The Los Angeles Dodgers try to avoid making history
By Bill Felber
The Los Angeles Dodgers could become the first team since 1913 to lose three consecutive World Series. Of course, they have to get to the Series first.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have a chance this season to do something that hasn’t occurred in 106 seasons. Not that they want to, but they could.
Only twice in baseball history, and not since 1913, has a team lost three consecutive World Series. The Dodgers lost in 2017 to the Houston Astros and last season to the Boston Red Sox. If they reach the 2019 World Series and then lose to the American League champion, they will be the first team to do so since the 1911-1913 New York Giants.
Since the World Series was first conducted in 1903, the only other team to lose three straight was the Detroit Tigers, who fell in 1907 and 1908 to the Chicago Cubs and in 1909 to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
The accomplishment, if one wants to call it that, occurs so infrequently because so few teams lose even two consecutive World Series. Since 1913, the only teams with even a chance to lose a third straight were the 1923 New York Yankees, the 1925 New York Giants, the 1938 New York Giants, the 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 1965 New York Yankees, the 1979 Los Angeles Dodgers, the 1993 Atlanta Braves and the 2012 Texas Rangers.
Of those teams, only the 1923 Yankees broke through to win the World Series. The 1925 and 1938 Giants, the 1954 Dodgers, 1965 Yankees, and 1979 Dodgers all failed to qualify for post-season play. The 1993 Braves lost to the Philadelphia in the National League Championship Series, while Baltimore defeated the 2012 Rangers in the American League wild-card game.
Those old Giants, led by John McGraw and featuring Christy Mathewson as their pitching ace, seemed at times to be an especially jinxed club.
The 1911 Giants lost in six games to the defending World Series champion Philadelphia Athletics when Frank ‘Home Run’ Baker hit decisive home runs off Rube Marquard and then Mathewson in both the second and third games. Those were the hits that earned him his nickname.
One year later, the Giants appeared to have beaten the Boston Red Sox. With the series tied at three games, New York scored in the top of the 10th inning to take a 2-1 lead and had Mathewson on the mound. But Boston took advantage of a stunning fielding lapse by center fielder Fred Snodgrass, who dropped an easy fly ball to open the bottom of the 10th, and scored twice to win 3-2.
The 1913 Series was a rematch of 1911, with Mack’s Athletics dismissing McGraw’s Giants in five games. Chief Bender, Philadelphia’s 21-game winner, won twice.
Next. Nats: Game one should decide who starts game two. dark
The 1907-09 Tigers featured Ty Cobb, but that didn’t help them against the Cubs and Pirates. Cobb, the American League batting champion all three of those years, hit just .200 against the 1907 Cubs, and just .231 against the 1909 Pirates. After winning just one game against the Cubs in 1907 and 1908, Detroit’s 1909 run ended in the first decisive seventh game in World Series history. The Pirates won that game 8-0 behind rookie Babe Adams’ shutout pitching.