I know the '95 Braves don't "count" because they'd won previously in Milwaukee in Boston. But to the city of Atlanta, it was our first title. The Braves had been terrible for so long -- Lewis Grizzard once joked that the thing Michael Jackson had in common with the Braves was that they both wore one glove for no apparent reason. The Hawks were and are never quite good enough. The Falcons were terrible before they became a Russian novel. It was the first championship within 500 miles of the city once called Loserville. Atlanta fans have gotten their hearts shattered so many times in so many excruciating ways. '95 was special.
I saw a crazy post that matchups between teams who have never won the WS has happened ONLY 7 TIMES in the past. Since 1903. That almost seems impossible.
But:
1903 (obviously)
1905
1906
1907
1909
1920
1980
And that's it. That is nuts. But I think it is right.
Whenever I hear people talk about title or bust, I think of the Marlins and whether the past 35 years have been better to Marlins fans or Atlanta fans.
Has any franchise in baseball/other sports had their success or failure cosmically turn on a name change like Tampa Bay? As Joe notes, from 1998 to 2007, they were awful - they finished 5th in the AL East all but one year when they finished 4th. Since 2008, they've made three World Series, including immediately in 2008, and they've finished 1st or 2nd nine times.
1985 WS - ugh. I'm still not fully over it, though we won in '06 and '11 and were in the WS in '87 and '13. I wish we would have won one more for Whitey. Y
Here's the stat I like: Before 1980, when was the most recent WS matchup between two teams that never won a WS? *1920*: Cleveland vs. Brooklyn. And before then it was aughts, the first decade of the Series, when it was inevitable. IT'S BARELY EVER HAPPENED. And it should be celebrated.
Ideally, the matchup should be the two losers of the LCS last year, Milwaukee and Seattle, so you'd have the original Seattle team, Pilots/Brewers, taking on the franchise created in its litigious wake. Alas, as Joe and Mike implied on the Poscast last winter, the Mariners owners are not serious about winning.
Between the fixed roof in Tampa and the weather in Wisconsin, this year will likely be under the roof for all 4-7 games. We had an all-indoor World Series in 2020 when the entire contest was played at a neutral park as an after effect of the pandemic. The Series in 2023 was between two retractable roof teams. Anyone remember if any of those games featured open air?
I think fans who are undecided should consider that the Brewers are still owned by the Selig family, used car salesman Bud Selig owned the Brewers, enabled if not encouraged the steroid era, tried to contract the Minnesota Twins (another small market that was doing better than the Brewers), and extorted numerous markets to build stadiums for their billionaire owners with the threat of franchise relocation.
At least the Brewers were able to defeat the Dodgers, who are still owned by Walter O'Malley (who stole baseball from Brooklyn). And thank goodness we won't see another championship for current A's owner Connie Mack, who makes himself the manager and just sells off his stars as soon as they get too expensive*.
What St. Louis fans should remember from 1985 is that they still could have won Game 6, and Joaquin Andujar coming unglued in Game 7 and Whitey Herzog--a Hall of Fame manager and baseball person--disgracing himself. It was sad to see.
And John Tudor assaulted a fan (not the kind who cheers but the kind that blows air on you) in the locker room after getting routed in Game 7. For 9 1/2 innings after the bad call at first, the Cardinals played criminally bad baseball.
Clark missed a pop-up, Porter had a passed ball ... setting up Dane Iorg's winning single. (The same Dane Iorg - I know of no other - who hit .529 for the Cardinals against the Brewers in '82.)
I'd throw in the 87 Twins win into this list of first time champs. Yeah, they were gifted the Senators franchise history, but I don't know any fans here who get too excited by that 1924 title.
The weird thing to me is I have vague memories of the Nationals trying to take some of that Senators memory, too. I know they have that freakshow Walter Johnson statue outside their stadium, but I think they have other stuff, too
When they played at RFK, they had numbers (or letters for players predating numbered jerseys) on the facade for notable Senators players. Does that still happen at InsertCorporateNameHere Ballpark?
The DC stadium is still called Nationals Park. The fanbase is split between the novelty of having a non-corporate name versus the lost revenue that the owners could/should have put into player salaries.
