List of World Series champions
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) and concludes the MLB postseason. First played in 1903, the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff and is a contest between the champions of baseball's National League (NL) and American League (AL). Often referred to as the "Fall Classic", the modern World Series has been played every year since 1903 with two exceptions: in 1904, when the NL champion New York Giants declined to play the AL champion Boston Americans; and in 1994, when the series was canceled due to the players' strike.
Yankees–Red Sox rivalry
The Red Sox were one of the most successful teams in baseball from 1901 to 1918. They won the inaugural World Series in (as the Boston Americans; the team changed its name to Red Sox in 1908) and four more between 1912 and 1918. In 1901, the Yankees, then known as the Baltimore Orioles, played in Maryland for two seasons before moving north. The two teams had their first meeting in Baltimore on April 26, 1901, the inaugural year of the American League. On May 7, 1903, both teams played for the first time after the franchise moved to New York and became the Highlanders, in reference to playing games in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The game was marked by a fight when Boston pitcher George Winter was knocked down. Boston would eventually go on to win the pennant and the inaugural 1903 World Series. The 1904 season featured the teams facing each other on opening day. Later in the season, the Highlanders, led by pitcher Jack Chesbro in his record-setting 41 game-winning season, met the Boston Americans in the season's final game to decide the American League pennant winner. Chesbro threw a wild pitch in the top of the ninth inning, allowing the winning run to score from third base, and Boston won the game, and the pennant. The New York Giants, who had already clinched the National League pennant, refused to play in the 1904 World Series because of a perception of the "Junior Circuit" as being inferior (and because of alleged animosity between American League founder and first president, Ban Johnson, and the hierarchy of the Giants, owner John T. Brush and his team's Hall of Fame coach, player-manager John McGraw); thus, there was no World Series that year. Not until 2004 would the Red Sox again defeat the Yankees in a title-deciding game.