than the White Sox had. When Judge Landis became commissioner he told the owners to go back to seven games: one week of post season play was sufficient.
Home field advantage was alternated by leagues each year (in 1935 they switched for some strange reason). They changed it in 2003 to whichever league wins the Allstar game because their broadcaster FOX was complaining about declining all star game ratings and wanted something to promote the game as “this time it counts”. I know it’s stupid. But tv executives think like that. I imagine if you tried introducing “best record gets home field” in 1905 John McGraw and other National league teams would complain about some AL team piling up wins against inferior teams.
Was it ratings, or was it because the league felt that the game had become a shadow of its former self, especially with managers withholding selected pitchers because it affected the team’s rotation - the 2002 tie being the last straw? I don’t think the fans care about World Series home field advantage in July; at least, not as much as the managers and players might.
Personally, I would give home field advantage to the league with the most interleague regular season wins, if you don’t count the series that are played every year unless their divisions play each other in the current year’s rotation. If it’s a tie, the league that didn’t have the advantage the previous year gets it.
Seems to me that the latter was a leading cause of the former.
That, and the increasing tendency for managers to be sure to put *everyone *on the team into the game. Baseball fans, who actually would like to see some of the top players from the other league actually play a little, got to see someone’s two minutes of fame and then the next piece was inserted into the game. It became an arm of marketing from many points of view. And then Selig went and made it infinitely worse with the notion that the players didn’t care enough. Of course, they wanted to win, but it was an honor and a show, for god’s sake, and they seemed to be the only ones who knew it.