The Nats' ring of honor does have an expansive list from any team connected with DC: Senators v1 (Joe Cronin, Goose Goslin, Bucky Harris, Walter Johnson, Rick Ferrell, Harmon Killebrew, Heinie Manush, Sam Rice, Early Wynn, and Clark Griffith surprisingly), Senators v2 (Frank Howard), Expos (Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines), and the Grays (Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Ray Brown, Buck Leonard, Cumberland Posey, and Jud Wilson), along with more recent Nationals (Jayson Werth, Ivan Rodriguez, and Ryan Zimmerman).
I've never understood the consistent inconsistency when a new city inherits or doesn't the old home town accomplishments. The Dodgers include Brooklyn. Baltimore doesn't include St. Louis (or Milwaukee, for our 135ish year old fans?). The Yankees ignore their time in Baltimore, but the Braves still recognize their efforts in Boston.
Emerson once said a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So what does that make foolish inconsistency?
All of the Nationals retired numbers (save Jackie) are Expos, though, so the Nationals are continuing the Montreal portion of their franchise in a way the others aren't.
The Twins don't honor Walter Johnson in a similar way, do they? And yes, I know he played before uniform numbers, but they don't have a "BIG TRAIN" up by their retired numbers or something similar, do they?
And of course, the Rangers version of the Senators didn't last long enough for much special recognition (though Killebrew played for both), the Browns were famously bad, and the Highlanders were short lived and such a long time ago that there were likely no standouts there, either. So it seems like Washington is really an outlier in this case.
Even that isn't consistent especially going back into the 1800s when everybody just seem to name themselves after the color of their sox. I think the Marlins, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Royals, Blue Jays, Padres, Mariners, White Sox, Mets, and Tigers are the only teams to change nothing about their name.
I'd suggest that the Twins, at least through the Calvin Griffith years, kept their Washington legacy. Modern ownership (and fans?) may have walked away from that. Then again, I'd want to walk away from any link to Calvin ("We came here because you've got good, hardworking white people here") too.
Rangers too, in the years when Frank Howard was the star.
Perhaps it is a lingering effect from dropping the name, but it isn't instantaneous.
That makes sense. I can understand why the Griffiths in particular would have wanted to hang on to their Washington legacy, considering their long history with that team.
It seems like once the people high up in the organization have lost their connection to the old place, whether that's instantaneous or not, that's when it goes. In the case of the Nationals, for instance, it was a new ownership group with no connection to Montreal.
Fully agree. I didn't realize that the Atlanta Braves are technically the oldest continuously playing franchise having inherited Milwaukee and Boston history going back to 1871. Seems dumb. Give it to the Cubs or Phils or Reds or some team that's still in the city they started.
Some Braves historians trace the lineage back to George and Harry Wright and the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly professional team. I tend to think that silly as there wasn't anything like continuity at that point in time, but at least there is an argument for it.
Call me a contrarian, but I will happily be in the minority in rooting against the Brewers for the next couple weeks and I was absolutely not rooting for the Yankees on 2001.
I'm a Red Sox fan living in CT amongst countless Yankees fans. I absolutely hate the Yankees, but I found myself rooting for them in 2001. Oddly, it wasn't because of 9/11. It was because I'd been a Red Sox fan for well over 30 years at the time and had never seen a championship and the idea that some team that had only been around for a couple of years could win a World Series before I saw the Red Sox win one really pissed me off! The only times I ever found myself rooting for the Yankees was that WS and 2003 against the Marlins for the same reason (and this would be the Marlins second). And naturally those jerk Yankees lost both times. I don't intellectually decide who to root for when the Sox are not involved. I just find myslef pulling for one team or the other.
I don't know when or why it started happening, but I love that the Rays have embraced their old Devil Rays uniforms with the green/yellow gradient.
I know the '95 Braves don't "count" because they'd won previously in Milwaukee in Boston. But to the city of Atlanta, it was our first title. The Braves had been terrible for so long -- Lewis Grizzard once joked that the thing Michael Jackson had in common with the Braves was that they both wore one glove for no apparent reason. The Hawks were and are never quite good enough. The Falcons were terrible before they became a Russian novel. It was the first championship within 500 miles of the city once called Loserville. Atlanta fans have gotten their hearts shattered so many times in so many excruciating ways. '95 was special.
I saw a crazy post that matchups between teams who have never won the WS has happened ONLY 7 TIMES in the past. Since 1903. That almost seems impossible.
But:
1903 (obviously)
1905
1906
1907
1909
1920
1980
And that's it. That is nuts. But I think it is right.
The Phillies, in 1980, weren't just the last of the original franchises to win a WS, but last by a LOT.
