As a librarian and sports fan, I decided to research the history of the World Series, given that the World Series starts this week, with the first game of the Series being played between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets on October 27, 2015. I have shared below what I have found on the World Series using some of the resources that are available to faculty, students, and staff here at the University of Scranton.
The World Series can be defined as an…
“Annual series of championship baseball games between the pennant winners of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL), played after the end of the regular season in October. The first team to win four games becomes the U.S. champion. The 1919 series is the most notorious because after the heavily favored Chicago White Sox were upset by the Cincinnati Reds, it was proven that members of the White Sox team had conspired with gamblers to throw the series. In what became known as the Black Sox Scandal, eight players were eventually acquitted but banned from baseball for life by the game’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Played every year since 1903 (except 1904 and 1994), the World Series is a major sporting event.”
Taken from the University of Scranton – Weinberg Memorial Library Credo Reference Database
World Series. (2004). In P. Cornelison & T. Yanak, The great American history fact-finder. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved from Credo Reference.
Upon further research, I found that The University of Scranton’s Weinberg Memorial Library has 6 books in our circulating collection that deal with the World Series. Here are some book recommendations: Autumn glory : baseball’s first World Series / By: Louis P. Masur (Call # GV878.4 .M37 2003), Eight men out : the Black Sox and the 1919 World Series / By: Eliot Asinof (Call # GV875.C6 A8 1987), Saying it’s so; a cultural history of the Black Sox Scandal (Call # GV875.C58 N38 2003), The World Series : a history of baseball’s fall classic / By: Ron Firmrite (Call # GV878.4 .F55 1993), The Story of the World Series / By: Fred Lieb (Call # GV863 .L53 1965), and World Series Classics / By: Dan Gutman (Call # GV878.4 .G89 1994).
For some more general research on the topic of baseball, I searched within the library’s catalog and came up with some great books from the Reference Collection. For a nice overview of baseball through the decades from its early history though the end of the 1990s, check out The chronicle of baseball : a century of major league action / By: John Mehno (Call # Reference GV863.A1 M4 2000) or for a nice comprehensive look at everything you could ever want to know about baseball from its early beginnings up to 1992, check out The Baseball encyclopedia : the complete and definitive record of major league baseball /By: Maxwell Macmillan International Publishing Company (Call # Reference GV877 .B27 1993).
Feel free to read up on baseball’s fall classic and learn more about the history of the game by using some of the resources that were mentioned in this library blog.
