The Toughest Miracle In The History Of Sports

Imagine being in the 1960s watching your 2 most favorite baseball teams play against each other in the world series. The score is 9-9, the game is tied,the bases are loaded and your favorite player is up to bat. You're sitting in the crowd on the edge of your seat wondering what is he gonna do. Will he hit a home run and win the world series, or will he strike out and disappoint His whole team? Baseball can be very complicated sometimes, but when you know more about a baseball team, famous player, and the equipment ,baseball won’t be complicated anymore .The New York Yankees were well-known in baseball during the 1960s, because of their popularity, the type of equipment they used, and their baseball players.

The “New York Yankees” is the baseball team that has won 18 division titles, 40 AL pennants, and 27 World Series championships, all of which are Major League Baseball records. It makes great records and great success each year. And the impact it has on the global economy is huge. Major League Baseball is an oligopoly dominated by a few firms.

Ever since I could remember, I have always had a great interest and love for the game of baseball. As a kid, I would spend countless hours in the backyard with my grandfather, or even by myself, tossing, hitting and fielding a baseball. When I wasn't in the yard pretending to be Nomar Garciaparra I would watch the Boston Red Sox games on TV with my Grandfather.  Even in my early adolescence, as impatient as most are, I had the patience to sit there and watch the Sox.With my eyes glued to the screen with a look of anticipation fixed on my face ready to mimic my grandfather with the excitement of a home run hit or the frustration of Mo-Vaughn striking out. Call me crazy, but I was addicted, even as a young boy, to Boston Red Sox baseball.

In 2004 the Boston Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in 86 years. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016 to end a 108 year championship drought. What do they have in common? The teams both had a success in the early 20th century, but both blundered for extensive amounts of time before winning another world championship. Both had to overcome a huge deficit to complete their championship winning seasons. Both teams were coming off a successful season the year before, and had big offseason acquisitions to strengthen their team as well mid- season acquisitions. The two also had playoff heroes that dazzled the audience on their paths to victory. The two teams are very much in common, but they are also different teams in

Baseball is known as America’s pastime and is one of the most popular, respected sports on earth. Since the beginning of the sport, it seemingly advances with technology every year making faster and stronger players. The use of steroids became rampant and spread among players and has carried them away from the true history of the game they play. Controversy still today runs around the sport today about fines, punishments and record breaking. The past two decades of Major League Baseball have been tainted because of the use of performance enhancing drugs, also known as steroids, causing the loss of many fans and the true meaning of America’s favorite sport.

In an big effort to end a bitter rivalry and promote unity in baseball, National League and newly established American League decided to come together for a new kind of season finale. Nine years earlier, the two top teams in the National League competed in an post-season championship in which Boston defeated Pittsburgh five games to three. In 1903, both teams found themselves competing against one another in the first official "World Series". Pittsburgh's Barney Dreyfuss and Boston's Henry Killilea agreed that their ball clubs, who were both pennant winners, should meet in a best-of-nine playoff series for the "World Championship."

In Major League Baseball’s 1919 World Series two teams that were the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds went up against each other. They played only a eight game series because the Cincinnati Reds already had won five games after the eighth game was over which didn’t require them to go to the ninth game. Many people found it hard to believe that the Reds actually one the World Series because the White Sox were favored to win. The bookies made the odds seven to five favored on the Chicago White Sox to win. Believe it or not the Chicago White Sox actually let the Cincinnati Reds win the series because they were payed a significant amount of money to throw the game. This famous Scandal was known as The Black Sox Scandal. The media reacted very suddenly to this scandal, the people were very shocked when they got word of it, and the aftermath of this Scandal cause many problems in baseball and society.

Baseball became a famous game in the late 1800’s, and continued to grow. The first World Series was played in 1903, and the annual contest between the two top teams quickly became one of the most anticipated events in America. More and more people kept attending each year. In 1919 the World Series was expected to be profitable, and it did reach a large attendance. It was such a big event, and many other major devious events were involved.

Nowhere in the country is he more popular than in Seattle, where he is considered the savior of baseball in the city. In the 1980s, the Mariners were a historically moribund franchise playing in the crumbling Kingdome. Prior to his arrival, the Mariners had been seriously considering a move to Washington DC, but that all changed once Griffey came (Fort, 2000, p. 313). His exciting style of play immediately attracted fans and attention to the franchise (Caple, 2010). In 1995, Griffey led a miracle rally to the Mariners first playoff appearance in decades (Reader, 2010), and capped the season by scoring the game winning run to defeat the New York Yankees in the first round (Schaefer, 2003, p.6). His rise rejuvenated baseball and the city in general, leading the building of the new stadium, Safeco Field, dubbed the “House That Griffey Built”.

Before Football, Basketball or Hockey, Baseball was America’s favorite pastime and a global phenomenon. Baseballs rich heritage and purity gave it a mass appeal not just in America but across the world. However, even the purest games can become corrupt, and over time Baseball has lost much of the integrity and credibility it once had. What caused the downfall of baseball? In many ways it all starts with Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series. The goal of this paper will be to examine the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, and how this scandal reshaped Major League baseball and Baseball worldwide, through its lasting impact. The paper will examine the causes of the Black Sox Scandal, such as lack of proper pay and the direct role World War I played in it. The paper will then

The year was 1919, and baseball was in the air. The Chicago White Sox had the World Series locked up when scandal struck. It would come to be known as the “Black Sox Scandal” when a group of players were paid by gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, including the great Joe Jackson. It was one of baseball’s darkest hours, and still lives in infamy inside the hearts of baseball fans all across the world, especially in the south-side of Chicago, the home of the White Sox.

The 1919 White Sox--the White Sox of Eddie Collins, Eddie Cicotte, Dickie Kerr, Ray Schalk, Buck Weaver and "Shoeless" Joe Jackson--are considered by baseball historians to be one of the greatest teams ever to take the field (Solomon). The “Black” Sox were the major favorites of the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Chicago had the better pitching, the better hitting, and the better fielding, but they somehow lost. The “Black” Sox lost in eight games, back in 1919 the only playoff series they was the World series so they played a max of nine games. A few months after the Reds won the World Series, on December fifteenth, 1919, “The New York World published an explosive article by Hugh Fullerton suggesting the the World Series was fixed” (Linder).

Transition: Heading into the World Series the White Sox were heavy favorites, and people in both cities believed they would make quick work of the Reds.

After the Chicago White Sox played the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series in 1919, accusations of the sox “throwing the game” started circling. This resulted in the most famous baseball scandal in history. Many believe that the reason for this scandal was the way the owner, Charles Comiskey, treated his players. He was known to make promises he didn’t keep, and he paid his players very poorly. He treated them unfairly and charged them for senseless things.

“The morning papers quoted Yankees stars Mantle and Roger Maris as saying the Yankees were still the better team, even if the Pirates somehow managed to win Game 7.”