Red Sox 1903
Giants 1905
White Sox 1906
Cubs 1907
Pirates 1909
A's 1910
Braves 1914
Reds 1919
Indians 1920
Yankees 1923
Senators 1924
Cardinals 1926
Tigers 1935
Dodgers 1955
Orioles 1966
Phillies 1980
Expansion teams
Mets 1969
Royals 1985
Blue Jays 1991
Marlins 1997
Dbacks 2001
Angels 2002
Astros 2017
Nationals 2019
Rangers 2023
Brewers OR Rays 2026
Padres, Mariners and Rockies When Hell Freezes Over,
Whenever I hear people talk about title or bust, I think of the Marlins and whether the past 35 years have been better to Marlins fans or Atlanta fans.
Has any franchise in baseball/other sports had their success or failure cosmically turn on a name change like Tampa Bay? As Joe notes, from 1998 to 2007, they were awful - they finished 5th in the AL East all but one year when they finished 4th. Since 2008, they've made three World Series, including immediately in 2008, and they've finished 1st or 2nd nine times.
1985 WS - ugh. I'm still not fully over it, though we won in '06 and '11 and were in the WS in '87 and '13. I wish we would have won one more for Whitey. Y
Joe, I vote for the Japanese T-shirts!
For long time Phillie fans, I will recommend this book. If you can't read the review, I plan to recommend it for Joe's nonfiction book club if you are a member. https://journalstar.com/life-entertainment/local/article_90f87169-1ea2-451f-ab67-7d69f63e7b82.html
Here's the stat I like: Before 1980, when was the most recent WS matchup between two teams that never won a WS? *1920*: Cleveland vs. Brooklyn. And before then it was aughts, the first decade of the Series, when it was inevitable. IT'S BARELY EVER HAPPENED. And it should be celebrated.
Ideally, the matchup should be the two losers of the LCS last year, Milwaukee and Seattle, so you'd have the original Seattle team, Pilots/Brewers, taking on the franchise created in its litigious wake. Alas, as Joe and Mike implied on the Poscast last winter, the Mariners owners are not serious about winning.
Between the fixed roof in Tampa and the weather in Wisconsin, this year will likely be under the roof for all 4-7 games. We had an all-indoor World Series in 2020 when the entire contest was played at a neutral park as an after effect of the pandemic. The Series in 2023 was between two retractable roof teams. Anyone remember if any of those games featured open air?
The last three games in 2023 were open air, yes. The 2020 pandemic World Series is the only all-indoor one to date.
It looks like there's a decent chance the first game or two in Milwaukee will have the roof open. We'll see.
Notable about the 1997 Marlins Series: The only Series in history where the 2 teams alternated wins all the way to the end.
I think fans who are undecided should consider that the Brewers are still owned by the Selig family, used car salesman Bud Selig owned the Brewers, enabled if not encouraged the steroid era, tried to contract the Minnesota Twins (another small market that was doing better than the Brewers), and extorted numerous markets to build stadiums for their billionaire owners with the threat of franchise relocation.
At least the Brewers were able to defeat the Dodgers, who are still owned by Walter O'Malley (who stole baseball from Brooklyn). And thank goodness we won't see another championship for current A's owner Connie Mack, who makes himself the manager and just sells off his stars as soon as they get too expensive*.
*some things never change
Bud Selig: Trailblazer /s
Didn't Wendy Selig sell to Mark Attanasio?
20 years ago but let him cook 😀
What St. Louis fans should remember from 1985 is that they still could have won Game 6, and Joaquin Andujar coming unglued in Game 7 and Whitey Herzog--a Hall of Fame manager and baseball person--disgracing himself. It was sad to see.
And John Tudor assaulted a fan (not the kind who cheers but the kind that blows air on you) in the locker room after getting routed in Game 7. For 9 1/2 innings after the bad call at first, the Cardinals played criminally bad baseball.
Clark missed a pop-up, Porter had a passed ball ... setting up Dane Iorg's winning single. (The same Dane Iorg - I know of no other - who hit .529 for the Cardinals against the Brewers in '82.)
I'd throw in the 87 Twins win into this list of first time champs. Yeah, they were gifted the Senators franchise history, but I don't know any fans here who get too excited by that 1924 title.
