The 114th World Series I on and, and for the first time it features a Boston vs. Los Angeles battle.While the two cities have long been rivals in basketball when the Magic Johnson-led Lakers battled Larry Bird’s Celtics for the NBA supremacy in the 80s, the NHL has never featured a Bruins-Kings meeting for the Stanley Cup, nor have the Patriots faced the LA-based Rams in the Super Bowl.Sports enthusiasts expect to read and watch rounds of Babe Ruth references the next few days until the best-of-seven World Series comes to an end because the eventual home run king starred in the one and only previous meeting between the Dodgers and Red Sox in the 1916 Fall Classic.
The Dodgers were in Brooklyn then, and in 1916, when the meeting with Boston took place, they were known as the Robins. The Babe won Game 2 of that World Series, throwing a 14-inning complete game in a 2-1 Red Sox victory. The last 13 of those innings were scoreless, the start of a 29-inning no-run streak for Ruth in World Series play. Ruth wasn’t the only pitcher with a titanic performance in that marathon Game 2. Brooklyn starter Sherry Smith also went the distance, pitching 13 1/3 innings until finally allowing a pinch-hit, walk-off single to Del Gainer in the 14th.
The first run off Smith was driven in by Ruth himself, on a third-inning RBI groundout. When all was said and done, the 14-inning contest was the longest in World Series history by innings –a record that has been tied twice, by Game 3 of the 2005 World Series and Game 1 of the 2015 World Series. Being that it was 1916, the game was still over in a snappy two hours, 32 minutes.The Brooklyn games were played at Ebbets Field, while the Boston games were played at Braves Field, then a larger venue than Fenway Park. This will, therefore, be the Dodgers franchise’s first has never made an appearance at Fenway Park in this,otherwise called “October Madness.” if there isn’t a lot of World Series history between the teams, this matchup, perhaps, is the most unusual historical aspect because this hasn’t happened before.
The wild-card era is barely in its 25th year, so that’s 50 seasons combined for the Red Sox and Dodgers. Together, they’ve put up 42 winning seasons, 25 playoff appearances, six pennants and three titles, all won by the Red Sox, by the way.The Dodgers have won the National League pennant 23 times. The Red Sox have been kings of the American League 14 times. But surprisingly, for all that success,
the teams have only met once before in the World Series –all the way back in 1916, when the Red Sox beat the Brooklyn Robins (named after manager Wilbert Robinson) in five games for the club’s fourth championship.Needless to say, baseball has changed a lot since then -there’s more than one team playing west of the Mississippi now, for one — and when the Dodgers and Red Sox clash in Game 1 of this 114th World Series on Tuesday, it won’t be anything like their last meeting in the Fall Classic more than a century ago.
