The First Modern World Series, 1903: Boston Americans and Pittsburgh Pirates

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 9 min read

How the American League champion Boston Americans and National League champion Pittsburgh Pirates came to play the first modern World Series in 1903, with the best-of-nine format, Cy Young, and Boston's comeback.

In early October 1903 the Pittsburgh Pirates led the Boston Americans three games to one in a best-of-nine series, needing two more wins for what looked like an easy championship. Boston won the next four games in a row and took the series five games to three. It was the first World Series between the champions of the National and American Leagues, and nothing about it was required: no rule, no league office and no contract forced the two clubs onto the same field.

That voluntary quality is the most interesting thing about 1903. The series that fans now treat as the natural end of every season began as a private arrangement between two owners, in a season when the American League was only two years into its claim to be a major league. This article explains how the series came about, why the format was longer than today's, who the stars were, what the historical numbers show about how Boston won, and why the whole thing nearly did not become a tradition.

Why a championship series was an invitation, not a requirement

Before 1901 there was one major league in the United States, the National League, which had absorbed or outlasted every rival. Baseball had held championship matches between rival leagues in the 1880s: the historical series records show the St. Louis Browns, then an American Association club, beating Chicago four games to two in 1886, for example. By the 1890s those contests had faded with the rivals that played them.

The American League changed that. It declared itself a major league in 1901 and raised the salaries of its players by signing National League stars, which started a war over contracts. By the end of 1902 the leagues were ready to stop fighting, and a national agreement signed in early 1903 recognized the American League as an equal and set rules for respecting each other's contracts. That peace made a series between the champions possible, but it did not demand one.

What it took was two owners willing to talk. Barney Dreyfuss, who owned the Pirates, and Henry Killilea, who owned Boston, arranged it in the late summer of 1903: Dreyfuss proposed a longer series in August, and in September Killilea met him and they settled on a best-of-nine series with games in both home parks. The point to hold onto is that two private parties wrote the rules, which is why the contest could so easily have been a one-time event.

Two pennant winners, very different clubs

The teams were not mirror images. Pittsburgh was the established power, a club that had won the National League pennant in 1901, 1902 and 1903, going 90-49, then 103-36, then 91-49. Boston, called the Americans at the time, was a newer club, second in the American League in 1901 and third in 1902 before running away with the 1903 pennant.

Pittsburgh scored the most runs in the majors that year, 793, and had the league's best hitter in Honus Wagner, who won the National League batting title at .355 with 182 hits, 30 doubles, 19 triples and 46 stolen bases. Ginger Beaumont led the majors with 209 hits. Boston's strength was run prevention. Its 2.57 team earned run average was the lowest in either league, built around a pitching staff headed by Cy Young (28-9, 2.08 ERA, 176 strikeouts) and Bill Dinneen (21-13). The American League's batting champion, Nap Lajoie at .344, played for Cleveland, not Boston, and Boston's best hitters were Patsy Dougherty (.331, 195 hits), Buck Freeman (13 home runs, 104 runs batted in, which led the league) and player-manager Jimmy Collins.

Both clubs played managers who were also regulars, which was normal then. Collins managed Boston from third base; Clarke ran Pittsburgh from the outfield.

A format built for the length of the season

Today the World Series is a best-of-seven. In 1903 it was a best-of-nine: the first club to win five games was the champion. The series opened in early October, after the regular season had ended, and the games were played in both home parks, Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston and Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. Both clubs had played 141 regular-season games, well short of the modern 162.

A best-of-nine series has a statistical logic: the longer the series, the harder it is for the weaker team to win by luck, and a contest meant to decide which league had the better team benefits from that. The best-of-nine returned for three years from 1919 to 1921, which is why the Black Sox scandal of 1919 unfolded over a series that could have lasted nine games.

The first four games: Pittsburgh in command

Pittsburgh took the early lead, and the reason was pitching. Deacon Phillippe started five of the eight games for the Pirates and completed all five, winning three and losing two. In 44 innings he allowed 15 earned runs for a 3.07 earned run average and struck out 22. He won Game 1 over Cy Young, who started the first game and lost, which meant the modern World Series opened with the winningest pitcher of all time taking a defeat.

Pittsburgh's lineup also had a strong opening. Jimmy Sebring, an outfielder, hit .333 for the series (10 hits in 30 at-bats) and is credited with the first home run in modern World Series history. Tommy Leach, the Pirates' third baseman, had four triples in the series, more than anyone on either side, and drove in seven runs.

Boston did not collapse: Dinneen threw two shutouts in the eight games, and the offense kept scoring. But by the time the series moved to its fifth game, Pittsburgh led three games to one, and the Pirates were a game from a decisive advantage.

The comeback: four straight

What changed was Pittsburgh's pitching depth. The Pirates' staff was short-handed. Sam Leever, who had won 25 games and led the National League in earned run average at 2.06, was reported to be bothered by a shoulder injury; he started twice in the series, lost both and posted a 5.40 ERA. Ed Doheny, a 16-game winner that year, was not available. With only Phillippe fully effective, the Pirates ran thin.

Boston, meanwhile, got the pitching it needed from its two stars. Over the final four games, Dinneen won two more times, including the clincher, and Young won two. The series ended with Boston winning five games to three. By the standard account, the last out was Dinneen striking out Wagner.