The weird thing to me is I have vague memories of the Nationals trying to take some of that Senators memory, too. I know they have that freakshow Walter Johnson statue outside their stadium, but I think they have other stuff, too
When they played at RFK, they had numbers (or letters for players predating numbered jerseys) on the facade for notable Senators players. Does that still happen at InsertCorporateNameHere Ballpark?
The DC stadium is still called Nationals Park. The fanbase is split between the novelty of having a non-corporate name versus the lost revenue that the owners could/should have put into player salaries.
The Nats' ring of honor does have an expansive list from any team connected with DC: Senators v1 (Joe Cronin, Goose Goslin, Bucky Harris, Walter Johnson, Rick Ferrell, Harmon Killebrew, Heinie Manush, Sam Rice, Early Wynn, and Clark Griffith surprisingly), Senators v2 (Frank Howard), Expos (Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines), and the Grays (Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Ray Brown, Buck Leonard, Cumberland Posey, and Jud Wilson), along with more recent Nationals (Jayson Werth, Ivan Rodriguez, and Ryan Zimmerman).
I've never understood the consistent inconsistency when a new city inherits or doesn't the old home town accomplishments. The Dodgers include Brooklyn. Baltimore doesn't include St. Louis (or Milwaukee, for our 135ish year old fans?). The Yankees ignore their time in Baltimore, but the Braves still recognize their efforts in Boston.
Emerson once said a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So what does that make foolish inconsistency?
Even just based on the examples you're laying out, whether they keep the same nickname seems to be a primary determining factor.
Braves, Athletics, Dodgers, Giants: Yes.
Yankees, Orioles, Twins, Rangers, Nationals: No.
All of the Nationals retired numbers (save Jackie) are Expos, though, so the Nationals are continuing the Montreal portion of their franchise in a way the others aren't.
The Twins don't honor Walter Johnson in a similar way, do they? And yes, I know he played before uniform numbers, but they don't have a "BIG TRAIN" up by their retired numbers or something similar, do they?
And of course, the Rangers version of the Senators didn't last long enough for much special recognition (though Killebrew played for both), the Browns were famously bad, and the Highlanders were short lived and such a long time ago that there were likely no standouts there, either. So it seems like Washington is really an outlier in this case.
Even that isn't consistent especially going back into the 1800s when everybody just seem to name themselves after the color of their sox. I think the Marlins, Diamondbacks, Rockies, Royals, Blue Jays, Padres, Mariners, White Sox, Mets, and Tigers are the only teams to change nothing about their name.
The Marlins changed from Florida Marlins to Miami.
To clarify, I meant teams that changed nicknames *after moving*. If they stayed in the same city, there's nothing to threaten the history.
I'd suggest that the Twins, at least through the Calvin Griffith years, kept their Washington legacy. Modern ownership (and fans?) may have walked away from that. Then again, I'd want to walk away from any link to Calvin ("We came here because you've got good, hardworking white people here") too.
Rangers too, in the years when Frank Howard was the star.
Perhaps it is a lingering effect from dropping the name, but it isn't instantaneous.
That makes sense. I can understand why the Griffiths in particular would have wanted to hang on to their Washington legacy, considering their long history with that team.
It seems like once the people high up in the organization have lost their connection to the old place, whether that's instantaneous or not, that's when it goes. In the case of the Nationals, for instance, it was a new ownership group with no connection to Montreal.
Fully agree. I didn't realize that the Atlanta Braves are technically the oldest continuously playing franchise having inherited Milwaukee and Boston history going back to 1871. Seems dumb. Give it to the Cubs or Phils or Reds or some team that's still in the city they started.
Some Braves historians trace the lineage back to George and Harry Wright and the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly professional team. I tend to think that silly as there wasn't anything like continuity at that point in time, but at least there is an argument for it.
Call me a contrarian, but I will happily be in the minority in rooting against the Brewers for the next couple weeks and I was absolutely not rooting for the Yankees on 2001.
I'm a Red Sox fan living in CT amongst countless Yankees fans. I absolutely hate the Yankees, but I found myself rooting for them in 2001. Oddly, it wasn't because of 9/11. It was because I'd been a Red Sox fan for well over 30 years at the time and had never seen a championship and the idea that some team that had only been around for a couple of years could win a World Series before I saw the Red Sox win one really pissed me off! The only times I ever found myself rooting for the Yankees was that WS and 2003 against the Marlins for the same reason (and this would be the Marlins second). And naturally those jerk Yankees lost both times. I don't intellectually decide who to root for when the Sox are not involved. I just find myslef pulling for one team or the other.