One part of the story is hard to quantify: the Boston crowd. A group of fans called the Royal Rooters, led by a tavern owner named Michael McGreevy, followed the team to Pittsburgh and sang a popular song, "Tessie," to rattle Pirates hitters. The historical record treats this as part of the story; no database can say how much it mattered.

Cy Young in October

Cy Young was 36 when the series started and had already won 28 games that season. He had jumped from the St. Louis club of the National League to the new Boston franchise in 1901, and by 1903 he was past his youngest seasons. He finished with 511 career wins, the all-time record, along with a 2.63 ERA and 749 complete games.

Young's 1.85 earned run average across the series is lower than his 2.08 in the regular season. He also hit well, going 1 for 15 with three runs batted in. The historical record shows show that Dinneen, not Young, was the star of the pitching: three wins, two of them shutouts, and 28 strikeouts.

His legacy is larger than this one series. The Cy Young Award, first given in 1956, was named for him after he died in November 1955. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1937, receiving 153 of 201 ballots.

The season around the series

The 1903 regular season shows how different the game was. Joe McGinnity of the New York Giants won 31 games, Christy Mathewson won 30 and Cy Young 28. Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics struck out 302 batters, while Buck Freeman's 13 home runs led the American League and Charlie Hickman's 12 were second. Frank Chance and Jimmy Sheckard each stole 67 bases to lead the National League. The whole major-league season drew 4,735,250 fans, about what one or two modern clubs draw in a year.

Those leaders say that power was scarce and that complete games were the norm for good pitchers. Deacon Phillippe is the best illustration on the Pittsburgh side. In the regular season he went 25-9 and walked only 29 batters in 289 and a third innings, a pace of fewer than one walk per nine innings. A pitcher with that control could finish five of five starts in October without much trouble, and Phillippe did, throwing 44 innings across the eight games.

The same context explains why a 3.07 ERA in the series, Phillippe's mark, was fine but not great, and why Dinneen's 2.06 and Young's 1.85 looked so strong. Most teams' earned run averages that year fell between 2.5 and 3.5. In that setting a pitching staff like Boston's, with the lowest team ERA in the majors, was the path to a pennant, and the first World Series was a test of which club's strengths would hold up across eight games.

What the numbers say about how Boston won

The surprising feature of the series is how close the hitting was. Boston batted .246 as a team (69 hits in 281 at-bats) against Pittsburgh's .237 (64 in 270), yet scored 39 runs to 24. Boston had 16 triples to Pittsburgh's 9, though only 4 doubles to 7, and both teams hit few home runs: Boston had 2 and Pittsburgh 1. Patsy Dougherty hit both of Boston's and finished with 8 hits and 5 runs batted in.

The 25 triples in eight games are striking. Crowds that overflowed onto the outfield grass were reported at the parks of the time, and balls hit into them were handled under special ground rules, which helps explain the extra bases. These two clubs also led the majors in triples during the regular season (113 and 110), so the series was in character. In 1903 teams averaged just 0.15 home runs per game and 3.55 strikeouts per game, against 1.02 and 7.50 in 2012, so the game was built on contact, speed and bunting, and runs came in clusters.

Pittsburgh struck out 45 times in the series to Boston's 29. That is 5.6 strikeouts a game, well above the 3.55 per team game of the 1903 regular season, and it helps explain why a club that led the majors in runs scored only 24 in eight games.

Why there was no series in 1904

If 1903 was the beginning, the next year nearly ended it. In 1904 Boston won the American League pennant again, but the National League champion New York Giants refused to play. The historical series records contain no 1904 World Series. Giants owner John Brush and manager John McGraw argued that the National League had no obligation to meet an American League champion, since the 1903 series had been a private arrangement, and Brush was reluctant to give the junior league legitimacy.

The embarrassment led to a more formal arrangement. In 1905 the Giants and the Athletics met in a best-of-seven series, which the Giants won four games to one, and the series became an annual event governed by a national commission. The 1903 contest therefore stands as a precedent, and the 1905 series is the first of the regular ones. In the long history that includes the 1954 World Series there are moments with bigger crowds and more famous plays, but none that did more to establish the idea that two leagues should settle things on the field.

Common questions

Was 1903 really the first World Series? It was the first between the champions of the National and American Leagues under the modern arrangement. Series between rival leagues' champions were played in the 1880s, and the historical record shows show some of them.

Why is Boston called the Americans? That was the club's name in the historical record shows for 1903. It became the Red Sox in 1908.

How good were the 1903 Pirates? They scored 793 runs, the most in the majors, and won 91 games. They had Honus Wagner, whose .355 average led the National League. Their 1902 team had won 103 games.

Did Black players take part? No. The color line kept them out of both major leagues, and they played for independent clubs. The historical record 1903 season file lists clubs such as the Cuban X Giants, with a 5-2 record in that year's data, outside the major-league structure.

Does the 1903 series show up in modern comparisons? It is useful for context. A best-of-nine and a 141-game schedule belonged to a different game, so comparisons with today's October are better done through the 1927 Yankees and later teams.

Where to go next

For the century that followed, read about the 1927 Yankees, the 1954 World Series and the Black Sox scandal, and see how tied seasons are resolved in how MLB tiebreakers work. Browse the history topic page for more.